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Bringing out the dead

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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4
Bringing out the dead

arts@sfbg.com

SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL The question of how to represent the Holocaust is one that rightly haunts film history — rightly, because it was the Nazis themselves who most rigorously documented their destruction of Europe’s Jews, and thus it is to the Nazis that any filmmaker incorporating archival evidence owes a dubious debt. Certainly, documentary contemplations of the Holocaust have been instrumental not only to our philosophical understanding of the history, but also to the development of documentary form itself (I’m thinking of 1955’s Night and Fog, 1985’s Shoah, 1969’s The Sorrow and the Pity, and, less readily available, the works of Abraham Ravett and Péter Forgács). But given the relative invisibility of more recent genocides and the political inflection of what Norman Finkelstein uncharitably calls the "Holocaust Industry," it seems clear that a contemporary work needs a more dimensional rationale than "never forget."

The 30th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival includes several documentaries that at least peripherally touch on the Holocaust, but two are particularly ambitious: Einsatzgruppen: The Death Brigades and A Film Unfinished. The former is an exhaustive cataloging of the Nazi execution squads’ brutal charge to render the Eastern front: Judenfrei, incorporating textbook history, eyewitness accounts (adhering to Shoah‘s trifurcated structure of Jewish survivors, local collaborators and onlookers, and former Nazis on hidden camera), and an unrelenting case of archive fever. The same color footage of starving Jewish children we see in Einsatzgruppen washes up in Yael Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished, but here it’s the provenance of these images, filmed by Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, that’s being scrutinized.

Director Michael Prazan is primarily interested in how the Einsatzgruppen’s killing was done. This leaves plenty to sort out during the film’s three hours, especially given the still contentious issue of local collaboration — a Ukrainian woman he interviews movingly conveys the shattering realization that the murderers who spoke her language so well were indeed her people. But in Einsatzgruppen, eyewitness accounts like these are tangential to the grand historical perspective glued together by voice-over and traumatic archival images (Claude Lanzmann assiduously avoided both in Shoah). The voice-over speaks from nowhere, while the images of bloody pogroms and fresh corpses viewed from the vantage point of their killers are merely speechless.

Reappropriating Nazi propaganda is an old story — Frank Capra grabbed some of Triumph of the Will (1935) for Why We Fight (1943-1945), as does director John Keith Wasson at the beginning of his fine SFJFF film, Surviving Hitler: A Love Story. Contrary though the meanings may be, it’s difficult to sidestep the totalizing operation of propaganda. Keenly aware of this epistemological trouble, A Film Unfinished‘s Hersonski does everything she can to address Nazi footage in its specificity. Her coordination of primary documents is breathtaking, aligning the Nazi reels with the descriptive (and at times deconstructive) diaries of ghetto inhabitants and the court testimony of one of the cameramen. The invocatory effect acknowledges the gaps of the visible history as it articulates its layers. Hersonski is similarly clever in staging her interviews: she films survivors watching the reels in darkened theaters, alone, offering comments and startling yelps of recognition ("Oy, I knew that woman!")

Before a contemporary filmmaker leans on horrific archival images as self-evident documents, he or she really ought to see the clip in A Film Unfinished of Jewish prisoners being rounded up for a film shoot, terrified that they were being led to slaughter — which they were, of course. The filming was a rehearsal for the murders, and, as Einsatzgruppen shows us ad nauseam, the camera was occasionally present for the final moments as well. The death brigade’s supervisorial role in the Eastern European killings afforded them their "objective" camera positions — a fact that should give any well-meaning documentarian pause.

SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

July 14–Aug. 9, most shows $11

Castro, 429 Castro, SF; Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk; CineArts@Palo Alto Square, 3000 El Camino Real Bldg Six, Palo Alto; Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center, 118 Fourth St., San Rafael

(415) 256-TIXX

www.sfjff.org

Against nostalgia

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Against nostalgia

arts@sfbg.com

VISUAL ART/MUSIC Whether through the distorted visual crackle of old videotape or the gauzy gaze of a photograph, there is a class of artwork that challenges the spectator to engage with something not immediately present. It’s as if there is something floating behind the image at hand, which the mind is desperately hungry to grasp, but cannot perceive. This effect we call “haunting,” and often leave it at that. But 17 years ago, French philosopher Jacques Derrida developed a way of thinking about the concept of the ghost in terms of its symbolic relevance to our experience of history, and his “hauntological” approach continues to inform strains of art and music criticism as well as political philosophy.

Inspired by Derrida along with a recent spate of hauntologically inclined British electronic music, the Berkeley Art Museum’s “Hauntology” exhibit assembles an array of such unsettling works across several media. Curated by local artist/musician Scott Hewicker and BAM director Lawrence Rinder, the small but affecting gallery is composed mostly of selections from BAM’s collection that fit in one way or another into the rubric of hauntology.

Working, with a few exceptions, from within the museum’s existing collection was ultimately liberating, according to Hewicker. “I think we wanted to take it another step further in some other open direction, and kind of be very poetic about it, and not be in this defined realm that doesn’t really have a very strict … defined realm,” Hewicker laughingly explains, on the opening day of the exhibit.

Besides that circumstantial constraint, the idea of a hauntology show presents a couple other interesting conundrums. For one thing, hauntology is not a genre of art; it’s an I-know-it-when-I-see-it affair at best, more of a critical framework than a set of conventions. For another thing, there is no defined hauntological movement in visual art (though there is arguably one in music), now or at any point in the past.

What defines hauntological art is loosely derived from Derrida’s idea, as quoted in the exhibit’s manifesto, of “the persistence of a present past,” a past not immediately perceptible but always exerting itself on the present. Hewicker and Rinder interpret this in a number of ways through their selections. The 1820 painting by an unknown artist View of Providence, Rhode Island invites questions of context — who painted this? and why? — and its ominous black grids of windows necessitate a similar curiosity: what’s behind them? In Roger Ballen’s Twirling Wires (2001), on the other hand, the question has more to do with what is actually transpiring in the photograph of a blanket-swaddled man seemingly menaced by a floating mass of wires.

Besides Derrida’s foundational 1993 book Specters of Marx, the curators point to British music journalist Simon Reynolds’ writings on electronic musicians such as Burial and the various artists on the Ghost Box label. Reynolds seems to have opened up the field for discussing hauntological aesthetics in modern popular culture. Another acknowledged inspiration is Adam Harper’s blog, Rouge’s Foam (www.rougesfoam.blogspot.com), which treats music and visual art from a hauntological perspective. Hewicker elaborates: “He was sort of the motivation for the show in the sense that he called for kind of a nonstylistic approach to art in a hauntological sense — that it wasn’t just about spooky images, necessarily, but … these things that have these layered meanings beneath them.”

Perhaps the most exciting issue raised by the show is that of medium — what it communicates (i.e. artistic medium as spirit medium), and what it means to make the medium the subject of a piece. Much of the exhibit consists of two-dimensional visual art, but the few deviations stand out. On the inclusion of video, audio, and sculpture, Rinder muses over e-mail, “People don’t think in as clearly material or disciplinary categories as they used to. So it felt natural to select from this broad range of works.”

Despite the fundamental role music plays in the exhibit’s conception, only one audio piece was incorporated into the exhibit, Ivan Seal’s Stuttering Piano (2007). Seal has produced cover art for such releases as the 2008 reissue of Persistent Repetition of Phrases by hauntological ambient project the Caretaker, but none of his visual art was in the collection. His audio works often accompany his paintings, so the curators saw this as an intriguing “solution” to that unavailability.

Lutz Bacher’s video piece Olympiad (1997) is a silent stuttering image, the deteriorated quality of which makes it disorienting to watch; many works in the exhibit similarly hound the viewer via their chosen medium. Paul Sietsema’s 2009 diptych Ship Drawing, oriented as the gallery’s centerpiece, is as concerned with medium as any piece in the show. One side depicts a drawing of a ship — note, specifically a drawing of one, since the weathered paper it appears on is also rendered in ink. The other half simply shows a blank bit of the same paper. Thus, the medium becomes the subject. In this way, even the nature of their own production is part of the past that haunts these works.

So all this art, spanning centuries, cultures, and movements, brought together at BAM — why now? Hewicker cites “ghosts that people are not addressing” as evidenced by the “Tea Party movement, the sort of revisionist nostalgia, the rewriting of textbooks in Texas.” Derrida’s ideas are still relevant to today’s political world, and that resonates in how this art affects us, whether it was created in 1658 or 2008.

As one would hope from a thoughtfully curated show, motifs emerge among the included works. There are myriad obscured faces, indecipherable objects, and artworks within artworks, as well as subtler commonalities. This conspires to reinforce the sense of hauntedness in the exhibit, as if something has come down through the ages to inspire art that not only, as Rinder puts it, “[evokes] futuristic ruins, displaced subjectivities, and uncanny silences,” but more important, leaves us ill at ease.

HAUNTOLOGY

Through Dec. 5, $5–$8 (free for students and children)

Berkeley Art Museum

2626 Bancroft, Berk.

(510) 642-0808

www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Here’s lookin’ at you, Vic

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Here’s lookin’ at you, Vic

cheryl@sfbg.com

FILM Ah, Friday night at the movies: chatty mobs, unable to detach from their smart phones or fathom seeing a movie that isn’t both brand-new and unnecessarily 3-D’d. With such a bummer scene in the outside world, might as well stay home and watch edited-for-TV Seagal flicks on TBS, right?

Insert screeching needle-on-a-record sound here. Third option: head to one of the city’s most offbeat repertory theaters, collectively-run Haight Street landmark the Red Vic, which celebrates its 30th birthday this week.

“So often we hear people say, ‘Oh, we love the Red Vic! But we haven’t been there in years,'” collective member Claudia Lehan says. “That’s our biggest joke. We’re still here, we’re hanging in, but we need people to come to the movies. We’re doing our best to provide what people want.”

For the past three decades, that has meant a unique space (bench-style seating; organic popcorn and home-baked treats) with programming that reflects the theater’s eclectic spirit. Along with films skating the gap between first-run cineplex and DVD (Kick-Ass, The Runaways), a recent Red Vic calendar also lists the Burning Man Film Festival, local-interest doc It Came From Kuchar, a surf-movie night, a San Francisco Museum and Historical Society-presented program on the Haight, and the cult classic Freaks (1932).

“I think we’re a unique night out,” Lehan says. “The whole experience — the movie itself, it’s such an intimate theater, and it’s community-based.”

On a recent afternoon, I met with current collective members Lehan, Jack Rix, and Susie Bell; the fourth and newest member, Sam Sharkey (who late-night movie fans will know from Landmark Theatres), was out of town. Also joining us was Jack’s wife, Betsy Rix; she, along with Jack, Brad Reed, and Terry Seefeld, cofounded the Red Vic in 1980, with the help of other key players, including Martha Beck (who appears in the Red Vic’s adorable pre-show trailer) and Gary Aaronson.

 

RED HEADS

“We were all door-to-door canvassers in the ’70s,” Betsy remembers. “We’d go out after, and say, ‘There’s gotta be something better out there for us to do.’ We started thinking about starting a business together: a bookstore, or a movie theater. Movie theater seemed like a really good idea. At that time, there was a thriving repertory scene. We talked right away about having couches, nondisposable popcorn bowls — just to make it a totally different kind of movie theater. We plugged away on the idea for over a year.”

After some scouting, the group found its first venue, just down the street from its current location at 1727 Haight. “The Red Victorian Bed and Breakfast had an international marketplace that was closing up. It was a great big space,” Betsy says. “We got a lease for 10 years and renovated it.”

Visit the Red Vic’s cozy lobby, and you’ll see their first calendar hanging on the wall. You might be fooled into thinking the theater opened in 1980 on July 14, with a screening of the 1942 classic Casablanca. That was the original plan — until all of the projection equipment was stolen. Fortunately, the group was insured, but they had to delay their debut until new equipment could be ordered. When it arrived, they opened with the film scheduled for that day, July 25: 1977’s Outrageous!

Within the first month, Betsy says, they had their first bomb (1969 Oscar winner Midnight Cowboy) and their first hit, Jacques Rivette’s Celine and Julie Go Boating (1974). From the beginning, Red Vic audiences were determined to support the theater’s more unexpected film choices. A recent favorite has been Tommy Wiseau’s The Room (2003), a terrible-amazing vanity project that’s drawn hoards of devotees to its frequent Red Vic midnight showings. At $25 a pop, Wiseau bobbleheads are an in-demand item at the concession stand.

 

BIG(GER) RED

Though the Red Victorian hotel would give the Red Vic its name, the theater’s address would eventually change. “We’d had a fairly antagonistic relationship with the landlady,” recalls Betsy. “We knew for many years that in 1990, when the lease was up, we had to go.”

Fortunately, “it worked out better for everyone,” Jack Rix says. He and Betsy ended up buying the building that houses the Red Vic today, flanked by Escape from New York Pizza and the Alembic Bar. “Awesome neighbors,” agree the collective members, who tend to cheerfully talk over each other like family members. Though Jack suggests that the success of a collective is “like making sausage — you don’t really want to delve into it too much,” it’s clear the unique structure of the theater’s “management” has enabled it to thrive. The non-collective members at the Red Vic are volunteers who work in exchange for free movies.

The Red Vic’s permanent home holds 143; in keeping with the theater’s cinephile roots, “we remain committed to 35mm. We really try to show things in 35mm,” Jack says.

This dedication can sometimes lead to extremes (thanks to a distributor snafu, they once had to contact director Jim Jarmusch directly to borrow one of his films). But you’ll never see video at the Red Vic, unless the work was specifically made for it.

“If it’s made on video, and meant to be screened on video, we do have a pretty kick-ass projector,” Lehan says. “But if it’s made for 35mm … “

That projector comes in handy when local filmmakers, whose projects are often created using the more accessible video format, are on the calendar. “We really enjoy showing local films that people aren’t going to get to see anywhere else,” Jack says. “Lately something that’s worked pretty well is to rent the theater to filmmakers. It seems to work well both ways, because we get a minimum amount of business that’s guaranteed, and filmmakers get their movie shown.”

 

RED-HOT TICKETS

Though making gobs of money isn’t exactly the Red Vic’s goal, it has had some certified hits over the years. Used to be you couldn’t pick up one of the Red Vic’s signature red-and-black calendars without seeing trippy, time-lapse-heavy Baraka (1992) on the schedule. “We’re taking a break [from Baraka] for a little bit,” Lehan says with a chuckle.

Other success stories (besides The Room, as noted above) include two films coming up in August, El Topo (1970) and Dead Man (1995), plus anything by Werner Herzog, 1998 big-wave surf film Maverick’s (“Lines around the block,” Susie Bell recalls), and The Big Lebowski (1998), which returns every year on April 20, the high holiday for stoners. The Red Vic’s political leanings also draw crowds (“A new Noam Chomsky documentary will always do well,” per Bell), along with “stuff that’s really beautiful that looks good up on the big screen,” according to Jack.

For the past several years, the Red Vic has screened Hal Ashby’s 1971 dark comedy Harold and Maude on its birthday, July 25. It was a favorite of the late Steve Kasper, a friend and regular customer from the Red Vic’s earliest days. “He loved Harold and Maude,” Betsy says. “I don’t think we had really thought about showing it, but he brought it in. He was the one who started handing out daisies [after the film, a tradition that continues]. And it just really caught on.”

For 30 years, its cozy sense of community has remained unchanged. But the Red Vic, like other repertory theaters, has felt the 21st century pinch: DVDs, video-on-demand, and the Internet mean that less people bother seeking out off-the-beaten-path exhibitors. For the most part, though, collective members remain cautiously optimistic about the decades ahead.

“The first time we showed Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972), which is a movie I really love, it did really well. I remember being amazed that we could show something like that and people would show up to see pure art on the wall of your funky little movie theater,” Jack says, before turning philosophical. “These are tough times for repertory theaters. To a certain extent, it’s use it or lose it. If people don’t support little theaters, they’re definitely not going to be around much too much longer.” 

HAROLD AND MAUDE

July 25–28, 7:15 and 9:15 p.m.

(also Sun/25, 2 and 4 p.m.; July 28, 2 p.m.), $6–$9

Red Vic Movie House

1727 Haight, SF

(415) 668-3994

www.redvicmoviehouse.com

Growing pains

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Growing pains

steve@sfbg.com

The medical marijuana movement was born and raised in the Bay Area, and now the city of Oakland is poised to take the next big step forward by being the first city to explicitly allow and permit several massive cannabis cultivation facilities on industrial land, making millions of dollars in taxes in the process.

It’s the latest move in a growing trend toward Bay Area cities figuring out how to regulate and tax a booming industry that could really explode if California voters approve Proposition 19 in November, which would legalize even recreational uses of marijuana and give local jurisdictions more authority to control it.

Pot growing has long been the murkiest realm within an increasingly legitimate and professional medical marijuana industry (see “Marijuana goes mainstream,” 1/27/10). While Oakland, Berkeley, and San Francisco all have well-defined and regulated systems governing the 30 licensed cannabis dispensaries in those three cities, most of their growers are underground operations with no official oversight.

Public officials on both sides of the bay — who almost universally voice their support for the medical marijuana industry — say there can be problems associated with unregulated grows. Jerry-rigged wiring can pose a fire danger, and valuable crops can be targeted by criminals. Growers can be raided by police even when they have valid paperwork. And cash-strapped city governments aren’t able to tax or regulate an industry that has kept on booming throughout the Great Recession.

“There is no system to regulate production,” Oakland City Council member Rebecca Kaplan, who has authored cultivation regulations, along with co-sponsor Council member Larry Reid. Although the city may lack resources to enforce new requirements on growers, Kaplan believes growers will sign up voluntarily: “Every time we’ve created a permitting system, people have sought to use it. They want to be above board.”

The measure would permit growing facilities of more than 100,000 square feet, charging them each a $5,000 permit fee and $211,000 “regulatory fee,” as well as a gross receipts tax to be determined. The Oakland City Council approved the measure July 20 after Kaplan agreed to have staff also create a permit system for smaller growers, with both regulatory systems slated to take effect Jan. 1, 2011.  Kaplan has also proposed a November ballot measure to increase the current gross receipts tax on cannabis-related businesses from 1.8 percent now to up to as high as 11.2 percent, which the council is set to consider July 22.

Kaplan’s cultivation proposal initially generated a backlash from some small growers and Harborside Health Center, Oakland’s largest dispensary, because of its focus on creating mega-facilities that could monopolize the market and hurt the small growers who have been at the heart of the medical marijuana movement.

“All we’re asking for is a level playing field and a fair opportunity to compete with these factories,” attorney James Anthony, who represents Harborside and its network of growers, told the Guardian. “As medical cannabis comes into the light, it’s still capitalism out here in the world.”

Oakland developer and business person Jeff Wilcox, who is new to the marijuana industry, has been aggressively pushing to create a massive cannabis growing and manufacturing facility on his 7.4-acre warehouse complex near the Oakland Coliseum, covering 172,000 square feet over four buildings.

On May 21, Wilcox and his company, AgraMed, released a report showing how the facility could produce about 21,100 pounds of high-grade marijuana per year, generating about $60 million in gross sales and more than $2 million a year in taxes for Oakland, assuming a 3 percent tax rate (or about $3.5 million if the rate is set at 5 percent). The report was based partly on information gathered from independent local growers.

“By closing the loop and regulating the entire industry, we can ensure the healthy production and use of cannabis, and ensure its legitimate standing in our society. We’re working with public health and public safety agencies to make sure we do this right,” Wilcox, who did not return Guardian calls for comment, said in his press release.

Anthony said he was wary of Oakland politicians handing so much market power to one person: “It’s not for the government to pick the winners and losers through a regulatory scheme.” But he does agree that growers are overdue for regulation. “It’s time for cultivation to come into the light.”

State law requires growers to be part of the collective that uses or distributes the product, and the facility proposed by Wilcox would contract with many collectives, a model that hasn’t been tested in the courts yet. In fact, Council member Nancy Nadel has expressed concern that what she called “a structurally flawed proposal” could be on shaky legal ground (City Attorney John Russo, who has endorsed Prop. 19, did not return our calls with questions about the Oakland measure’s legality. His office also has not issued an opinion because it conflicts with federal law).

“Though state law allows for the operation of medical marijuana cooperatives by primary caregivers and patients, it does not legitimize large-scale growing operations. Just in the past few months, the DEA has raided two medical cannabis testing labs in Colorado. We need to retain a level of good sense and discretion,” Nadel wrote in a July 13 memo to her council colleagues, urging them to hold off on approving the measure until after voters decide Prop. 19 in November.

Yet Kaplan told us that even though the council moved the legislation forward, staff would continue to work through its myriad regulatory details and no permits will be issued until January. She also agreed that “it’s really important for Prop. 19 to pass,” giving Oakland more explicit authority to regulate the industry.

Oaksterdam University founder Richard Lee, who bankrolled the campaign to place Prop. 19 on the ballot, supports Kaplan’s regulations (although he told us he would like to see a greater focus on small cultivators) and called regulation of growers “a historic next step” that further legitimizes the industry.

“I think this will help Prop. 19 pass and help Oakland be ready when it does,” Lee said, voicing support for Wilcox and other business people who seek to join this movement. “We need everyone we can get on our side.”

Most polls show that Californians are split fairly evenly on Prop. 19. Even so, several California cities are already making preparations to use the new taxation and regulation authority that the measure would bestow.

Lee said Sacramento, Oakland, Stockton, Long Beach, San Jose, and Berkeley all have been working on cannabis regulatory schemes for voters to approve. For example, on July 13, the Berkeley City Council placed a measure on the November ballot proposing a gross receipts tax of 2.5 percent on medical marijuana and a 10 percent tax on recreational pot, as well as a system for permitting up to 10 medical marijuana growing operations.

“State law is really a mess at the moment and there are a number of things happening now that violate state law,” Lee told us. “That’s why Prop. 19 is going to be a cleanup law to deal with a lot of the stuff that’s going on now.”

Kaplan, who has been working on her ordinance for almost a year and got help from students in UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, agreed that the current legal requirements for growing medical marijuana are unclear: “There isn’t a right way [to permit cultivation facilities] under state law. The law isn’t clear.”

Attorney David Owen, who has researched medical marijuana laws for the new SPARC dispensary in San Francisco and for local growers, echoed the point. “The short answer is that we know so little about the boundaries of state law.”

Prop. 215, the 1996 measure that legalized medical marijuana, was broadly written and then codified largely by Senate Bill 420, portions of which were later struck down by the courts. But enforcement of marijuana laws has primarily been done by the federal government, which backed off after President Barack Obama took office, leaving state and local officials to regulate a fast-growing industry using standards that the courts have yet to clarify.

“We don’t have appellate court decisions to interpret a lot of key terms in state law,” Owen said. “We don’t really know what state law says.”

For example, Owen said the widely used term “dispensary” doesn’t even appear in state law. Local jurisdictions often define how much pot a patient can grow. For example, Oakland allows groups of three patients to grow up to 72 plants in 96 square feet. But most of those standards haven’t been held up by the courts. And even though state law says growers must be part of the same collective as their patients, Owen said, “In theory, you could have a collective with 37 million members.”

Although Owen said a large scale doesn’t necessarily make a marijuana operation illegal, he said permitting a 170,000 square foot facility is bound to draw attention from the feds: “I guarantee the DEA will be at their doorstep the day they open.”

Council member Nadel said Oakland could be liable then as well, noting that it would be permitting a facility that would meet about 60 percent of the entire Bay Area’s demand for 35,000 pounds of pot per year. “Thus, to prevent diversion to illegal markets and collective members outside of the cultivation collective (which would violate state law), the city must act responsibly and set a limit on the total size of cultivation allowed in Oakland. While the memo from the Council members discusses the alternative method [permitting a smaller capacity], it does not recognize the problems with projecting sales to dispensaries outside the Bay Area,” Nadel wrote.

Kaplan said the ordinance is a starting point that can be further refined by staff. But she emphasized the need to regulate the industry, warning of risks to Oakland residents. Her measure’s staff report attributes at least seven house fires, eight robberies, seven burglaries, and two homicides to unregulated growing operations in 2008 and 2009. Kaplan also said she worries about the possibility of “another Oakland Hills fire.”

Yet Kaplan, who is running for mayor, also told us the taxes are important in a city that was recently forced to fire 80 police officers. “Given Oakland’s budget crisis,” she said, “the revenue for the city is no small thing.”

Deal time

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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1
Deal time

sarah@sfbg.com

Lennar Corp.’s massive redevelopment plan for Candlestick Point-Hunters Point cleared a critical hurdle July 14 when the Board of Supervisors voted 8-3 to affirm the Planning Commission’s certification of the project’s final environmental impact report, with Sups. John Avalos, Chris Daly, and Eric Mar opposed

Board President David Chiu called the vote "a milestone." Termed-out Sup. Sophie Maxwell, whose District 10 includes Candlestick Point and the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, saw the vote as evidence that city leaders support the ambitious plan. Yet many political observers saw the vote as proof that Lennar and its Labor Council allies have succeeded in lobbying supervisors not to support opponents of the project.

"I’m concentrating on pushing this over the finish line," Maxwell said at the hearing in the wake of the vote, which came in the wee hours of July 14 after a 10-hour hearing. Supervisors can still amend Lennar’s development plan during a July 27 hearing and project opponents are hoping for significant changes.

Mar said he wants to focus on guaranteeing that the city has the authority to hold Lennar responsible for its promises. "I want to make sure that we have the strongest enforcement we can," he said.

Lennar’s plan continues to face stiff opposition from the Sierra Club, the Golden Gate Audubon Society, the California Native Plant Society, San Francisco Tomorrow, POWER (People Organized To Win Employment Rights) and CARE (Californians for Renewable Energy).

Representatives for these groups, whose appeals of the EIR certification were denied by the board, say they are now weighing their options. Those include taking legal action within 30 days of the board’s second reading of and final action on the developer’s final redevelopment plan, which will be Aug. 3 at the earliest.

Supervisors are expected to introduce a slew of amendments July 27, when they consider the details of the proposal and its impacts on the economically depressed and environmentally polluted.

Michael Cohen, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s top economic advisor, admitted July 19 that all these various demands will likely delay project construction. "But 702 acres of waterfront land in San Francisco is an irreplaceable asset," Cohen reportedly told the San Francisco Chronicle. "It’s not a question of if — but when — it gets developed."

Chiu already has introduced five amendments to the plan in an effort to alleviate concerns about shipyard toxins, Lennar’s limited financial liability, a proposed bridge over Yosemite Slough, and the possibility that local residents will need more access to healthcare and training if they are to truly benefit from the development plan.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi told the Guardian that he expects the board will require liquidated damages to ensure the city has some redress if the developer fails to deliver on a historic community benefits agreement that labor groups signed when Lennar was trying to shore up community support for Proposition G, the conceptual project plan voters approved in June 2008.

Mirkarimi said the board would also seek to increase workforce development benefits. "Thirty percent of the target workforce population are ex offenders. So while they might get training, currently they won’t get jobs other than construction," Mirkarimi observed.

He supports the health care access amendment and the public power amendment Chiu introduced July 21, pointing to Mirkarimi’s previous ordinance laying the groundwork for public power in the area. "This ordinance established that where feasible, the City shall be the electricity provider for new City developments, including military bases and development projects," Mirkarimi said. "PG&E was ripped when we pushed that through."

But Sierra Club activist Arthur Feinstein isn’t sure if additional amendments will help, given intense lobbying by city officials and a developer intent on winning project approvals this summer before a new board and mayor are elected this fall.

"Chiu’s amendments gave us what we asked for over Parcel E-2" Feinstein said, referring to a severely contaminated section of the shipyard for which Chiu wants an amendment calling for a board hearing on whether it’s clean enough to be accepted by the city and developed on.

But Feinstein is less than happy with Chiu’s Yosemite Slough amendment, which would limit a proposed bridge over it to a width of 41 feet and only allow bike, pedestrian, and transit use unless the 49ers elect to build a new stadium on the shipyard. In that case, the project would include a wider bridge to accommodate game-day traffic.

"The average lane size is 14 feet, so that’s a three-lane bridge. So it’s still pretty big. And it would end up filling almost an acre of the bay," Feinstein said.

Feinstein thanked Mirkarimi and Campos for asking questions that showed that the argument for the bridge has not been made. "But it’s disappointing that a progressive Board would be willing to fill the Bay for no reason," Feinstein said.

He concurred with the testimony of Louisiana-based environmental scientist Wilma Subra and environmental and human rights activist Monique Harden, who challenged the wisdom of the Navy digging out toxins while the developer installs infrastructure at the same site.

Subra said contamination is often found at Superfund sites after they have been declared clean when contractors to later dig into capped sites and expose workers and the community to contamination. Harden said the plan to begin construction on some shipyard parcels while the Navy removes radiological-contamination from shipyard sewers is "like a person jumping up and down on a bed that another person is trying to make."

But Cohen, who has aggressively pushed the project on Newsom’s behalf, countered that there is no scientific evidence to support such concerns. "It’s a very common situation," Cohen said. "It’s the basis for shipyard artists and the police being on the site for many years … It’s safe based on an extraordinary amount of data."

But Feinstein pointed to his experience working for the Golden Gate Audubon Society at the former Alameda Naval Station. He recalls how a remediation study was completed, but then an oil spill occurred at the site, which had been designated as a wildlife refuge.

"The military didn’t know about everything that happened and was stored on site, and it’s easy to miss a hot spot," he said. "And who’ll be monitoring when all these homes are built with deeds that restrict the renters and owners from digging in their backyards?"

Feinstein said he’s concerned that only Campos seemed to be asking questions and making specific requests for information around the proposed project’s financing

"Lennar is paying city staff and consultants and promising labor huge numbers of jobs. When you are throwing that much money around, it’s hard for people to resist — and the city has been co-opted," Feinstein said. "And how much analysis and resistance can you expect from city commissions when the Mayor’s Office is the driving force behind the project? So we don’t have a stringent review. The weakness of the strategy of ignoring our bridge concerns is that when we sue, we may raise a whole bunch of issues."

Arc Ecology director Saul Bloom says Chiu’s bridge proposal "screwed up the dialogue. We were close to a deal," Bloom claims. "But while that amendment allowed one board member to showboat, it prevented the problem from being solved."

Bloom is concerned that under the financing deal, the project won’t make any money for at least 15 years and will be vulnerable to penalties and bumps in the market — an equation that could lead the developer to build only market rate housing at the site.

"It’s a problematic analysis at best," he said.

"The bigger the development, the more it benefits people who have the capacity to address it — and that’s not the community," Bloom said. "So there’ll be more discussion of the bridge, and that’s where the horse-trading is going to be."

He also said the bridge has now taken on a symbolic value. "The thing about the bridge is that it’s not actually about the bridge any more," Bloom added. "It’s about Lennar telling people, ‘You will support us.’ If they get the bridge, it will give them free rein, an unencumbered capacity to do as they see fit. They are willing to make deals, but they have to have the bridge because it defeats the people who have been the most credible and visible — and then they have no opposition."

On the Cheap listings

David Talbot
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0

P>On the Cheap listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

THURSDAY 22

RitLab Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission, SF; (415) 655-7800. 6pm, $5. Roll up your sleeves and create art with your friends at this weekly installment of the Contemporary Jewish Museum’s D.I.Y. craft workshop focusing on personalized amulets that celebrate womanhood. Featuring snacks, drinks, creative guidance, and free materials.

BAY AREA

“A Roof Full of Wild Flowers” Bone Room, 1573 Solano, Berk.; (510)526-5252. 7pm, free. As part of the Bone Room Presents natural history lecture series, California Academy of Sciences Senior Curator and Botanist Frank Alameda will talk about the living, growing, 2.5 acre roof on the new California Academy of Sciences building. Alameda will discuss the construction of the roof and the part that it plays in the sustainability of the museum as a whole.

FRIDAY 23

Black Rock Roller Disco SOMArts, 934 Brannan, SF; (415) 863-1414. 8pm; $7 in disco or playa garb, $10 no costume, $5 skate rental. Skate to some old school funk and roller disco with the Black Rock Rollers and help raise funds to bring a roller disco rink to Burning Man 2010. Participants must be 21 and over and Black Rock Roller Disco is not responsible for alcohol related crashes.

BAY AREA

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial Paramount Theater, 2025 Broadway, Oakl.; (510) 465-6400. 8pm, $5. Enjoy a true vintage movie experience complete with period newsreels, cartoons, previews, live music from the Mighty Wurlitzer organ, and audience participation games at this screening of E.T. in the classic, art deco Paramount Theater.

Ransanble! Humanist Hall, 390 27th St., Oakl.; www.raratoulimen.com. Fri. 6pm-9:30pm, Sat. 11am-9pm, Sun. Noon-6pm; free-$20. Gather with dancers, musicians, community leaders, scholars, activists, dance and music educators, linguists, cultural and food enthusiasts and supporters of Haiti for this Haitian arts and culture festival featuring film screenings, dance workshops, Haitian cuisine, art, lectures, performances, Kreyol language classes and more.

SATURDAY 24

“The Bard in Bollywood” Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF; www.thirdi.org. 7pm, $8-$10 sliding scale. Shakespearean scholar, Gitanjali Shahani, will explore the many adaptations, manifestations, and appropriations of Shakespeare in popular Hindi cinema using clips from Shakespeare Wallah, Maqbool, and Omkara to illustrate how Bollywood has re-imagined Shakespeare through the ages.

“Fly Trap Theater” Paxton Gate’s Curiosities For Kids, 766 Valencia, SF; (415)252-9990. 2pm, free. This kid-friendly presentation by staffers from the Conservatory of Flowers offers an up close look at carnivorous plants and how they attack and eat bugs. There will even be a fly trap dissection, so onlookers can see the plants’ trapping mechanisms, followed by bug and plant puppet crafts.

Redstone Labor and Culture Walk Meet at Redstone Building, 16th St. and Capp, SF; RSVP at (415) 841-1254. 1pm, free. Learn about the history behind the murals in the lobby of the Redstone Building, a building that was the headquarters of the 1934 General Strike, followed by a guided walk through the vibrant surrounding neighborhood highlighting the Mission’s art, ethnic history, and class struggle.

Urban Youth Arts Festival Precita Park, Folsom at Precita, SF; (415) 285-2287. 1pm-6pm, free. Over 2,000 square feet of portable wall space will be open for artists of all ages to express themselves with free paint, brushes, and aerosol paint cans to get things started. There will also be mural performances, live music, breakdancing, spoken word performances, and free refreshments.

SUNDAY 25

Prepare for the Playa Café Cocomo, 650 Indiana, SF; www.preparefortheplaya.com. Noon-7pm, free. Over 60 burner businesses and designers will be showcasing their playa specific products and services, including lights, faux fur, goggles, dust masks, costumes, sexy playa outfits, and more. There will also be a fashion show, how-to demonstrations for playa survival, virgin burner makeovers, and more.

Laborfest Book Fair and Poetry Reading Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF; www.laborfest.net. 9:30am-5pm, free. All day long, the Mission Cultural Center will feature multiple rooms where authors, activists, educators, and organizers will present labor themed panel discussions, book discussions, poetry readings, historical lectures, tabling, socializing, and more.

Symphony in the Park Dolores Park, Dolores at 18th St., SF; www.sfsymphony.org. 2pm, free.Pack a picnic basket and bring your friends and family for the San Francisco Symphony’s free concert in Dolores Park, including a special tribute to Mexico with conductor Alondra de la Parra to celebrate the bicentennial of the independence of Mexico.

Up Your Alley Dore Alley at Folsom, SF; www.folsomstreetfair.org/alley. 11am-6pm, $5 suggested donation. If you like bondage, animal role play, kink, leather straps, whips, paddles, latex outfits, suspension, and hardcore BDSM pastimes, than the Dore Alley street fair is for you! This smaller, more gay male-focused event features demonstrations, kinky vendors, and local DJs setting the mood.

BAY AREA

Last Sundays Fest Telegraph between Bancroft and Dwight, Berk.; www.lastsundaysfest.com. Noon-7pm, free. Enjoy a whole day jam packed with East Bay culture at this street festival featuring live indie pop and rock music, craft, food, and contemporary merchandise vendors, children’s exhibits, and more.

For Lit, Talks, and Benefits listings, visit the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision.

Small biz should support Chiu tax plan

David Talbot
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Small biz should support Chiu tax plan

EDITORIAL It’s rare to see a fairly conservative city agency, created in part to make it harder for progressives to push measures that might affect business, come down in favor of a new business tax. But the San Francisco Office of Economic Analysis has concluded that the proposal by Board of Supervisors President David Chiu to change the local payroll tax and impose a new tax on commercial rents would actually help local businesses, particularly small businesses. The proposal presents a crucial opportunity for progressives to make the case that the Chamber of Commerce and big downtown corporations are not advancing the interests of small businesses — and local merchant groups need to pay attention.

Chiu has taken on a problem that has lingered in San Francisco for decades. The city’s business tax is terribly regressive: Only 10 percent of the companies in town even pay the payroll tax, in part because banks, insurance companies, and financial services firms are exempt under state law. That means the burden falls the heaviest on small and medium-sized companies — the ones that provide most of the net job growth in the city.

The new proposal would make the flat payroll tax more progressive and would exempt more small businesses. It would also raise $28 million more a year for the cash-strapped municipal coffers by taxing commercial rents of more than $60,000 a year.

The commercial rent levy would force the big outfits that now pay no city taxes whatsoever to take on at least some of the burden of financing San Francisco government. Smaller companies with modest leases, and small commercial landlords, wouldn’t pay the new tax at all.

Chiu originally had proposed an even broader tax, which would have raised more than $35 million. But after the Small Business Commission expressed concerns, he changed the measure, reducing the burden on small business even further. And at this point, Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist at the Office of Economic Analysis, reports that the tax would lead to greater job creation in the private sector (because of the reduction in the payroll tax) as well as greater job creation in the public sector (because of the additional revenue to the city).

It’s the kind of idea that ought to have broad-based support — progressives looking to fund crucial services see it as a way to bring in money, and small businesses ought to see it as a way to cut taxes and create jobs in the sector of the city that most needs economic stimulus.

Unfortunately, the response from small business leaders hasn’t been encouraging. The commission hasn’t taken a stand on the measure; on July 12th, the panel deadlocked 2-2, with one member absent and two slots still vacant (the mayor hasn’t filled them). That lets the big downtown players — the Chamber, the Building Owners and Managers Association, the Committee on JOBS, etc. — in a position to claim that the Chiu proposal is anti-business.

We’ve seen this pattern far to often. Small business groups allow big corporations, which have no interest in the real issues that impact local merchants, stick the little folks out front on political issues. We’ve seen it over the years with public power, commercial rent control, downtown development, and taxes — and it needs to stop.

The Small Business Commission, the Council of District Merchants, all the local community merchant groups, and anyone else who really cares about the interests of small business in San Francisco should support the Chiu measure. It’s a tax plan that’s good for small business. And if the advocates don’t realize that, they’re hurting themselves, the customers, and the city.

Small biz should support Chiu tax plan

David Talbot
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2

A new proposal to make the flat payroll tax more progressive and exempt more small businesses

EDITORIAL It’s rare to see a fairly conservative city agency, created in part to make it harder for progressives to push measures that might affect business, come down in favor of a new business tax. But the San Francisco Office of Economic Analysis has concluded that the proposal by Board of Supervisors President David Chiu to change the local payroll tax and impose a new tax on commercial rents would actually help local businesses, particularly small businesses. The proposal presents a crucial opportunity for progressives to make the case that the Chamber of Commerce and big downtown corporations are not advancing the interests of small businesses — and local merchant groups need to pay attention.

Chiu has taken on a problem that has lingered in San Francisco for decades. The city’s business tax is terribly regressive: Only 10 percent of the companies in town even pay the payroll tax, in part because banks, insurance companies, and financial services firms are exempt under state law. That means the burden falls the heaviest on small and medium-sized companies — the ones that provide most of the net job growth in the city.

The new proposal would make the flat payroll tax more progressive and would exempt more small businesses. It would also raise $28 million more a year for the cash-strapped municipal coffers by taxing commercial rents of more than $60,000 a year.

The commercial rent levy would force the big outfits that now pay no city taxes whatsoever to take on at least some of the burden of financing San Francisco government. Smaller companies with modest leases, and small commercial landlords, wouldn’t pay the new tax at all.

Chiu originally had proposed an even broader tax, which would have raised more than $35 million. But after the Small Business Commission expressed concerns, he changed the measure, reducing the burden on small business even further. And at this point, Ted Egan, the city’s chief economist at the Office of Economic Analysis, reports that the tax would lead to greater job creation in the private sector (because of the reduction in the payroll tax) as well as greater job creation in the public sector (because of the additional revenue to the city).

It’s the kind of idea that ought to have broad-based support — progressives looking to fund crucial services see it as a way to bring in money, and small businesses ought to see it as a way to cut taxes and create jobs in the sector of the city that most needs economic stimulus.

Unfortunately, the response from small business leaders hasn’t been encouraging. The commission hasn’t taken a stand on the measure; on July 12th, the panel deadlocked 2-2, with one member absent and two slots still vacant (the mayor hasn’t filled them). That lets the big downtown players — the Chamber, the Building Owners and Managers Association, the Committee on JOBS, etc. — in a position to claim that the Chiu proposal is anti-business.

We’ve seen this pattern far too often. Small business groups allow big corporations, which have no interest in the real issues that impact local merchants, stick the little folks out front on political issues. We’ve seen it over the years with public power, commercial rent control, downtown development, and taxes — and it needs to stop.

The Small Business Commission, the Council of District Merchants, all the local community merchant groups, and anyone else who really cares about the interests of small business in San Francisco should support the Chiu measure. It’s a tax plan that’s good for small business. And if the advocates don’t realize that, they’re hurting themselves, the customers, and the city.

The martyrdom of Mooney and Billings

David Talbot
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0

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

It was an unusually hot July day in San Francisco.   There was a parade on that day in 1916 – a “Preparedness Day” parade organized by local Republican businessmen. It was intended to drum up support for U.S. entry into World War I and embarrass Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, who was running for re-election on a platform that stressed,  “He kept us out of war!”

A lot of people supported neither the war nor the parade, however. The opponents particularly included the union organizers who were the radicals of that period – “reds” who were trying to establish the right of unionization in the face of often violent opposition from the business interests who controlled the city and who most assuredly supported the war.

Many thousands of spectators, as many as 100,000 by some accounts, lined the parade route down Market Street, cheering and enthusiastically waving American flags. At precisely 2:06, less than a half-hour after the parade of more than 25,000 marchers had begun, just as contingents from the Grand Army of the Republic and Sons of the American Revolution were passing the crowded corner of Steuart and Market  streets. . . Boom!

It was the thunderous blast of a bomb that had either been thrown into the crowd or planted there.  The horrific explosion killed 10 bystanders and seriously wounded 40 others.

Within a few hours, the authorities had their culprits. Not surprisingly, all of those arrested as suspects were union organizers. Among them were two men who were especially despised by the city’s virulently anti-labor business establishment — Tom Mooney, 34, a burly Irish-American organizer for the International Molders Union who was one of San Francisco’s most prominent labor activists, and his close friend, slim, short, boyish Warren Billings, a 23-year-old shoe factory worker.

Mooney and Billings were San Francisco’s “most notorious reds,” declared the SF Chamber of Commerce in one of its typically frenzied assessments of those who dared challenge the status quo in which workers were treated as mere chattel.

The others who were arrested were soon freed, but Mooney and Billings were put on trial and eventually found guilty. Mooney was sentenced to death by hanging, Billings to life imprisonment.

There’s absolutely no doubt Mooney and Billings were framed. Federal investigators, investigative newspaper reporters and others proved that beyond any doubt.  The city’s famously corrupt district attorney, Charles Frickert, was found to have suppressed evidence that proved the pair’s innocence, joining with corrupt policemen to fabricate evidence that supposedly proved their guilt, and failing to call witnesses who, as he knew, had solid evidence that they were not guilty. Frickert hired other witnesses and coached them to give perjured testimony implicating Mooney and Billings.

Eventually, every major witness confessed to lying to the juries at both the Mooney and Billings trials. Some of them claimed to have seen the men plant the bomb on the day of the explosion, although it turned out the supposed eye-witnesses hadn’t even been in the city at the time.

Some gave their perjured testimony in exchange for such favors as the parole of relatives who were serving prison sentences, others for the pay District Attorney Frickert offered them. All were after the $17,500 reward posted for evidence leading to the conviction of Mooney and Billings.

 The judge who presided over Mooney’s trial told California’s governor he had determined through personal investigation that “every single witness who testified against Mooney had lied.” Mooney’s lawyer declared them “the weirdest collection of God-damned liars” he’d ever seen.

 A federal fact-finding commission concluded that “there was never any scientific attempt made by either the police or the prosecution to discover the perpetrators of the crime. The investigation was in reality turned over to a private detective, who used his position to cause the arrest of the defendants.” 

Fremont Older, the crusading editor of the San Francisco Bulletin, concluded that the authorities “conspired to murder a man with the instruments that the people have provided for bringing about justice. There isn’t a scrap of testimony that wasn’t perjured.”

The cases quickly drew widespread national attention, right up to the White House. President Wilson argued against Mooney’s hanging on grounds that there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support his guilt.

It was obvious that the Chamber of Commerce’s so-called Law and Order Committee had played a major role in framing Mooney and Billings as part of the chamber’s drive to change San Francisco’s status as one of the country’s most heavily unionized cities. 

Mooney and Billings, of course, had been attempting to enhance that status, in part by helping wage major organizing drives among the city’s vital transit workers and the equally vital employees of the company that supplied the city’s gas and electricity. Which was a very good reason the utility company – Pacific Gas & Electric – hired the private detective cited by federal fact-finders to help District Attorney Frickert and the police fabricate evidence against Mooney and Billings.  Not incidentally, Frickert was backed financially by Pacific Gas & Electric in his election campaigns for district attorney.

 The convictions prompted protests across the United States and worldwide, much like those raised five years later in behalf of two other union radicals, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vinzetti, who were executed in Massachusetts for a murder they clearly did not commit.

The Mooney and Billings case was dubbed internationally as “America’s Dreyfus Case,” a comparison to the famous French case that also drew worldwide protests. The protests stemmed from the rigged conviction of Jewish French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus in 1894 for allegedly attempting to turn over secret military documents to the German government. Although the “Dreyfus Affair,” as it was called, was based on another issue – anti-Semitism – it similarly involved the use of false evidence against an innocent man by powerful authorities.

 Protestors in the United States and abroad quickly formed a network of defense committees in behalf of Mooney and Billings, and mounted rallies and other noisy and highly visible public demonstrations. 

 Freeing the two men became labor’s cause célèbre. Unions everywhere voiced loud and frequent protests, as did all other segments of the left, ranging from liberal to Communist. Eventually, they helped force California authorities to reduce Mooney’s death sentence to life imprisonment, ironically on the basis of evidence that should have freed him.

 President Wilson’s request that Mooney be spared was probably the main reason his sentence was commutated, but the heavy pressures of the Mooney-Billings defense committees and the American Federation of Labor, which Wilson most certainly felt, also had much to do with it.
   
Mooney finally was freed in 1939, twenty-one years later. Culbert Olson, California’s first Democratic governor in 44 years, granted him a full and unconditional pardon. Mooney, said Gov. Olson, was “wholly innocent,” and his conviction  “wholly based on perjured testimony.” 

Mooney’s release sparked great celebration among his supporters, who had fought so long for his freedom. Thousands paraded up Market Street behind Mooney shortly after his release, the street cleared for them by police, past the site of the explosion 23 years earlier that had sent Mooney to prison.

The next day, Mooney joined a picket line of striking department store employees on Market Street and donated to their cause half of the $10 the state had given him on his release from San Quentin Prison. Mooney sent the other half to Newspaper Guild members who were waging a major strike in Chicago.

Tom Mooney hadn’t much time to enjoy his freedom. His health had been broken in prison and he soon was hospitalized with a serious stomach ailment. He remained in a hospital bed until his death at age 60, less than two years later.

Billings got his freedom a few months after Mooney left San Quentin. Gov. Olson commutated his life sentence to time served – 23 years for a crime that no one really believed he or Mooney had committed.  Finally, in 1961, Gov. Edmund G. Brown granted Billings a full pardon. But, as Billings complained, it was granted on grounds that he had been “rehabilitated” rather than because he was innocent.

After leaving prison, Billings married and settled down in San Mateo, working in  San Francisco as a watch repairman, a trade he had learned in prison, and later set up his own repair business at home.  Billings quickly resumed his labor activism, as a member of the Watchmakers Union executive board and delegate to the San Mateo Labor Council. He was active as well in the anti-Vietnam War movement and various other political, economic and social causes. 

I interviewed Billings just before his death in 1972 at age 79. I expected to encounter a bitter, angry old man. Yes, he was old, but his spritely manner belied that basic fact of his life, and he showed absolutely no bitterness over the great injustice that had been done him – none! He talked instead of injustices that were being done to others, and of joining in efforts to help overcome them.

“I don’t have anything against anybody about anything,” Billings told me. “The people who testified against me were after that reward, but it all went to the police who arrested me. I’ve never felt any bitterness, but the fact that the witnesses against me didn’t get any of the reward money should make them bitter.”

Warren K. Billings was a great inspiration to me and others who knew him, and to many who just knew of him. He was a man possessing a spirit that could not be broken by circumstances far more severe than most of us have ever had to endure.  A man who would not even raise his voice in anger or bitterness against the terrible injustice that was done him. A man who maintained his convictions through it all. A strong and courageous man, but kind and gentle, and possessed of an incredible measure of tolerance and understanding.

The Preparedness Day bombing has never been solved.

NOTE: For more on the Mooney-Billings case, See “Frame-up” by Curt Gentry, an extraordinary work of investigative journalism book covering all aspects
of the case.

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

Hotel Fairness Initiative qualifies for fall ballot

Sasha Cuttler
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Hotel Fairness Initiative qualifies for fall ballot

By Brittany Baguio

The Department of Elections has announced that the Hotel Fairness Initiative was approved for the November ballot. Labor and community groups last week turned in 10,544 signatures, a little more than the required 7,168 signatures needed to put an initiative on the ballot. The Department of Elections did a sample of 500 signatures to check the validity and reported that 478 of the 500 signatures sampled were valid, resulting in a 95.6 percent accuracy rate.

The Hotel Fairness Initiative would increase revenue by imposing a 2 percent hotel tax on San Francisco hotel rooms temporarily for 4 years, with an average surcharge of $3 per hotel room per night, and close loopholes that let some visitors avoid paying the hotel tax. The hotel tax is currently 14 percent. According to the Controller’s Office, if the Hotel Fairness Initiative passes, it is expected to raise $25 million a year in revenue.

The hotel tax is one of five measures proposed to help close the budget deficit, which we discuss in more detail in this week’s paper. Mayor Gavin Newsom has also placed a measure of the ballot to also close the loopholes that lets airline employees and those who book hotels online avoid paying hotel taxes, as the Hotel Fairness Initiative would also do, but it includes a provision that would invalidate the hotel tax if his measure gets more votes.

Supporters of the Hotel Fairness Initiative claim that online booking companies and airline companies have been using corporate loopholes that have cost the city about $6 million per year. In total, online booking companies have escaped paying $70 million in hotel taxes through its loophole of taking the hotel tax out of a portion of the money the hotel receives, rather than the total amount the customer pays.

For example, Internet booking companies would charge customers $200 for a room and then pay the hotel $170. Internet booking companies argue that the hotel tax comes from a portion of $170, instead of $200. Similarly, airlines have avoided paying hotel taxes by renting blocks of rooms for its flight crews and claiming that airline companies are protected by the Permanent Resident Exclusion law. This law was originally intended to help the homeless and states that individuals who occupy a room for at least 30 days are tax exempted. However, airlines have been taking advantage of this law by moving different flight crews in and out of their hotel rooms rather than an individual person occupying the room for 30 consecutive days that is implied by the law.

Opponents of the Hotel Fairness Initiative, such as the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the Hotel Council, contend that the hotel tax would hurt tourism to San Francisco as well as cause job cuts. In a press release, Steve Falk, President & CEO of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce said, “This misguided effort will discourage travel to San Francisco, hurt our city’s largest industry, and eliminate many of the union jobs the Labor Council seeks to protect. Raising city revenue at the expense of hotels and hospitality workers is not the answer to the city’s fiscal problems.”

A Hotel Council press release states that “the Hotel Fairness Initiative will lead to 7.3 jobs lost for every million dollars in revenue gained.” If this is true, about 182 jobs could be lost as a result of this initiative, offset by the city being able to save many public sector jobs and services with the revenue. The hotel industry already fluctuates in the number of positions available as a result of the market. According to California Labor Market Info’s latest data, the average amount of hotel jobs lost per month in 2009 was 143 jobs.

Although the Hotel Council and the Chamber of Commerce claim that the initiative would eliminate jobs, one of the biggest supporters of the hotel tax is UNITE HERE LOCAL 2, a union of hotel workers. UNITE HERE representative Ian Lewis emphasized that opponents of the issue are conveniently ignoring the lack of fairness in current hotel booking practices. “Hotel workers live in San Francisco,” Lewis told the Guardian, “We’re taxpayers like everyone else. We are in a severe budget crisis and everyone needs to carry their fair share.”

Community groups, retirees, and hospital workers all volunteered their time to collect signatures supporting the Hotel Fairness Initiative. Community groups such as UNITE HERE collected 1700 signatures, Keep the Arboretum Free collected 1000, and a collection of nonprofit groups collected more than 4000. With the efforts of these community groups, the coalition was able to collect an estimated 15,000 signatures.

Family health advocate for the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, Bobbi Lopez, said she found that those who signed the petition saw the hotel tax as a necessary step in closing the budget deficit, “They understood that the necessity of fighting the cuts, particularly the cuts to MUNI, to parks, and to hospitals,” Lopez told us, “I think that they were getting the idea that in desperate budget times, we need a temporary solution and long term solution and that’s exactly what the Hotel Fairness Initiative is.”

Community groups remain optimistic that this grass roots effort will pass. Brenda Barrows, a health care provider at San Francisco General Hospital, told the Guardian, “My hope is that in November it passes and the city’s financial situation gets better so that people who live in the city don’t have to suffer and also people who work for the city don’t have to suffer.”

Lopez told us she thinks that the initiative will pass if there is an ongoing effort on the issue. “We want to remind folks that this is just the beginning and now we have to embark on a long term campaign,” Lopez told us, “so it’s really about sustaining the energy that we had on June 1 when we kicked off and reminding folks that its going to necessitate all the same volunteers to work together and make it reality.”

 

Our Weekly Picks: July 14-20, 2010

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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WEDNESDAY 14

MUSIC

Sean Bonnette

Sean Bonnette is the guitar player for Andrew Jackson Jihad, the band that proved punk rock sounds better unplugged. He’s been with the group since its inception in 2004, and along with his comrade-in-arms Ben Gallaty, has spent the last six years writing hilariously irreverent lyrics, cutting a swath through the country’s basements, parks, and concert halls, and slowly pushing folk-punk into the mainstream consciousness. Bonnette’s solo show promises to be a showcase of the loveliest, messiest, raggedy-ist tunes this side of Neutral Milk Hotel and a reminder that, 924 Gilman’s financial woes notwithstanding, DIY’s not dead. (Zach Ritter)

With Kepi Ghoulie and Gnarboots

9 p.m., $8

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(414) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

MUSIC

Bardot A Go Go

In America, Bastille Day is the only day of the year where Francophiles, if they’re not storming a prison, can revel in their obsession en masse. With drink specials and a night of decadence that would make Louis XIV’s wife blush, the Rickshaw Stop offers its very own discotheque. If Austin Powers and Marie Antoinette put their wits together and threw a party, Bardot A Go Go would be it. With swinging ’60s pop — Serge Gainsbourg, France Gall, and the titular femme fatale, to name a few — and its very own go-go girls, this long-standing shindig stares hipsters in the face and dares to ask the unaskable: Parlez-vous francais? So put down your Balzac, put on a beret, and get the hell down to Fell. (Ryan Lattanzio)

8 p.m., $7

Rickshaw Stop

155 Fell, SF

(415) 861-2011

www.rickshawstop.com

 

THURSDAY 15

VISUAL ART

Japanese Art Kite Show

What could be better than a Matt Furie painting? Well, maybe a Matt Furie painting on a kite. Furie is one of 21 artists contributing sky-ready works to “Japanese Art Kite Show,” a group exhibition co-curated by Shoko Toma and Yukako Ezoe that brings together kites by 21 artists from Japan and the Bay Area. Bay Area residents from the Hamamatsu City prefecture in Japan have taken part in the Berkeley Kite Festival for the past five years, while Hamamatsu kites — created with washi and rice glue — date back at least 450 years. The kites here vary in size and utilize hemp for string. On Naoki Onodera’s kite, stars evoke another historical marker: the Kanrun Maru’s journey across the Pacific from Japan to the U.S. 150 years ago. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Through July 29

5:30 p.m., free

Chandler Fine Art and Framing

170 Minna, SF

(415) 546-1113

www.chandlersf.com

 

COMEDY

Zane Lamprey

Do you like to go out drinking? Me too! Oh, and so does Zane Lamprey, host of Three Sheets, a TV show that’s survived the move to three different channels as Lamprey travels the world exploring fine libations, drinking games, and hangover cures. With the future of the show uncertain — again — Zane has taken to the streets with the “Drinking Made Easy Comedy Tour,” a celebration of all things alcoholic. No one can fault you for not knowing about Three Sheets, it’s had a hell of a time staying on air. But show me a San Franciscan who doesn’t look happier with a drink in their hand, and I’ll show you a liar. (Peter Galvin)

8 p.m., $29.50

Fillmore

1805 Geary, SF

www.livenation.com

 

MUSIC

Mary Gauthier

The story of Mary Gauthier’s rise in the ranks of musicians — a career she chose at the ripe age of 35 after stints as a teenage runaway, substance abuser, philosophy major, café manager, and restaurant owner — is full of lucky breaks and an almost charmed trajectory. Yet her first year of life, spent in the charity wards of St. Vincent De Paul, was far removed from the good fortunes of her eventual transformation to masterfully frank folk lyricist and guileless performer. In The Foundling, her sixth album, Gauthier chronicles her own history from birth date to birthright, searching for answers and finding only more questions. Her Café Du Nord appearance, however, answers our question: When’s Mary Gauthier going to come back around? (Nicole Gluckstern)

With Peter Bradley Adams

8:30 p.m., $20

Café Du Nord

2174 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

 

MUSIC

Sextreme Ball

It’s been 15 years since the Lords of Acid-My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult Sextacy Ball Tour stomped across the continent. But since sex, drugs, and mass murder have never really gone out of style, this summer’s reprise is far from feeling dated. Maybe it’s just the humidity, but there’s an almost palpable electric charge in the air — could it be the promise of a) tissue-throbbing, groin-grinding beats b) the cheerfully lewd lyrics of classics such as “Mr. Machoman” or creepier implications of “Sex on Wheels” or c) the prospect of catching latest Lords of Acid chanteuse Lacey Conner in a leather-clad catfight? I’m going with d) all of the above. (Gluckstern)

9 p.m., $23

DNA Lounge

375 11th St, SF

(415) 626-1409

www.dnalounge.com

 

FRIDAY 16

DANCE

Run for Your Life! and Gadung Kasturi

Run for Your Life! … it’s a dance company! and Gadung Kasturi Balinese Dance and Music are unlikely bedfellows, but trust Dudley Brooks — he knows how to make a match. After all, he is “sleeping” with both of them. Run for Your Life! is his long-running comedy-dance theater company; Gadung Kasturi is a classical Balinese dance company whose music Brooks has performed for more than 20 years. How he keeps the two identities apart is anybody’s guess. Stylization is what keeps him going. His comedy, often with puppets, is smart, hilarious, and musical. Included in this program are the LOL-worthy Les Sillyphides, Cirque du So Little, and Roaring ’20s, Mafioso-inspired The Soldier’s Tale. Gadung, with eight-year old Chandra Ayu Davies — who blew everyone away at this year’s Ethnic Dance Festival — offers the new Nyapuh Jagat. Watch for Brooks, he’ll be hammering away in the gamelan orchestra. (Rita Felciano)

Through Sat/17

8 p.m., $18

Dance Mission Theater

3316 24th St., SF

(415) 273-4633

www.brownpapertickets.com

 

MUSIC

Antibalas

Afrobeat keeps growing and mutating, revitalizing club music and giving indie rock a much-needed groove. Twelve years into since their summertime birth, Brooklyn’s Antibalas can be seen and heard as true veterans of the sound, with ties to two generations of the Kuti legacy. At the same time, afrobeat is the base from which the group — who worked with producer Tortoise’s John McEntire on 2007’s Security — reach deep into other genres. Antibalas plays out often enough to have seen the world and then some, and one of its most recent songs, “Rat Race,” suits the current socioeconomic moment. Prepare to dance. (Huston) With Sway Machinery

9 p.m., $23

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

1-888-233-0449

www.gamhtickets.com

 

DANCE

Post: Ballet

Choreographer and dancer Robert Dekkers is making himself known in the dance world for seamlessly merging contemporary and classical movement styles. The name of his new SF-based contemporary ballet company, Post: Ballet, says it all. Much like his stylistic sensibility, the words Post: Ballet imply an affiliation with and departure from the conventions of classical ballet. The company’s inaugural performance, Concert One, features classically-trained, versatile ballet dancers in a series of innovative and thought-provoking works. Dekkers’ fierce choreography — along with live music by SF composers Daniel Berkman and Jacob Wolkenhauer, as well as the engaging music of Grizzly Bear, Steve Reich, and Department of Eagles (to name a few) — will keep those who ordinarily fall asleep at the ballet wide awake. (Katie Gaydos)

Through Sat/17

8 p.m., $25

Cowell Theater

Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

www.postballet.org

 

VISUAL ART

David Byrne and Dave Eggers

Former Talking Head David Byrne and McSweeney’s founder Dave Eggers are no strangers to other disciplines of art. Both have dabbled in screenwriting and visual art outside their respective fields of popular music and prose fiction. Now SF’s Electric Works is hosting simultaneous galleries by the two Renaissance men. Byrne’s exhibition shares the name “Arboretum” with his 2006 book of branching diagrams. Eggers’ “It Is Right To Draw Their Fur” treats more animate subjects — animals, to be exact. As it happens, Eggers studied art before switching to writing novels, so these grease pencil drawings are hardly the work of a naïf. Judging from their past works and unconventional worldviews, Byrne and Eggers ought to complement each other well. (Sam Stander)

Through Aug. 21

6 p.m., free

Electric Works

130 Eighth St., SF

(415) 626-5496

www.sfelectricworks.com

SATURDAY 17

FILM

Little Shop of Horrors

Midnight movies are alive and well in San Francisco, and the Landmark Theatres are active participants in the historic cult tradition. For the next month, the Bridge plays host to a “Rocksploitation”-themed midnight program, featuring local cinephile band Citizen Midnight playing pre-show music for a variety of rock-inspired flicks. This week the series features Frank Oz’s incredibly campy 1986 musical remake of Little Shop of Horrors starring Rick Moranis and Steve Martin. Check back in the coming weeks for Brian De Palma’s gothic rock opera Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and an uncut version of David Lynch’s 1990, Palme d’Or-winning, Elvis-fueled Wild at Heart. (Stander)

Midnight, $10

Bridge Theatre

3010 Geary, SF

(415) 668-6384

www.landmarkafterdark.com

 

FILM/MUSIC

Psycho with the San Francisco Symphony

The symphony’s probably the last thing you’d associate with a shower scene. (Although if we’re talking porn here, maybe you missed Wet ‘n Wagner or Rusty Tromboners 2: Spit Valves Under Spray Heads.) It’s definitely the last place you’d expect to hear the stabbing “EE! EE! EE! EE!” of the shower scene from Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) to pop up — unless you’ve an ear for esoteric snatches of Webern. But Bernard Herrmann’s fiendishly clever orchestral score for this mother of all classic slashers is catnip for the adventurous San Francisco Symphony, which will be performing it in full as the 50-year-old flick unfurls above them in all its chocolate-syrup-spattered glory. Expect expert deployment of sinister ostinato and hair-curling counterpoint throughout. Don’t forget to invite Mom. (Marke B.)

8 p.m., $30–$70

Davies Symphony Hall

201 Van Ness, SF

(415) 864-6000

www.sfsymphony.org

 

SUNDAY 18

MUSIC

New Pornographers

Have you been craving propulsive choruses? Hunting for hummable harmonies? Longing for a variety of vocalists? Seek no further — Canada’s foremost power pop supergroup, the New Pornographers, is now touring on behalf of its fifth album, Together. Their continued togetherness is a bit unexpected, since members Neko Case and Dan Bejar (of Destroyer) have full-blown careers of their own. But the New Porn engine keeps chugging along, a full-fledged entity rather than a side project. The latest record is perhaps their most bombastic yet, but they haven’t sacrificed the diversity of lyrical voices that makes them consistently worthwhile. They’re supported at Oakland’s Fox Theater by local concern the Dodos as well as sometime-Yeah Yeah Yeahs member Imaad Wasif. (Stander)

With Dodos and Imaad Wasif

7:30 p.m., $27.50

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

www.thefoxoakland.com

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

Point of entry

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
Point of entry

MUSIC Blessed with the pipes and vocal chords of an angelic opera singer but willing and able to deliver the type of piercing wail that would shock a banshee, Rob Halford has long been considered one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time. Rightfully dubbed “the Metal God” by fans, he has been making his mark in music for nearly 40 years, from his iconic role as front man for the legendary Judas Priest, through his tenure with Fight in the 1990s, and some excellent solo ventures during the last decade.

Halford is embarking on a summer tour with his own eponymous band. It kicks off in a San Francisco club before joining the mammoth OzzFest, so local fans are in for a rare, intimate treat. “I think San Francisco is still a very important part of America as far as the music scene. And it’s a place that has a lot of great memories for me personally,” says Halford, speaking on the phone from his home in San Diego.

“I remember one of my first ever visits to the Bay Area, in the late ’70s, when [Judas] Priest came over to the States. The big climax of that was a surprise performance with Led Zeppelin. And then some years ago, the guys from Pansy Division took me around to some cool places they thought would be of some interest to me besides Fisherman’s Wharf,” he adds, laughing.

The set list for the tour promises to touch on all facets of Halford’s career, not just Judas Priest. “That isn’t what this is about for me. It’s about playing the Halford material and the Fight records,” he explains. “The music from them is still quite potent and show off what the Halford band is able to achieve, more than anything else.”

Soft-spoken and humble, Halford is still happy to discuss his old band’s accomplishments, including Judas Priest’s classic album British Steel, which received a deluxe 30th anniversary rerelease earlier this year. “Music is like a time machine in some aspects” Halford muses. “[The rerelease] just reinforces that a great song is able to last forever. If a song you wrote in 1980 can still touch people in 2010, then I think you’re doing your work well.”

Next month Halford’s own Metal God record label is releasing the concert DVD and CD Halford: Live In Anaheim, and he hopes to enter the studio later this year to record a new album with his current band before Judas Priest roars back into action in 2011. Obviously, the 58-year old rocker shows no signs of slowing down. Indeed, he says that he loves to keep busy and wouldn’t have it any other way.

“The great thing about music is that there’s no gold watch waiting in the wings,” he says. “You keep doing it for as long as you want, and I’m always grateful because I wouldn’t be able to set foot out of the house without knowing this tremendous and resilient fan base is going to be waiting.” 

ROB HALFORD

Sat/17, 9 p.m., $37–$40

Regency Ballroom

1290 Sutter, SF

(800) 745-3000

www.theregencyballroom.com

She’s a briiide

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0
She’s a briiide

marke@sfbg.com

SUPER EGO A couple of Friday evenings ago, Hunky Beau and I went out on a bourgeois love date in SoMa. It was there that I was reminded that, along with loquats, plums, figs, and fat guys on the Internet pretending they’re in armed militias, we are in the midst of bachelorette season. Children, be warned!

To kickstart our romantic rendezvous, Hunky had called me from Mr. Smith’s, a bar that still exists, where he’d gathered with coworkers for clock-out cocktails. Alas, I couldn’t hear him over all the squealing. “Always a bridesmaid. Always.” he texted. “Run for your wife!!1!” I pecked back. We sheltered ourselves in the tidy environs of Terroir (www.terroirsf.com) on Folsom Street, a chill unmarked wine bar that reminds me of Seattle’s Living Room, with a nifty furnished mezzanine and vinyl Shins and Cure on the phonograph. Settling in with a few glasses from the smart and sassy list and some fatty-licious French food cart grub from Spencer On the Go across the street, we commenced our rendezvousing. Until a look of terror clouded the cute Terroir co-owner’s face and the screaming started streaming in. No exit! Bachelorette attack! It was Sex and the City 3-D: less menopause, more claws.

Hastily, the besieged Terroirier apologized, saying “We’re not usually this back country.” I would’ve gone off, but mocking roving bachelorette parties (or BPs, ’cause that shit’s toxic and endless) is like shooting Kardashians in a barrel. Viva stereotypical drunk heterosexuals, all is full of love. So I just plugged my good ear with a Bordeaux cork and marveled at my favorite BPers: the sheepish bridesmaid of color, the childhood friend who can’t stop making toasts to hide her unfathomable bitterness, the warring former college roommates, the pushy “leader,” and — bestest— the puggy one with bad bangs and a lemon face who wanders around picking fights with random strangers, slurring, “Leave ‘er alone … sh-sh-she’s a briiide.” Snooki lives. And I want a girls night out with 10 of her.

Treasure Island preview: Get your Long John Silvers out — the lineup’s been announced for this year’s festival on Oct. 16 and 17, and it’s pretty rad. “Electronic music” highlights? Four Tet, Holy Fuck, our own Wallpaper party boys, LCD Soundsystem, and (zef yes!) Die Antwoord. Kruder and Dorfmeister will be drifting us back to the early ’00s. I am typing the name Deadmau5. Full lineup and tickets at www.treasureislandfestival.com

 

HOT WAX

An all-vinyl night always guarantees my nightlife blessing — and this regular one at 222 is too-too-too nice to pass up. This month’s installment is themed “Ladies of the ’80s,” with an all-female DJ crew that includes Sweaterfunk’s DJ Mamabear, Shred One, Chungtech, and Sabrina spinning you delightful, deep-crated retro R&B and soul shakers of the XX-generated variety.

Thu/15, 9 p.m., $5. 222 Hyde, SF. www.222hyde.com

 

DJ DRM

I’m loving the jazzy beats revival raining down this summer, spawned by the choppy R&B re-edits scene, dubstep’s more melodic turn, a Latin funk infusion, and a general interest in sparkling, danceable vibes. Killer weekly Loose Joints is bringing in Brooklyn sizzler DRM of Bastard Jazz Recordings to get swingy. Loose Joints regulars Tom Thump, Centipede, and Damon Bell warm it up.

Fri/16, 10 p.m., $5. Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com

 

SOME THING ELSE

Fresh off its cheeky “9/11 in July” night, weekly dragstravaganza Some Thing is getting even more dangerous, with an imposters night that sends up San Francisco’s most boisterous queens of stage and toilet. Newcomers will impersonate — with affection! — old-schoolers. Expect some bewigged heads to explode as some big fish in our little pond get roasted, one birdseed boob at a time.

Fri/16, 10 p.m.–late, $7. The Stud, 399 Ninth St., SF. www.studsf.com

 

RAIZ

Vividly named L.A. brothers Vangelis and Vidal Vargas, formerly known as Acid Circus, have aptly switched monikers to Raiz, but still deliver the throbbing, bass-heavy minimal tech that razes the roof. They’ll be in town, accompanying local melodic thumper DJ Zenith, to celebrate the fierce monthly Tekandhaus party’s first anniversary.

Fri/16, 10 p.m., $5. Anu, 43 Sixth St., SF. www.tekandhaus.com

Bad faith

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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3
Bad faith

steve@sfbg.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom and his business allies are actively trying to sabotage the various revenue measures that have been put forth by the labor movement and progressive members of the Board of Supervisors, employing deceptive rhetoric, sneaky tactics, and a refusal to bargain in good faith.

In fact, Newsom — the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor — is so averse to supporting anything that could be called a “tax” that he rejected a hard-won compromise measure created by powerful developers, affordable housing advocates, a pro-business think tank, the building trades, and his own directors of housing and economic development.

Just as that story was breaking in the New York Times (produced by Bay Citizen) on July 9, members of the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee discovered that Newsom’s proposed ballot measure to close loopholes in the city’s hotel tax that favored airline employees and online travel companies — a widely supported change, but one worth just $6 million per year — contains language that would nullify any increases in the hotel tax. Earlier in the week, labor unions turned in signatures on an initiative to increase the hotel tax by 2 percent, which would bring in more than $30 million per year.

“This poison pill is an intentionally deceptive, underhanded move,” Gabriel Haaland, an organizer with Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which sponsored the hotel tax, told us. “It’s so frustrating. It’s not even a good faith fight. He’s trying to create confusion and fool the voters. If our measure passes fair and square, it should be implemented.”

Meanwhile, Newsom and business groups have been attacking a reform measure by Board President David Chiu that would make the currently flat payroll tax more progressive, exempt more small businesses from paying it, and create a commercial rent tax to spread the tax burden more widely than the 10 percent of businesses who now pay tax to the city.

Critics complained that the measure would hurt local businesses — but that’s just not true. The city’s Office of Economic Analysis concluded that Chiu’s original proposal would have no effect on private sector jobs and would generate $34 million annually for the city, preserving some government jobs and spending.

Then Chiu amended the measure to spare even more small businesses. Now the OEA says that the measure would actually create private sector jobs — and still bring $28 million in to the city. Yet Newsom and the business community are still withholding their support.

This trio of Machiavellian moves comes just a week after Newsom pulled out of budget negotiations with board progressives concerning about $40 million in board add-backs to programs that Newsom proposed to cut after they wouldn’t agree to his precondition that they withdraw unrelated measures proposed for the November ballot, such as splitting appointments to the Rent, Recreation and Park, and Municipal Transportation Agency boards and requiring police officers to do foot patrols.

The series of events has led many progressives to say that conservative ideological blinders — a knee-jerk opposition to anything that saves government jobs and services or that Republicans might criticize — is the only logical explanation for the intransigent stance adopted downtown and by Newsom.

“It’s ideological. It’s not economic, and it’s not even political,” said Calvin Welch, the affordable housing activist who helped negotiate the transfer tax compromise with developer Oz Erickson, San Francisco Planning Urban Research Association director Gabriel Metcalf, Mayor’s Office of Housing Director Doug Shoemaker, and others.

That measure would have created a transfer tax on sales of properties over $875,000 and generated approximately $50 million annually for affordable housing (funds that were drastically reduced in Newsom’s proposed 2010-11 budget) while cutting in half the current requirements and fees on market-rate developers to create below-market-rate units. The plan would have stimulated both types of housing and created desperately needed construction work — an approach those involved called an elegant solution to several problems.

“To me, this was a win-win, solving two problems that are each a big deal,” Metcalf told us. “I don’t know what his reasons were for not supporting it. I was surprised.”

But Welch said, “It collapsed straight up because the mayor didn’t want to support a tax.” Although Newsom told the Times it was because there wasn’t broad enough consensus yet, “the mayor’s reason is whole-cloth bullshit,” Welch said, noting the role of the Mayor’s Office in brokering the deal. “The mayor walks away from it because everyone wasn’t in the room? Well, it’s your room, motherfucker. Show some leadership.”

Newsom Press Secretary Tony Winnicker refused to discuss these issues by phone, responding to our written inquires by noting that Newsom opposes taxes and thinks the best way to address budget deficits are privatizing city services and pension reform (although he opposes Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s initiative, the only pension reform measure on the fall ballot).

“The mayor is opposed to the Board of Supervisors’ proposals to increase taxes because they’re not needed to balance the budget and they will strangle our still young economic recovery,” Winnicker wrote, refusing to answer follow-up questions or support a statement about Chiu’s measure that the OEA concludes is not accurate.

Like many political observers of all stripes, those from downtown and progressive circles, Welch criticized Newsom for his lack of engagement with city business and its long-term fiscal outlook, contrasting him with former Mayor Willie Brown, who met regularly with former Board of Supervisors President Tom Ammiano even as the two ran a bitter campaign for mayor against one another in 1999. “They dealt with the city’s business like two adults who cared about the city,” he said.

Welch acknowledged that there was still work to be done building political support for the transfer tax measure. He and other progressives would have had to win over city employee unions who wouldn’t like the budget set-aside aspect, and Erickson and Metcalf would need to placate some of their downtown allies who oppose taxes on ideological grounds. But given how downtown groups are behaving right now, that might not have been an easy sell.

“There are members of the small business community that are averse to any taxes,” said Regina Dick-Endrizzi, director of the city’s Office of Small Business and staffer to the Small Business Commission, which was withholding a recommendation on the Chiu measure but planned to meet again to consider it July 12 (look for an update on the sfbg.com Politics blog). She said the small business community is having tough times and “they are just not sensitive to keeping city workers employed.”

Larger commercial interests are being even more forceful in opposing the revenue measures. While a parade of workers, social service providers, and progressive activists testifying at the July 9 Budget Committee hearing implored supervisors to place all the proposed revenue measures on the ballot, representatives from the Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) and San Francisco Chamber of Commerce were the only two speakers urging supervisors to drop the measures and focus instead on creating private sector jobs.

“You’re trying to create a little revenue here and it’s not going to work,” said Ken Cleaveland, director of BOMA SF, arguing that big banks and financial services companies — entities exempt from the payroll tax that Chiu is hoping to target with the commercial rent tax — will buy their buildings to avoid paying the tax. “They aren’t going to create more jobs and they really aren’t going to create more revenue.”

Yet Chiu noted that it was the business community and fiscal conservatives who pushed to create the Office of Economic Analysis, whose work they have regularly used to attack progressive legislation. Now that the office has concluded that a piece of progressive legislation is good for the local economy, Chiu told Cleaveland and the Chamber spokesperson Rob Black at the hearing, “I ask you to respect the work this office has done.”

Black said the Chamber board will consider Chiu’s amended legislation, but said businesses are in no mood to help the city. “How many times have you gone to your neighborhood merchant and had them say, ‘Gee, my rent’s too cheap’?<0x2009>” he said during his testimony.

Yet Chiu said landlords of small tenants (those paying less than $65,000 in rent per year) are exempt from the rent tax and only 26 percent of SF businesses would pay any city business tax under his plan. “I hope the mayor will support this proposal and the business community will give it a good look,” Chiu said as the hearing ended.

At the beginning of the hearing, Chiu framed the dire situation facing San Francisco, citing Controller’s Office figures showing this year’s $500 million budget deficit (out of a $6 billion total budget) will be followed by a $700 million deficit next year and a $800 million gap the following budget cycle as a result of a deep structural budget imbalance.

“We have budget deficits as far as the eye can see,” Chiu said at the hearing. “We have to consider measures that will provide more stable sources of revenue.”

He also noted that city employee unions have agreed to give back about $250 million in salary and had their ranks reduced by about 2,000 workers in the last two years. So he and the other progressive supervisors say it’s time for the rest of San Francisco to help address the problem.

“We, as a city, should not be trying to balance this budget simply through cutting,” Sup. David Campos said.

Sup. John Avalos, the committee chair, amended his transfer tax measure in the wake of Newsom’s rejection of the deal by making it a simple 2 percent tax on properties that sell for more than $5 million, and 2.5 percent tax on properties over $10 million. He estimates it will bring in about $25 million per year from the city’s wealthiest corporations and landlords.

“That’s who we’re socking it to,” Avalos told us, saying he was disappointed the compromise fell through. “The amendment is going to be more progressive than what was originally planned.”

Even Sup. Sean Elsbernd, a strong fiscal conservative who announced early in the hearing, “You want to do that [balance future budgets] by adding taxes, but I want to do it through ongoing service cuts,” later told the Guardian that he was intrigued by the amendments Avalos and Chiu made to their measures and has not yet taken a position on them.

Sup. Ross Mirkarimi is also sponsoring a measure to increase the city’s tax on parking lot operators from 25 percent to 35 percent, the first change to that tax in 30 years, and will include valet parking for the first time. The measure would bring in up to $24 million per year, and OEA analysis shows it would decrease the number of cars trips by 1.3 percent, another benefit.

SFMTA supports the measure, with board member Cameron Beach testifying that the money will be used to subsidize Muni and “it links the use of private automobiles and is consistent with the city’s transit-first policy.” Mirkarimi, who chairs the Transportation Authority, also has proposed a $10 local vehicle license fee surcharge that would bring in another $5 million per year for Muni.

All the revenue measures require six votes by the full Board of Supervisors, which is scheduled to consider them July 20, after which they would need a simple majority approval by voters in November to take effect.

The mayor has the authority to directly place measures on the ballot, so the committee hearing on his hotel tax loophole measure and a $39 million general obligation bond that he’s proposing to create a revolving loan fund for private sector seismic improvements were mere formalities, so supervisors criticized aspects of each but were unable to make changes.

Avalos even grudgingly acknowledged the hotel tax poison pill was an effective way to kill that revenue source, saying at the hearing, “This is very smart. I don’t agree with it, but it’s very smart.”

Haaland was less charitable, criticizing a provision designed to confuse voters. “This kind of move means both measures won’t pass because now we have to oppose [Newsom’s measure],” he said, criticizing the mayor for running away from the hard decisions facing the city. “He won’t be around next year, when we have an even bigger structural budget deficit, to clean up this mess. Absent new revenue sources, this city starts to fall apart.”

On the cheap listings

David Talbot
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0

On the Cheap listings are compiled by Paula Connelly. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com.

WEDNESDAY 14

Make Beer in Your Basement Bazaar Café, 5927 California, SF; (415) 831-5620. 7pm, free. Learn to make your own beer to both save money and get invited to more parties. Home brewer Caleb Shaffer presents an overview of the beer brewing process, complete with explanations on technique, equipment, and ingredients.

Vive le Film! Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter, SF; www.disposablefilmfest.com. 8pm, free. In honor of Bastille Day, the Disposable Film Festival will present a collection of disposable films with a French flare. Enjoy drink specials courtesy of Hotel Rex and valet bike parking provided by Globe Bikes.

THURSDAY 15

Hayes Valley Farm Tour Hayes Valley Farm, Laguna between Oak and Fell, SF; www.laborfest.net. 3pm, free. Attend this LaborFest sponsored tour of Hayes Valley Farm, an urban agriculture education and research project, and learn about the alliance of urban farmers, educators, and designers that comprise the Hayes Valley Farm Project Team and the innovative strategies used on the farm in order to meet the needs of our planet and the surrounding communities of San Francisco. Tours of the farm are held every Thursday and Sunday.

FRIDAY 16

Free Museum Weekend Various museums in San Francisco, visit www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com/target for exact dates and times. Fri.-Sun., free. The de Young Museum, Asian Art Museum, SFMOMA, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Museum of African Diaspora, Zeum, and the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival are all offering free admission days throughout the weekend for all ages along with hands-on art activities, and family friendly performances.

SATURDAY 17

“Art Show” Cat Club, 1190 Folsom, SF; (415) 703-8964. 5pm, $5 suggested donation. Watch interpretive drag performances devoted to the works of Keith Gaspari, who will be hosting along with the lovely Bebe Sweetbriar. Featuring works by local artists and performers, champagne toasts, a raffle, and special Bulleit bourbon cocktails to benefit Visual Aid, a non-profit that supports artists living with HIV.

“Beatles to Bowie” San Francisco Art Exchange, 458 Geary, SF; (415) 441-8840. 7pm, free. Attend the opening of this Rock n’ Roll photo exhibition displaying original photos showcasing the evolution of music from the British invasion to glam rock from 1962 to 1974. Featuring never before seen photos by Terry O’Neill.

Behind the Storefronts Chinese Cultural Center of San Francisco, 3rd floor, 750 Kearny, SF; (415) 252-2598. 2pm, free. Learn about how Art in Storefronts, a citywide project that temporarily places original art installations and murals into vacant storefront windows and exposed walls, from some of the artists and property owners who participated in the current Chinatown exhibition. An artist-led tour of the storefronts and murals will follow the discussion.

Night Light SOMArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan, SF; (415) 552-1770. 9pm, $5 suggested donation. Get lost in a multimedia garden party featuring temporary multimedia, abstract sound, video, and film installation set in the garden of SOMArts. In conjunction with the current “Totally Unrealistic: the art of abstraction” exhibit.

Schools for Salone El Rio, 3158 Mission, SF; (415) 648-4767. 4pm, $10 suggested donation. Enjoy an afternoon of dancing, eating, drinking, and probable sunshine to benefit Schools for Salone, a non profit that build schools in Sierra Leone. Featuring music by DJs Marcos, Eschew, SpinCycle, PMS, and Ras Kanta, African food by Bissap Baobab, and raffle prizes.

Song and Poetry Swap The San Francisco Folk Music Club, 885 Clayton, SF; (415) 648-3457. 8pm, free. Join the Freedom Song Network to help keep the spirit of labor and political song alive in the Bay Area by bringing songs or poems to share at this swap of picket line, rally, and concert songs and poems. No musical training or talent required. Part of LaborFest 2010: www.laborfest.net.

Union Square Art Walk Participating galleries along Post and Sutter streets, SF; for exact locations visit http://artwalksf.com/. Noon-5pm, free. Take a free, self-guided walking tour of Union Square art galleries at this art walk featuring artist talks, performance art, live music, film screenings, refreshments, and more.

SUNDAY 18

Lots of Abundance Meet at CCA Farm, 8th St. at Hooper, SF; www.sfbike.org. 9:45am, $5 suggested donation. Discover local projects that reclaim abandoned lots and former freeways for public use and for the purpose of restoring connections to food on this two and a half hour bike tour led by TransitionSF and the San Francisco Permaculture Guild. The tour will highlight local efforts to create community and garner support for both the environment and the economy.

MONDAY 19

Ubu Roi Theater Pub, Café Royale, 800 Post, SF; www.sftheaterpub.wordpress.com. 8pm, free. Take in a one night performance of Alfred Jarry’s 1896 bawdy and nihilistic re-imagining of Macbeth, translated and modernized by Bennett Fisher. Enjoy this original work and workshop at the Café Royale bar featuring musical accompaniment by DJ Wait What.

For Lit, Talks, and Benefits listings, visit the Pixel Vision blog at www.sfbg.com/pixel_vision.

Film listings

David Talbot
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Film listings are edited by Cheryl Eddy. Reviewers are Kimberly Chun, Michelle Devereaux, Max Goldberg, Dennis Harvey, Johnny Ray Huston, Erik Morse, Louis Peitzman, Lynn Rapoport, Ben Richardson, and Matt Sussman. For rep house showtimes, see Rep Clock. For first-run showtimes, see Movie Guide.

ANOTHER HOLE IN THE HEAD

The seventh Another Hole in the Head Film Festival runs July 8-29 at the Roxie, 3117 16th St, SF; and Viz Cinema, New People, 1746 Post, SF. For tickets (most shows $11) and schedule, visit www.sfindie.com.

OPENING

Inception Christopher Nolan takes a break from the Bat-Director’s Chair to helm this Leonardo DiCaprio thriller about futuristic mind crimes. (2:30) Marina, Presidio.

*Let It Rain Well-known feminist author Agathe Villanova (writer-director Agnès Jaoui) is taking a rare break from her busy Paris life, visiting her hometown to see family, vacation with boyfriend Antoine (Frédéric Pierrot), and do a little stumping for her nascent political career. But despite the ever-picturesque French countryside as background, all is not harmonious. Antoine complains Agathe’s workaholism (among other things) is killing their relationship, particularly once she agrees to be time-consumingly interviewed for film about "successful women" by shambling documentarian Michel (coscenarist Jean-Pierre Bacri) and local Karim (Jamel Debbouze). Her married-with-children sister Florence (Pascale Arbillot) is having a secret affair with Michel, but seems more focused on old resentments springing from Agathe being their late mother’s favorite. Karim — son of the family’s longtime housekeeper (Mimouna Hadji) — bears his own grudge against the clan and brusque, officious Agathe in particular. Being happily wed, he’s further bothered at his hotel day job by his attraction to co-worker Aurélie (Florence Loiret-Caille). These various conflicts simmer, then boil over as the documentary shooting goes from bumbling to disastrous. In 2004, Jaoui delivered a pretty near perfect Gallic ensemble seriocomedy in Look at Me. This isn’t quite that good. Still, her seemingly effortless skill at managing complex character dynamics, eliciting expert performances (including her own), and weaving it all together with insouciant panache makes this a real pleasure. The problem with Agnès Jaoui: she’s so good it chafes that (acting-only gigs aside) she’s made just three films in ten years. Pick it up, girl! (1:39) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

*[Rec] 2 See "666-ZOMB." (1:24) Lumiere.

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Socially awkward science nerd Dave (Jay Baruchel) toils away on his suspiciously elaborate NYU physics project, unaware that he’s about to have a Harry Potter-style moment of awakening. Enter Balthazar (Nicolas Cage), a centuries-old, steampunky sorcerer who believes Dave to be "the Prime Merlinian" — i.e., the greatest conjurer since Merlin himself. (Literally) rising from ashes to provide conflict are fellow sorcerers Horvath (Alfred Molina) and Morgana (Alice Krige); signing on for romantic-interest purposes are Monica Bellucci and newcomer Teresa Palmer. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice spins off Disney classic Fantasia (1940) in only the loosest sense, though there is a scene of dancing brooms. The bland Baruchel’s rise to fame continues to mystify, but at least Cage and Molina seem to be having a blast exchanging insults and zapping each other around. (1:43) (Eddy)

South of the Border After a prolific career of dramatic films steeped in political commentary, Oliver Stone drops the pretext. South of the Border is his Michael Moore moment, a chance for the filmmaker to make a direct and focused documentary in which his bias is readily apparent. Stone travels to South American nations and meets with their political leaders, men and women — including Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, and Rafael Correa — who have long been considered enemies of the United States. His goal is to show that they are not ruthless dictators but rather democratically elected representatives of their country, cast in a negative light by a mainstream media with ulterior motives. Stone’s rapport with these politicians is intimate: at one point, he plays soccer with Morales. Even if you’re skeptical of his assertions, you can at least appreciate the unique perspective South of the Border offers. As a film, it’s somewhat slipshod, not nearly as glossy as a Moore production. But provided you’re willing to fill in the blanks, it’s a captivating and well-intentioned endeavor. (1:18) (Peitzman)

Spring Fever Shot surreptitiously and chock full of gay sex, Chinese director Lou Ye’s latest film isn’t likely to earn him any additional slack from Chinese government censors (his 2006 film, Summer Palace, got him banned from filmmaking for five years after he failed to preview it before it screened at Cannes). Using hand-held cameras, public settings, and natural lighting, Lou follows Wang Ping (Wu Wei), who’s been having a passionate, messy affair with travel agent Jiang Cheng (Qin Hao). Things get more complicated when the snoop Wang’s wife hires to follow her closeted husband winds up pursuing the two men in ways he never imagined. What Spring Fever lacks in continuity and psychological depth, it makes up for with sexual candor and a genuine frisson of risk, given the secretive conditions under which it was made. That thrill doesn’t quite last through the film’s duration, but as a document of defiance Spring Fever is commendable. (1:56) Four Star. (Sussman)

Standing Ovation Atlantic City teens form a song-and-dance troupe in this High School Musical-style family film. (1:48)

ONGOING

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo Opening with the humid buzz of crickets and the probings of bug aficionados in the thick of a forest, first-time documentarian Jessica Oreck puts Japan’s fascination with insects under the microscope. Preferring to let the images and interview subjects speak for themselves, she turns a lens to young children who clamor to buy sleek, shiny, obsidian beetles, as well as the giant big city gatherings of insect collectors — events that likely are less than familiar to western audiences. Oreck’s intent is to get at the ineffable attraction behind such astonishing sales as that of a single beetle for $90,000 not so long ago, and to that end, she weaves in looks at insect literature and art, visits to Buddhist temples, and historical factoids about, for instance, the first cricket-selling business in the early 1800s. (1:30) Sundance Kabuki. (Chun)

*City Island The Rizzo family of City Island, N.Y. — a tiny atoll associated historically with fishing and jurisdictionally with the Bronx — have reached a state where their primary interactions consist of sniping, yelling, and storming out of rooms. These storm clouds operate as cover for the secrets they’re all busy keeping from one another. Correctional officer Vince (Andy Garcia) pretends he’s got frequent poker nights so he can skulk off to his true shameful indulgence: a Manhattan acting class. Perpetually fuming spouse Joyce (Julianna Margulies) assumes he’s having an affair. Daughter Vivian (Dominik García-Lorido) has dropped out of school to work at a strip joint, while the world class-sarcasms of teenager Vinnie (Ezra Miller) deflect attention from his own hidden life as an aspiring chubby chaser. All this (plus everyone’s sneaky cigarette habit) is nothing, however, compared to Vince’s really big secret: he conceived and abandoned a "love child" before marrying, and said guilty issue has just turned up as a 24-year-old car thief on his cell block. Writer-director Raymond De Felitta made a couple other features in the last 15 years, none widely seen; if this latest is typical, we need more of him, more often. Perfectly cast, City Island is farcical without being cartoonish, howl-inducing without lowering your brain-cell count. It’s arguably a better, less self-conscious slice of dysfunctional family absurdism than Little Miss Sunshine (2006) — complete with an Alan Arkin more inspired in his one big scene here than in all of that film’s Oscar-winning performance. (1:40) Four Star. (Harvey)

Cyrus It’s tempting to label Mark and Jay Duplass’ Cyrus as "mumblecore goes mainstream." Yes, the mumblecore elements are all there: plentiful moments of awkward humiliation, characters fumbling verbally and sometimes physically in desperate attempts to establish emotional connections, and a meandering, character-driven plot, in the sense that the characters themselves possess precious little drive. The addition of bona fide indie movie stars John C. Reilly, Catherine Keener, and Marisa Tomei — not to mention Hollywood’s chubby-funny guy du jour, Jonah Hill — could lead some to believe that the DIY-loving Duplass brothers (2005’s The Puffy Chair, 2008’s Baghead) have gone from slacker disciples of John Cassavetes (informally known as "Slackavetes") to worshippers at the slickly profane (with a heart) altar of Judd Apatow. But despite the presence of Apatow protégé Hill (2007’s Superbad) in the title role, Cyrus steers clear of crowd-pleasing bombast, instead favoring small, relatively naturalistic moments. That is to say, not much actually happens. Mumblecore? More or less. Mainstream? Not exactly. Despite playing a character with some serious psychological issues, Hill comes off as likeable. Unfortunately the movie is neither as broadly comic nor as emotionally poignant as it needs to be — the two opposing forces seem to cancel each other out like acids and bases. (1:32) Empire, Sundance Kabuki. (Devereaux)

Despicable Me Judging from the adorable, booty-shaking, highly merchandisable charm of its sunny-yellow Percocet-like minions, Despicable Me‘s makers have more than a few fond memories of the California Raisins. That gives you an idea of the 30-second attention-span level at work here. Thanks to Pixar and company, our expectations for animated features are high, but despite the single lob at Lehman Brothers aimed toward the grown-ups, the humor here is pitched straight at the eight and younger crowd: from the mugging, child-like minions to the all-in-good-fun, slightly quease-inducing 3-D roller-coaster ride. Gru (Steve Carell) is Despicable‘s also-ran supervillain — a bit too old and too unoriginal for a game that’s been rigged in the favor of the youthful, annoyingly perky Vector (Jason Segel), who’s managed to swipe the Giza Pyramids and become the world’s number one bad dude. When Vector steals away the crucial shrink ray needed for Gru’s plot to thieve the moon, the latter pulls out the big guns: three adorable orphans who have managed to penetrate Vector’s defenses with their fund-raising cookie sales. It turns out kids have their own insidiously heart-warming way of wrecking havoc on one’s well-laid plans. Filmmakers Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud do their best to exploit the 3-D medium, but Avatar (2009) this is not. Nor will many adults be able to withstand the onslaught of cute undertaken by all those raisins, I mean, minions. (1:35) 1000 Van Ness, Presidio, SF Center. (Chun)

*Exit Through the Gift Shop Exit Through the Gift Shop is not a film about the elusive graffiti-cum-conceptual artist and merry prankster known as Banksy, even though he takes up a good chunk of this sly and by-no-means impartial documentary and is listed as its director. Rather, as he informs us — voice electronically altered, face hidden in shadow — in the film’s opening minutes, the film’s real subject is one Thierry Guetta, a French expat living in LA whose hangdog eyes, squat stature, and propensity for mutton chops and polyester could pass him off as Ron Jeremy’s long lost twin. Unlike Jeremy, Guetta is not blessed with any prodigious natural talent to propel him to stardom, save for a compulsion to videotape every waking minute of his life (roughly 80 percent of the footage in Exit is Guetta’s) and a knack for being in the right place at the right time. When Guetta is introduced by his tagger cousin to a pre-Obamatized Shepard Fairey in 2007, he realizes his true calling: to make a documentary about the street art scene that was then only starting to get mainstream attention. Enter Banksy, who, at first, is Guetta’s ultimate quarry. Eventually, the two become chummy, with Guetta acting as lookout and documenter for the artist just as the art market starts clambering for its piece of, "the Scarlet Pimpernel of street art," as one headline dubs him. When, at about three quarters of the way in, Guetta, following Banksy’s casual suggestion, drops his camcorder and tries his hand at making street art, Exit becomes a very different beast. Guetta’s flashy debut as Mr. Brainwash is as obscenely successful as his "art" is terribly unimaginative — much to the chagrin of his former documentary subjects. But Guetta is no Eve Harrington and Banksy, who has the last laugh here, gives him plenty of rope with which to truss himself. Is Mr. Brainwash really the ridiculous and inevitable terminus of street art’s runaway mainstream success (which, it must be said, Banksy has handsomely profited from)? That question begs another: with friends like Banksy, who needs enemies? (1:27) Lumiere. (Sussman)

Get Him to the Greek At this point movie execs can throw producer Judd Apatow’s name on the marquee of a film and it’s a guaranteed blockbuster. It’s hard to say whether this Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008) spin-off benefits from the Apatow sign of approval or if it would be better off standing on its own, but it definitely doesn’t benefit from comparisons to its predecessor. Russell Brand returns as the British rock star Aldous Snow, and Jonah Hill, playing a different character this time, is given the task of chaperoning the uncooperative Snow from London to LA in 48 hours. Despite a great cast, including a surprisingly animated P. Diddy, the story is pretty bland and can’t match the blend of drama and comedy that Marshall achieved. Of course, none of that matters because the movie execs are right: if you like Apatow’s brand of humor, you’re going to have a good time anyway. (1:49) Four Star, 1000 Van Ness, Presidio. (Peter Galvin)

*The Girl Who Played With Fire Lisbeth Salander is cooler than you are. The heroine of Stieg Larsson’s bestselling book series is fierce, mysterious, and utterly captivating: in the movie adaptations, she’s perfectly realized by Noomi Rapace, who has the power to transform Lisbeth from literary hero to film icon. Rapace first impressed audiences in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2009), a faithful adaptation of Larsson’s premiere novel, and she returns as Lisbeth in The Girl Who Played With Fire. The sequel, as is often the case, isn’t quite on par with the original, but it’s still a page-to-screen success. And while the first film spent equal time on journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), The Girl Who Played With Fire is almost entirely Lisbeth’s story. Sure, there’s more to the movie than the hacker-turned-sleuth — and the actor who plays her — but she carries the film. Rapace is Lisbeth; Lisbeth is Rapace. I’d watch both in anything. (2:09) Embarcadero, Smith Rafael. (Peitzman)

*The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo By the time the first of Stieg Larsson’s so-called "Millennium" books had been published anywhere, the series already had an unhappy ending: he died (in 2004). The following year, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo became a Swedish, then eventually international sensation, its sequels following suit. The books are addicting, to say the least; despite their essential crime-mystery-thriller nature, they don’t require putting your ear for writing of some literary value on sleep mode. Now the first of three adaptive features shot back-to-back has reached U.S. screens. (Sorry to say, yes, a Hollywood remake is already in the works — but let’s hope that’s years away.) Even at two-and-a-half hours, this Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by necessity must do some major truncating to pack in the essentials of a very long, very plotty novel. Still, all but the nitpickingest fans will be fairly satisfied, while virgins will have the benefit of not knowing what’s going to happen and getting scared accordingly. Soon facing jail after losing a libel suit brought against him by a shady corporate tycoon, leftie journalist Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) gets a curious private offer to probe the disappearance 40 years earlier of a teenage girl. This entangles him with an eccentric wealthy family and their many closet skeletons (including Nazi sympathies) — as well as dragon-tattooed Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), androgynous loner, 24-year-old court ward, investigative researcher, and skillful hacker. Director Niels Arden Oplev and his scenarists do a workmanlike job — one more organizational than interpretive, a faithful transcription without much style or personality all its own. Nonetheless, Larsson’s narrative engine kicks in early and hauls you right along to the depot. (2:32) Four Star, Lumiere, Smith Rafael. (Harvey)

Grown Ups In order of star power, Grown Ups casts Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, Rob Schneider, and David Spade as five fortysomething friends who reunite to attend the funeral of their high school basketball coach, and play catch-up over a long weekend together at a cabin by the lake. If you’re expecting five of America’s biggest comedy stars to form like Voltron and make the most hilarious movie of the year, you’ve got a sad day coming. Grown Ups is never the sum of its parts, it’s about on par with Sandler’s other producing/starring affairs, and probably features a lot of the same jokes. People fall in poop and little kids say cute things designed to make audiences awww, but history has shown that’s exactly what a popcorn viewer is looking for. By these standards, Grown Ups is a perfectly summer-y movie. (1:42) 1000 Van Ness. (Galvin)

*I Am Love I Am Love opens in a chilly, Christmastime Milan and deliberately warms in tandem with its characters. Members of the blue-blood Recchi family are content hosting lavish parties and gossiping about one another, none more than the matriarch Emma (Tilda Swinton). But when prodigal son Edoardo befriends a local chef, Emma finds herself taken by both the chef’s food and his everyman personality, and is reminded of her poor Soviet upbringing. The courtship that follows is familiar on paper, but director Luca Guadagnino lenses with a strong style and small scenes acquire a distinct energy through careful editing and John Adams’ unpredictable score. Swinton portrays Emma’s unraveling with the same gritty gusto she brought to Julia (2008), and her commitment to the role recognizes few boundaries. You’ve probably seen this story before, but it has rarely been this powerful. (2:00) Embarcadero, Sundance Kabuki. (Galvin)

*Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work Whether you’re a fan of its subject or not, Ricki Stern and Annie Sundberg’s documentary is an absorbing look at the business of entertainment, a demanding treadmill that fame doesn’t really make any easier. At 75, comedian Rivers has four decades in the spotlight behind her. Yet despite a high Q rating she finds it difficult to get the top-ranked gigs, no matter that as a workaholic who’ll take anything she could scarcely be more available. Funny onstage (and a lot ruder than on TV), she’s very, very focused off-, dismissive of being called a "trailblazer" when she’s still actively competing with those whose women comics trail she blazed for today’s hot TV guest spot or whatever. Anyone seeking a thorough career overview will have to look elsewhere; this vérité year-in-the-life portrait is, like the lady herself, entertainingly and quite fiercely focused on the here-and-now. (1:24) Embarcadero. (Harvey)

John Rabe John Rabe (Ulrich Tukur) was the Oskar Schindler of Nanking: A man who, under discreetly opportunist pretenses, attempted to keep the Chinese in a safety zone from the Japanese in the late 30s. Steve Buscemi plays Robert Wilson, a surly American doctor. He’s to Tukur as Ben Kingsley was to Liam Neeson in 1993’s Schindler’s List, but without the nuance or iconic chemistry. Tukur is understated, bordering on uninteresting, and Buscemi is just over-the-top. Unlike Spielberg’s film, John Rabe grants us little access to the stories of civilians. The film is so preoccupied with people of power and those like Rabe, couched in a world of privilege, that the film lacks an emotional, human center. It’s impossible to feel much of anything because we’re never asked to feel, nor are we ever asked to endure any especially difficult scenes. Even the occasional rain of hellfire isn’t as wallop-packing as it ought to be. (2:14) Four Star, Presidio. (Ryan Lattanzio)

The Karate Kid The most baffling thing about The Karate Kid is its title: little Dre Parker (Jaden Smith) never actually learns karate. He practices kung-fu, an entirely different form of martial arts — you know, from a different country. There’s something obnoxious and absurd about the misnomer: the film seems to suggest that if you’ve seen one Asian culture, you’ve seen them all. That aside, it’s not a bad movie. Smith is mostly pretty likeable, and there’s a definite satisfaction to seeing him grow from bullied weakling to kung-fu star. And Jackie Chan gets to exercise his dramatic chops — he even gets a crying scene! But Karate Kid is a "reboot," the preferred term for the endless stream of unnecessary remakes Hollywood keeps churning out. You can’t help but think about the superior 1984 version. Jaden Smith is no Ralph Macchio, Jackie Chan is no Pat Morita, and kung-fu is no karate. Don’t even get me started on the "jacket on, jacket off" crap. Which, if you say it quickly, sounds a little adult for a PG movie. (2:20) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center. (Peitzman)

*The Kids Are All Right In many ways, The Kids Are All Right is a straightforward family dramedy: it’s about parents trying to do what’s best for their children and struggling to keep their relationship together. But it’s also a film in which Jules (Julianne Moore) goes down on Nic (Annette Bening) while they’re watching gay porn. Director Lisa Cholodenko (1998’s High Art) co-wrote the script (with Stuart Blumberg), and the film’s blend between mainstream and queer is part of what makes Kids such an important — not to mention enjoyable — film. Despite presenting issues that might be contentious to large portions of the country, the movie maintains an approachability that’s often lacking in queer cinema. Of course, being in the gay mecca of the Bay Area skews things significantly — most locals wouldn’t bat an eye at Kids, which has Nic and Jules’ children inviting their biological father ("the sperm donor," played by Mark Ruffalo) into their lives. But for those outside the liberal bubble, the idea of a nontraditional family might be more eye-opening. It’s not a message movie, but Kids may still change minds. And even if it doesn’t, the film is a success that works chiefly because it isn’t heavy-handed. It refuses to take itself too seriously. At its best, Kids is laugh-out-loud funny, handling the heaviest of issues with grace and humor. (1:47) Bridge, SF Center. (Peitzman)

*Knight and Day A Bourne-again Vanilla Sky (2001)? Considerably better than that embarrassingly silly stateside remake, though not quite as fulfilling as director James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma (2007) rework, this action caper played for yuks still isn’t the most original article in the cineplex. But coasting on the dazzling Cheshire grins of its stars, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, reunited for the first time since Sky, you can just make out the birth of a beautiful new franchise. Everygirl June Havens (Diaz) is on her way to her sister’s wedding when she collides-cute at the airport with Roy Miller (Cruise). After killing the passengers and pilots on their plane, he literally sweeps her off her feet — thanks to some potent drugs. Picture a would-be Bond girl dragged against a spy-vs.-spy thriller semi-against-her-will — grappling with the subtextual anxiety rushing beneath all brief romantic encounters as well as some very justifiable survival fears. Can June overcome her trust issues? Is Roy the man of her dreams — or nightmares? Mangold and company miss a few opportunities to have more fun with those barely teased out ideas, and the polished, adult-yet-far-from-knowing charisma of the leads doesn’t quite live up to sophisticated interplay of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, or even the down-home fun of Burt Reynolds and Sally Field, but it’s substantial enough for Knight and Day to coast on, for about 90 minutes tops. (2:10) 1000 Van Ness. (Chun)

The Last Airbender There must be some M. Night Shyamalan fans out there. How else does one explain the fact that he keeps making movies? And yet, most of his post-Sixth Sense (1999) work has ranged from forgettable to downright reviled. His latest disaster is sure to fall into the latter category: in The Last Airbender, he takes a much-loved Nickelodeon cartoon and transforms it into an awkwardly paced, poorly acted mess. Woefully miscast Noah Ringer stars as Aang, the avatar with the power to end the Fire Nation’s dominion. Along with his friends, siblings Sokka (Jackson Rathbone) and Katara (Nicola Peltz), Aang must — oh, just watch the damn show. For newcomers, the film is as confusing as Shyamalan’s equally self-indulgent Lady in the Water (2006). For fans of the TV show, The Last Airbender is nearly unbearable, condensing the entire first season into one film by removing the humor, the heart, and the complexity of the characters. There’s no twist here — we expect Shyamalan to disappoint, and he does. (1:34) 1000 Van Ness, SF Center, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

Micmacs An urge to baby-talk at the screen underlines what is wrong with Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s new film: it is like a precocious child all too aware how to work a room, reprising adorable past behaviors with pushy determination and no remaining spontaneity whatsoever. There will be cooing. There will be clucking. But there will also a few viewers rolling their eyes, thinking "This kid rides my last nerve." It’s easy to understand why Jeunet’s movies (including 2001’s Amélie) are so beloved, doubtless by many previously allergic to subtitles. (Of course, few filmmakers need dialogue less.) They are eye-candy, and brain-candy too: fantastical, hyper, exotic, appealing to the child within but with dark streaks, byzantine of plot yet requiring no close narrative attention at all. The artistry and craftsmanship are unmissable, no ingenious design or whimsical detail left unemphasized. In Micmacs, hero Bazil (Dany Boon) is a lovable misfit who lost his father to an Algerian landmine, then loses his own job and home when he’s brain-injured by a stray bullet. He falls in with a crazy coterie of lovable misfits who live underground, make wacky contraptions from junk, and each have their own special, not-quite-super "power." They help him wreak elaborate, fanciful revenge on the greedy arms manufacturers (André Dussollier, Nicolas Marié) behind his misfortunes, as well as various human rights-y global ones. So there’s a message here, couched in fun. But the effect is rather like a birthday clown begging funds for Darfur — or Robert Benigni’s dreaded Life is Beautiful (1997), good intentions coming off a bit hubristic, even distasteful. (1:44) Opera Plaza. (Harvey)

Predators Anyone who claims to be disappointed by Predators has clearly never seen parts one and two in the series; all three are straight B-movie affairs (though 1990’s Predator 2 takes everything oh-so-slightly over the top. Gary Busey’ll do that). And if you’ve seen either of the recent Predator-versus-Alien flicks, Predators should feel like a masterpiece. Nimród Antal directs under the banner of Robert Rodriguez’s production company, which explains the presence of Danny "Machete" Trejo in the cast. Adrien Brody stashes his Oscar in a safe place to star as Royce, a well-armed mercenary who awakes to find himself in free fall, plummeting into a strange jungle along with other elite-forces types (including Brazilian Alice Braga, playing an Israeli soldier). It doesn’t take long before Royce realizes that "this is a game preserve, and we’re the game." I wish Predators had allowed itself to have a little more fun with its uniquely skilled characters (the yakuza guy does have a nice, if culturally-stereotyped, swordplay scene); there’s also an underdeveloped "plot twist" involving the presence of the decidedly un-badass Topher Grace among the human prey. But all is forgiven when Laurence Fishburne turns up as Crazy Old Dude Who’s Been Hiding Out With Predators a Little Too Long. Fishburne’s presence also adds to the heart-of-darkness vibe the movie seems vaguely interested in conveying. (1:51) 1000 Van Ness. (Eddy)

*Restrepo Starting mid-’07, journalists-filmmakers Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger spent some 15 months off and on embedded with a U.S. Army platoon in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley, a Taliban stronghold with steep, mountainous terrain that could hardly be more advantageous for snipers. Particularly once a second, even more isolated outpost is built, the soldiers’ days are fraught with tension, whether they’re ordered out into the open on a mission or staying put under frequent fire. Strictly vérité, with no political commentary overt or otherwise, the documentary could be (and has been) faulted for not having enough of a "narrative arc" — as if life often does, particularly under such extreme circumstances. But it’s harrowingly immediate (the filmmakers themselves often have to dive for cover) and revelatory as a glimpse not just of active warfare, but of the near-impossible challenges particular to foreign armed forces trying to make any kind of "progress" in Afghanistan. (1:33) Clay. (Harvey)

The Secret in Their Eyes (2:07) Opera Plaza, Red Vic.

*Stonewall Uprising On the night of June 28, 1969, police embarked on what they thought would be a routine raid on a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, the sleazy, Mafia-run Stonewall Inn. The ensuing three days of rioting — during which mostly young men and drag queens accustomed to being marginalized and hauled off to jail stood their ground and fought back — became what historian Lillian Faderman has called "the shot heard round the world" for LGBT activism: a spontaneous expression of street-level outrage that fueled the birth of a movement. Kate Davis and David Heilbroner’s solid documentary Stonewall Uprising takes a "just the facts, ma’am" approach to this historic flashpoint that makes for an information-packed, if at times dry, 80 minutes. Working around the paucity of photographic documentation of the actual riots (itself a testament to the marginalization of homosexuality in the late 1960s), Davis and Heilbroner make extensive use of period news footage and photography, reenactments, and most important, the first-person testimonies of who those who witnessed and participated in what one interviewee terms "our Rosa Parks moment." The filmmakers’ contextual groundwork is as impressive for its archival research as it is repetitive in its message: pre-Stonewall life was hell. The documentary becomes more nuanced as it zeros in on reconstructing the first night of rioting via eyewitness accounts. (1:22) Lumiere. (Sussman)

Touching Home Hometown boys (Logan and Noah Miller) make good in this based-on-a-true-story tale of identical twins who must divide their time at home between training for major league baseball and looking after their alcoholic father. The brothers, who also wrote and directed the film, aim for David Gordon Green by way of Marin, but fall short of mastering that director’s knack for natural dialogue. Ed Harris is, unsurprisingly, compelling as the alcoholic father, but the actors in the film who are not named Ed Harris tend to contribute to the script’s distracting histrionics. Touching Home has some amazing NorCal cinematography, and I could see how family audiences might enjoy its "feel bad, then feel good" style of melodrama. But while it’s awkward to say that someone’s real-life experiences come off as trite, there are moments here that feel as clichéd as a Lifetime movie. (1:48) Smith Rafael. (Galvin)

*Toy Story 3 You’ve got a friend in Pixar. We all do. The animation studio just can’t seem to make a bad movie — even at its relative worst, a Pixar film is still worlds better than most of what Hollywood churns out. Luckily, Toy Story 3 is far from the worst: it’s actually one of Pixar’s most enjoyable and poignant films yet. Waiting 11 years after the release of Toy Story 2 was, in fact, a stroke of genius, in that it amplifies the nostalgia that runs through so many of the studio’s releases. The kids who were raised on Toy Story and its first sequel have now grown up, gone to college, and, presumably, abandoned their toys. For these twentysomethings, myself included, Toy Story 3 is a uniquely satisfying and heartbreaking experience. While the film itself may not be the instant classic that WALL-E (2008) was, it’s near flawless regardless of a viewer’s age. Warm, funny, and emotionally devastating—it’s Pixar as it should be. (1:49) Empire, Marina, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse The only person more bored by the Twilight franchise than I am is Kristen Stewart. In Eclipse, the third installment of the film series, she mopes her way through further adventures with creepily obsessive vampire Edward (Robert Pattinson). Look, you’re either sold on this star-crossed love story or you’re not, and it’s clear which camp I fall into. Besides, Eclipse is at least better than New Moon, the dreadful Twilight film that preceded it last year. But the story is still ponderous and predictable — Eclipse sets up a conflict and then quickly resolves it, just so it can spend more time on the Bella-Edward-Jacob love triangle. (As if we don’t know how that ends.) Then there’s the unfortunate anti-sex subtext: carnal relations are cast as dirty, wrong, and soul-destroying. I’m not saying we should be encouraging all teenagers to have sex, but that doesn’t mean we should make them feel ashamed of their desires. And what parent would approve of Eclipse‘s conclusion? Marrying your first boyfriend at 18 — not always the best move. (2:04) Empire, 1000 Van Ness, Sundance Kabuki. (Peitzman)

*Wild Grass The premise of Wild Grass, Alain Resnais’ loopy new film, could have come straight from Nancy Meyers: an older married man finds a single, middle-aged woman’s wallet. He returns it but can’t stop thinking about her. She, in turn, is intrigued by his attentions. Both are surprised by the connection they feel growing between them, one which they nevertheless have difficulty articulating. When they finally meet, sparks fly. That purloined wallet, along with the romcom set-up, aren’t the only MacGuffins in Resnais’ Wild ride, which uses Christian Gailly’s novel L’ Incindent as a rough guide for its careening tour of the irrational courses that desire can lead us down. The man and woman in question are Georges, an embittered writer with a possibly dark past, and flame-haired Marguerite, a dentist and part-time aviatrix, both played to neurotic perfection by longtime Resnais regulars André Dussollier and Sabine Azéma. Resnais’ attempt to translate what he has called the "musicality" of Gailly’s prose has resulted in a frenetic everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach that tries to visually approximate Georges and Marguerites’ every internal monologue, fantasy, and increasingly risky instance of impulsive behavior, throwing in some knowing winks to classic Hollywood cinema for good measure. It’s a mess, to be sure (there are even two endings!). But like Mr. Magoo, the 87-year-old Resnais, as if by some unseen hand, steers clear of complete disaster. There hasn’t been a Gallic car crash this delightful to watch since Godard’s famous pile-up in 1967’s Week End. (1:44) Opera Plaza, Shattuck. (Sussman)

*Winter’s Bone Winter’s Bone has already won awards at the Berlin International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival, but it’s the kind of downbeat, low-key, quiet film that may elude larger audiences (and, as these things go, Oscar voters). Like Andrea Arnold’s recent Fish Tank, it tells the story of a teenage girl who draws on unlikely reserves of toughness to navigate an unstable family life amid less-than-ideal economic circumstances. And it’s also directed by a woman: Debra Granik, whose previous feature, 2004’s Down to the Bone, starred Vera Farmiga (2009’s Up in the Air) as a checkout clerk trying to balance two kids and a secret coke habit.

Drugs also figure into the plot of the harrowing Winter’s Bone, though its protagonist, Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence), is faced with a different set of circumstances: her meth head father has jumped bail, leaving the family’s humble mountain home as collateral; the two kids at stake are her younger siblings. With no resources other than her own tenacity, Ree strikes out into her rural Missouri community, seeking information from relatives who clearly know where her father is — but ain’t sayin’ a word. It’s a journey fraught with menace, shot with an eye for near-documentary realism and an appreciation for slow-burn suspense; Lawrence anchors a solid cast with her own powerful performance. Who says American independent film is dead? (1:40) Embarcadero. (Eddy)

REP PICKS

*Beyond the Doors and Bigfoot This double bill in the middle of the Vortex Room’s conspiracy-focused schedule of Thursday screenings offers musings on some favorite 1970s subjects for paranoid speculation. "Our assignment: neutralize the three Pied Pipers of rock n’ roll music," recalls a government operative near the beginning of Larry Buchanan’s Beyond the Doors. Upset at Vietnam protests and drug culture, President Nixon hits on the logical solution: Jimi, Janis and Jim (Morrison) must die. Made in 1984, this late effort by Southern cheesebagger Buchanan followed three decades of such titles as Naughty Dallas (1964), Zontar: The Thing from Venus (1966), Mars Needs Women (1967), and The Loch Ness Horror (1981). Having achieved modest box-office success with his tabloid-tenored 1976 take on Marilyn Monroe, Goodbye Norma Jean, Buchanan applied the same delicate brushstrokes to this dramatized imagining of what really happened to acid rock’s martyred holy trinity. Actor "discoveries" Gregory Allen Chatman (Hendrix), Riba Meryl (Joplin), and Bryan Wolf (Morrison) were, not entirely surprisingly heard from again, though the various approximations of those musicians’ sounds could be worse. In the second half of the Vortex Room bill, John Carradine helps helps various bikers, rednecks, and cops investigate the abduction of underdressed white-meat babes which Bigfoot (or rather, several Bigfoots … or is that Bigfeet?) kidnaps to chain up in a cave so that they might squirm and scream in their bikini briefs. (The original ad line was "Breeds with anything.") Leading victim is 1950s starlet Joi Lansing, a Mormon-raised Monroe wannabe whose prior career highlights were a brief run on The Beverly Hillbillies, bits in studio features and leads in Z-grade films like the glorified ’67 country-music concert compendium Hillbillies in a Haunted House. This being a 1970 drive-in feature (by Robert F. Slatzer, who’d made the rather stupendously bad 1967 Hellcats), naturally a biker club rides to the eventual rescue, pitting one group of hairy primitives against another. Add Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) star Haji, Elvis bodyguard Del "Sonny" West, some hoary Hollywood veterans, and lesser Mitchum family members, and you’ve got one weird time capsule. Thurs/15, 8 p.m., $5, Vortex Room, 1082 Howard, SF; www.myspace.com/thevortexroom. (Harvey)

Alerts

David Talbot
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0

alert@sfbg.com

WEDNESDAY, JULY 14

Anarchists abound


This summer in Detroit nearly 20,000 people attended the June 2010 U.S. Social Forum, a conference and collaboration to build a platform for an international political movement that unites oppressed communities. Hear about the forum from attendees Sarolta Jane, Sarah Lazare, Sam Brown, and Marshall Hillton as they discuss the role anarchists played at the forum.

7:30 p.m., $2–$5 suggested donation

Station 40

3030B 16th St., SF

(415) 661-1852

THURSDAY, JULY 15

"In Deepwater"


Hear about what’s really happening with the oil spill in the gulf from two experts who have been in the region since the blowout occurred: Texas shrimper turned activist Diane Wilson and Riki Ott, a marine biologist who worked on the Exxon Valdez spill. Hear about the projected long-term effects on the environment, human health, and local communities as well as more ways BP can be held accountable.

7 p.m., $10–$20 sliding scale

Richard and Rhoda Goldman Theater

The David Brower Center

2150 Allston, Berk.

(510) 859-9100

FRIDAY, JULY 16

Peaceful warriors


Demand that we bring our troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan now at this rally for peace. The total cost of the U.S. wars has already surpassed the $1 trillion mark during the worst economic recession since the Depression. Join the East Bay Grey Panthers in protest.

2 p.m., free

Corner of Action and University, Berk.

(510) 548-9696

SATURDAY, JULY 17

General Strike Walk


Tour key historical sites of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike with historian Luis Prisco, ILWU Local 10 longshoreman Jack Heyman, and others and learn why the strike was successful, how it was organized, and why the issues of the strike are still relevant to working people today. Bring lunch and prepared for a long walk.

10:30 a.m., free

Meet at Harry Bridges Plaza

Ferry Building

Embarcadero at Market, SF

(415) 841-1254

Streetsweeper for a day


Help beautify one of San Francisco’s most popular tourist destinations by joining other volunteers and the San Francisco Department of Public Works to plant trees, work on greening projects, remove weeds, paint over graffiti, and pick up litter. Students can accumulate hours for community service.

9 a.m., free

Fisherman’s Wharf

Embarcadero at Bay, SF

(415) 641-2600

MONDAY, JULY 19

Revolution remembered

Hear Alejandro Murguia, cofounder of the Mission Cultural Center, read from his new book, Southern Front. In the book, Murgiua describes his experience fighting in the international guerrilla Southern Front of the Sandinista National Liberation Front. Murguia will also read some of his poetry and discuss the legacy of the Sandinista revolution on its 21st anniversary.

7 p.m., free

Modern Times Bookstore

888 Valencia, SF

www.mtbs.com

Mail items for Alerts to the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 437-3658; or e-mail alert@sfbg.com. Please include a contact telephone number. Items must be received at least one week prior to the publication date.

Board votes on Candlestick-Shipyard project EIR appeal today

Mary Magee
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3

All images by Luke Thomas

The Chronicle’s suggestion that the city’s massive Candlestick-shipyard project may be facing smoother sailing seems like wishful thinking to those who attended a July 12 noontime rally that was organized by POWER (People Organized to Win Employment Rights) and featured two Louisiana-based advocates who protested the project’s EIR and shared many of the longstanding concerns about project cleanup, infrastructure and financing.

The Chronicle was of course referring to five amendments to the city’s massive redevelopment proposal that Board President David Chiu introduced during yesterday’s July 12 meeting of the Board’s Land Use committee. The Chron interpreted these amendments as a sign that Chiu plans to approve the project’s environmental impact report, which comes before the Board today, after several groups appealed the final EIR that the Planning Commission approved last month.

But while city officials fear the developer will walk, if the Board does not approve the final EIR, some environmental advocates hope a better plan could be reached.

At POWER’s July 12 rally, nationally acclaimed environmental scientist Wilma Subra called on the District Attorney’s environmental justice department to “step up.” Subra claimed that the project’s final EIR “failed to evaluate and assess the cumulative impacts of exposure to children, adults and the environment as a result of exposure to all of the chemicals at the site.”

Monique Harden, co-director and attorney for Advocates for Environmental Health Rights (AEHR) of New Orleans, Louisiana, pointed to “deep flaws in the environmental regulation system,” as a reason why low-income communities of color should be concerned about the proposed plan.
“Why in the middle of an environmental crisis caused by BP in the Gulf am I coming to San Francisco?” Harden asked. “Because San Francisco is providing unequal environmental protection to its residents. As a resident of New Orleans, I’m concerned that San Francisco is careening towards making a decision that can crush the future of Bayview Hunters Point,”

But as local Bayview resident Jose Luis Pavon began talking about seeing gentrification occur in his lifetime within San Francisco, he and others got shouted down by a group of yellow and green-shirted project supporters, who were led by a guy calling himself Bradley Bradley and Alice Griffith public housing resident Stormy Henry.
“This is the devil’s trick in the last hour,” Henry said of the POWER rally.

Henry shared her heartfelt belief that if the Board approves the project’s final EIR, she and other Alice Griffith residents will get desperately needed new housing units. even if it takes some years to build them. Others in her group were unable to answer media questions: they had difficulty speaking in English, but were clutching neatly written statements in support of the project that they later read aloud at the Board’s Land Use Committee hearing.

As these project supporters prepared to move inside to attend the Land Use Committee meeting and lobby supervisors for their suppor, D. 10 candidate Tony Kelly shared his concerns that the Navy has a demonstrated history of finding nasty things at the shipyard years after they say everything’s clean, and that this pattern could jeopardize the plan.

“This happened at Parcel A,” Kelly said, referring to the first and only parcel of land that the Navy transferred to the city for development in 2004. “Since then, Parcel A has gotten smaller and as they found stuff on sites they then renamed as new parcels, like UC-3, which has radiological contamination in a sewer line that goes into the Bayview. So, that means the contamination is now in the Bayview.”

Kelly is concerned that the city is trying push through EIR certification before the Navy completes an environmental impact statement (EIS) related to shipyard cleanup activities. “The EIS is supposed to go before the EIR, as far as I know,” Kelly said

At the Land Use Committee meeting, Sup. Sophie Maxwell, whose district includes Candlestick and the Shipyard,said, the project was about “revitalization and opportunity.”

She noted that the certification of the project’s final EIR has been appealed to full Board’s July 13 meeting. She further noted that she intends to introduce legislation next week to address concerns that Ohlone groups have expressed.

The next two hours were full of testimony from a bevy of city officials, beginning with Michael Cohen, Mayor Gavin Newsom’s top economic advisor in the Office of Workforce and Economic Development.

“Every single element [of this project] has been discussed and debated at countless meetings,” Cohen claimed, as he sought to quell fears that the community had not been properly consulted with over the plan. “As we get closer to a vote, all of a sudden pieces of paper start circulating, criticizing project and suggesting that community involvement just began,” he continued. ” That’s factually untrue.”

He also sought to reassure the supervisors that the Board will have a say-so as to whether the city accepts early transfer of shipyard parcels from the Navy.
“Neither the city nor the developer have any specific authority over the cleanup,” Cohen said, noting that the cleanup is governed by specific rules set out in CERCLA [Comprehensice Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act, aka Superfund].

“Regardless of what we do, CERCLA will continue to be the regulatory tool,” Cohen said. ” I urge you not to be confused by CEQA and CERCLA.”

So, how can the city implement Prop. P, which voters overwhelmingly supported in 2000, urging the Navy to clean up the shipyard to highest attainable standards.
“Prior to any transfer, US EPA and DTSR have to concur in writing that the shipyard is safe,” Cohen explained, noting that, thanks to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, the Navy has already spent over $700 million on shipyard cleanup efforts.

“We have 250 artists at the shipyard….but not a shred of scientific evidence to say that the shipyard is not safe,” Cohen claimed. “It’s safe to develop the shipyard in precisely the manner we are proposing.”

When Sup. Eric Mar raised the question of radiological contamination on Parcel UC-3, Cohen downplayed Mar’s concerns.
“The exposure levels are lower than watching TV,” Cohen claimed. “The primary source is very low level radiation from glow-in-the-dark dials.”
Indicating a map that showed a network of old sewers (in blue) and old fuel lines (in red) under the entire development area, Cohen said, “The radiological contamination that has and will be addressed at the shipyard is quite low level. You have radiation, you get nervous. We asked EPA to come out and do a scan to deal with the issue.”

IBI Group’s David Thom, the lead architect and planner for the project said the plan is designed “to connect new development back into the Bayview.”
“And this plan connects the Bayview through to the water.”

Tiffany Bohee, Cohen’s deputy in the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, insisted that project’s proposed bridge is better than Arc Ecology’s proposed alternative route, which would not involve constructing a bridge over an environmentally sensitive slough.
“The non-bridge route increases the number of intersections,” Bohee said, seeking to turn an environmental question (the impact of bridge on wildlife and nature experience) into a public safety issue.”
She claimed the BRT route over bridge was 5-10 minutes faster than Arc’s proposed alternative, “because there are fewer turns, it can go at higher speeds.” But Arc’s studies suggest the BRT route over the bridge is only a minute faster, and would cost over $100 million.

Bohee noted that $50 million from the sale of 23 acres of parkland for condos at the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area (CPSRA) will be “set aside for the state, and won’t be able to be raided by the city,” with $40 million going to improvements, and $10 million to ongoing operation and maintenance costs.

She also cited additional benefits that the project would bring to the community, including thousands of construction job opportunities.

“We are working with City Build to make sure they are for local residents,” Bohee said.“And there is absolutely no displacement for the rebuild,” Bohee continued referring to proposal to place current Alice Griffith public housing iresidents n new units, on a 1-1 basis

Eric Mar said he was impressed by many elements of the plan, but continued to express reservations.
“I’m still concerned that is seems to serve newcomers as proposed to existing residents,” he said. “And I’m still not convinced that the bridge is the best for existing residents.”

Rhonda Simmons, who works in Cohen’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development,  tried to flesh out details of the project’s job creation promises.
“The most immediate workforce is related to the construction site, and as you know, this project goes over a 15-20 year span,” Simmons said, pointing to green tech and retail as job opportunities that will exist once the project is built.

Mar expressed concern that the jobs may not be at the level of D.10 residents
“How is this gonna bring their skill level up?” he asked.
“The idea is that training gives first level entry at a variety of building trades,” Simmons said, pointing to the project’s large solar component.

“What about women?” Sup. Maxwell asked
Simmons pointed to retail opportunities,
“The idea of the training is to give folks job readiness skills, like getting there and showing up on time,” she said

Mar wanted to know who would have oversight of monitoring and compliance.
“In the city we have a tapestry of folks who do contract compliance,” she said. “The oversight will come from a variety of places.”

After Kurt Fuchs of the Controller’s Office listed the estimated economic benefits of the project, Board President David Chiu observed that the city is “at a crossroads.”

“I do not plan to prejudge,” Chiu continued, as he introduced his five amendments to regulate the Parcel E-2 cleanup, the size of a proposed bridge over the Yosemite Slough, expand healthcare access in the Bayview, create a workforce development fund and lay the groundwork for bringing public power to the project.

During public comment, Bayview resident Fred Naranjo pleaded for project support.  

“Please don’t let the train leave the station,” Naranjo said. “If Lennar leaves, the Bayview will never be developed.”

And Tim Paulson, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council expressed hope that an agreement was getting closer.
“There really is a path to getting this done,” Paulson said. “This really is a model project in many ways for the rest of the United States.”
But D. 10 resident Linda Shaffer with the Yerba Buena chapter of the California Native Plant society indicated the huge pressure exerted on folks to support the project
“I do not want to be classified as an opponent, but we have concerns,” Shaffer said, noting that her group has filed an appeal of the project’s final EIR.

And while the Sierra Club’s Arthur Feinstein thanked Chiu for proposing to reduce the size of the bridge, he pointed out that Chiu’s amendment wasn’t really a compromise.
“That’s because it’s still a bridge,” Feinstein said, as he explained how noisy the area surrounding the slough will become as traffic whizzes by.

Connie Ford of the Labor Council accused some project critics of being “disrespectful.”
Ford took particular issue with claims that the project will gentrify the area
“The neighborhood is changing,” she said. “Since 1990, African American families have been leaving the Bayview in huge numbers. I encourage you to see this project as a good plan.”

Gabe Metcalfe of SPUR expressed his unconditional support for the plan,
“This plan is being asked to fix a huge number of problems,” he said.
Noting that the bridge continues to be a sticking point, Metcalfe said he sees opposition to every transportation project these days.
“We seem to be in a moment when you can’t build anything without it being opposed.”

But other speakers from the Sierra Club reiterated their stance that there are better and viable options to the bridge, noting that it is too costly, and that the surrounding community and wildlife would be better off without it.”

All these competing viewpoints suggest that whatever decision the Board makes today, it will take some time and create plenty of uproar. So, here’s hoping the Board votes in a way that will truly benefit the D. 10 community, not career politicians, city officials and out-of-state developers. It’s about time.

Oakland considers limiting and licensing marijuana growers

Sasha Cuttler
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Oakland considers limiting and licensing marijuana growers

Updated info below

The medical marijuana community – everyone from small growers to Harborside Health Center, the biggest dispensary in Oakland – are reacting strongly against an ordinance proposed by Oakland City Council members Rebecca Kaplan and Larry Reid to limit and license marijuana cultivation, a proposal that will be heard tonight (7/13) at 6 p.m. by the council’s Public Safety Committee.

They say the measure is an affront to medical marijuana patients and the small growing operations that have been at the forefront of the long struggle to legalize pot for medical uses. While the measure stems from concern about growing weed in residential areas – it would allow only a few large growing operations exclusively in industrial areas – critics characterize it as an attack on patients that violates Prop. 215, the 1996 measure that legalized medical marijuana and explicitly allows patients to grow their own medicine.

“It’s a disturbing turn of events for the usually forward thinking Oakland City Council,” medical marijuana consultant Gaynell Rogers, who works with Harborside, the city’s premier dispensary, wrote in a press release. It went on to quote Harborisde executive director Steve DeAngelo as saying, “This ordinance would deprive hundreds of patient-farmers of their livelihood. It seems a very unfair way to repay them for the years during which they courageously stood up to the federal government, and faithfully supplied patients with the medicine they could not get anywhere else…I’d rather see Harborside’s own opportunity to produce on a centralized efficient-scale basis reduced, than to see the small patient-farmers who are the backbone of this movement driven to extinction.”

Kaplan did not immediately return a Guardian call seeking comment, and neither did Oakland City Attorney John Russo, who is one of the few active law enforcement officers and elected officials to come out in support of Prop. 19, the fall ballot measure that would legalize marijuana for even recreational use by adults.

In addition to regulating growers for the first time, the proposed legislation would also increase the number of licensed dispensaries from four to six. San Francisco, a trailblazer in regulating medical marijuana, currently has more than 22 licensed dispensaries and no licensing program for growers, although Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has said there is a need to better protect growers from prosecution and even to explore having the city grow medical marijuana.

While medical marijuana advocates welcome regulations as a necessary step toward legitimizing the industry, they generally oppose anything limits a patient’s rights to grow their own weed. “We support local regulation but not when it’s at the expense of patients,” Mike Meno, a spokesperson for the DC-based Marijuana Policy Project, told the Guardian.

The hearing will be held in council chambers, with this item last on the agenda for a meeting that begins at 6 p.m.

Update: Kaplan has been in a closed session on Oakland Police Department issues all day, but her staffers just got back to me and clarified that the measure allows small grows of up to 96 square feet or 72 plants (Oakland’s standard for the needs of three patients) to continue unlicensed, although they say the intention is to eventually set standards and a legal framework for all medical marijuana growers.

Policy analyst Ada Chan said Kaplan is concerned about commercial grows in residential areas and its related crime and fire risks and “she feels we need to move it out of residential areas.” She said Harborside and other medical marijuana players were consulted in drafting the legislation, which she said would likely be subject to more staff work before being approved: “This is just the first step.”

But Harborside attorney James Anthony told us that he had not seen language or specifics on the legislation until it was publicly released last week, he’s still concerned that small growing operations will be hurt by the measure because of ambiguity in the legislation, and he fears the council intends to move quickly on an unworkable policy: “This thing is on track to go to the full City Council next week and pass.”

Buyer beware of Candlestick-Shipyard project

Mary Magee
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0

Board President David Chiu has introduced five amendments to the city’s Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard redevelopment proposal. All five are a good start, but longtime observers question if they are too little, too late, in the face of intense lobbying by a city and a developer intent on getting project approvals before a new Board and possibly a new mayor occupy City Hall in January 2011.

Chiu’s amendments address key concerns with the city’s proposed redevelopment plan, and they come as the Board prepares for its July 13 hearing into three separate appeals of the project’s final EIR certification, as well as amendments to the Bayview Hunters Point and Shipyard redevelopment plans.

Two of Chiu’s amendments seek to address concerns about the clean-up of radiologically impacted waste at Parcel E-2 on the shipyard, and environmental impacts of a proposed bridge over Yosemite Slough.

Chiu’s other three amendments seek to finance the expansion of the Southeast Health Center, create a workforce development fund and analyze the feasibility of providing public power, including natural gas at the site.

But while all five amendments are welcome, some observers worry they do not fully address concerns about the project’s sustainability, financing and infrastructure.  But before we get to those concerns, let’s review Chiu’s five amendments in greater detail:

1. The Parcel E-2 amendment.
This amendment declares that the Board’s adoption of CEQA findings for the project “shall not in any way imply support of a cap for Parcel E-2.” 

As such, this amendment is a critical step towards insisting that the parcel get completely cleaned up, not just capped, as the Navy is currently proposing. On the other hand, it’s not a watertight demand to excavate and haul away all contamination from this parcel, which is the cleanup alternative that many in the community would prefer..

Instead, Chiu’s Parcel E-2 amendment declares that the U.S. EPA, California EPA and the Navy, “should pursue the highest practicable level of cleanup for Parcel E-2.”
And that the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency “should not accept the property unless and until that cleanup is satisfied.”

It also establishes that the Board shall conduct a hearing regarding final cleanup strategies for Parcel E-2 before a final remedy is selected, urges the U.S. EPA, California EPA and the Navy to participate in such a hearing, and further establishes that the Board shall conduct a separate hearing prior to any transfer of Parcel E-2 to Redevelopment.”

(There was some question as to why the Board was saying “should” in some parts of this amendment, and “shall” in others. The reason I heard was, you can’t force the Navy to do anything, but you can urge them, and you certainly can refuse to accept the property, if it is not cleaned up a city’s requirements.But this needs to be clarified.)

2. The Yosemite Slough Bridge amendment
Chiu notes that the city’s EIR for the project analyzed a non-49ers-stadium alternative that “includes an approximately 41 ft. wide bridge spanning the Yosemite Slough which is limited to bike, pedestrian and transit use.”
“However, in the event the San Francisco 49ers elect to build a new stadium on the shipyard site, the project will include a bridge spanning Yosemite Slough that is wider than 41 ft. across to accommodate game-day traffic,” Chiu’s amendment states.
(So, Chiu’s amendment doesn’t throw the bridge entirely out with the 49ers’ stadium, and that leaves environmental groups uneasy, afraid that the anticipated 25,000 new residents in the proposed development will subsequently push for legislation to allow for a wider, car-accessible bridge.)

3. The Southeast Health Center amendment
Chiu’s Southeast Health Center amendment demands that the developer contribute $250,000 to the Redevelopment Agency for a needs assessment study regarding the need to expand the center and the ongoing health needs of local residents, and, to the extent such expansion is needed, to help pay for predevelopment expenses associated with this expansion.
The capital costs for expanding the center would be funded through a combination of  tax increment dollars, a $2 million Wellness Contribution paid by the developer, and the City’s ability to finance savings that would accrue to the Department of Public Health by moving from leased space into owned space at the expanded center.

4. The Workforce Development Fund amendment
Chiu’s amendment would modify language in the current community benefits agreement to require the developer to contribute $8,925,000 to a workforce development fund to be used for programs “designed to create a gateway to career development, fiirst for residents of District 10 and secondly for “at-risk job applicants.”
(A member of the public suggested that veterans be specified as “at-risk job applicants,” an idea D. 10 Sup. Sophie Maxwell seemed to support during yesterday’s July 12 Land Use Committee hearing, which was where Chiu introduced his five proposed amendments.)

 5. The Public Power amendment 
Chiu’s public power amendment notes that the SFPUC confirmed the feasibility of providing electric service to the shipyard sire, but requires the agency to update this study and include the Candlestick site and include “an analysis of the feasibility of providing natural gas to the project site.”

But will these steps be enough to ensure that the development actually delivers on its promises of thousands of jobs, and hundreds of affordable housing units,? And is a bridge really necessary across Yosemite Slough, if the 49ers go to Santa Clara as planned?

Long-term observers of the project point to the first phase of the project, which began on the shipyard’s Parcel A, as a warning of where things might end up.

“We approved the fast-tracking of Parcel A based on a bevy of assurances and enthusiastic endorsements from the best and brightest this administration has to offer,” said a source who wishes to remain anonymous. “But what has happened since then, and what are we to learn from this experimental test case?”

This source noted that recent maps of the shipyard show that Parcel A, which the Navy conveyed to the city in 2004, has since been carved up into several new pieces.

“How did Parcel A get divided into two areas that don’t even border one another?” my source asked.

The answer appears to be that sections of the shipyard, including Parcel A,  have since been renamed as new and separate parcels, after it was discovered that shipyard sewers on those parcels contained radiologically contaminated material.

One of these sewer lines, as indicated on recent project maps, leads from a site now known as Parcel UC-3, into the Bayview. In other words, it appears to lead off the shipyard site and into the surrounding community. If so, this raises concerns that shipyard contamination is no longer limited to the shipyard in the Bayview, and could be impacting residents and businesses that are not covered by the Navy’s clean-up commitments.

Either way, it seems that the Board could use an update on what happened on Parcel A, since it was conveyed, what’s the deal with UC-3, and other recently renamed parcels, before they consider an early transfer of the rest of the shipyard.

“How can we start Phase 2 of the project, when we haven’t completed Phase 1?” my source asked.

And since the Navy is still tasked with cleaning up the rest of the shipyard parcels, it would be helpful if the Navy updated the Board on what the Navy is proposing in its Records of Decisions for each of these parcels, including UC-3, before the Board votes on Phase 2 of the project.

My source also noted that since the project plans to use 100 percent recycled water at the site, it would be helpful to have an update as to how issues with sewer contamination and groundwater concerns might impact the project’s sustainability plans.

“These issues touch on half of the documents that make up the EIR, but are now obsolete, because of the issue of radioactive contamination on UC-3,” my source claimed.

And then there’s the question of fproject financing and who the developer for the project actually is, these days.

“The city’s exclusive negotiating agreement (ENA) was with Lennar, so who is CP Development and why do we have an ENA with them?” my source asked.”What happened to Lennar? And why would we be obligated to negotiate solely with this CP Development group?”

Now, hopefully the Board has greatly reassuring answers to all these questions, so that the community can rest assured that the supervisors really do understand the ramifications of a project that they are being asked to approve in what appears to be an awful hurry.

Yes, there are plenty of project supporters who keep on urging “no delays.” I understand their concerns. They want jobs, housing, parks and other promised community benefits. And I don’t blame them.

But it’s up to the Board to ensure that it doesn’t get rushed into approving a project that perhaps doesn’t guarantee any or all of these things. So, let’s keep asking questions so the Board of Supervisors doesn’t end up with buyer’s remorse, but instead can truly claim to having secured a deal that really helps all the folks who currently live and work in the city’s southeast sector. Stay tuned.

 

 

T

 

 

Sunday Streets creates public benefits from private labors

Sasha Cuttler
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2

By Kristen Peters

San Francisco locals will take to the streets this weekend as main roads in the Mission neighborhood are closed to automobiles for the sixth installment of Sunday Streets. On July 11, a three-mile route from 17th and Valencia to Dolores Park to Potrero Avenue will be car-free from 10 am until 3pm.

Taken from Bogota’s weekly ciclovía, in which nearly 100 miles of city streets are reserved for pedestrians and other recreationalists, Sunday Streets began in San Francisco almost two years ago. Since then, the tradition has made its way to other California cities including Los Angeles and Oakland.

“In San Francisco we have our own unique style,” event coordinator Susan King, who works for the nonprofit group Livable City, said. “We have different routes and we hit different neighborhoods year after year. In each neighborhood, the featured events have their own flair.”

This Sunday, revelers can look forward to performances by Grupo Azteca as well as capoeira and salsa dancing lessons, not to mention the countless restaurants in the area opening their doors early to the public. While the event has some support from the city and its San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, mostly in the form of permit fee waivers, it is run by Livable City and funded from corporate donations.

“Our corporate sponsors provide everything from durable goods, in-kind donations and cold, hard cash,” King said.

City officials have even curtailed helping with hanging “no parking” signs, leaving that task to volunteers from the SF Bicycle Coalition. That job was usually designated to the San Francisco Department of Parking and Traffic, but they have now stopped providing that service to an event that Mayor Gavin Newsom trumpets as something he’s bringing to the people. But King still calls Sunday Streets a good example of a public-private partnership.

“Everybody brings something to the table,” King said. “It’s a real cooperative entity with everyone pulling together to produce something really special.”

According to King, the benefits are widespread. Not only is it refreshing for the public to ditch their cars for a few hours, but it also reinvigorates the local economy. “It’s a real boom for the city,” King said. “Lots of people on the street means lots of eating. It’s good for business and good for the community.”

Acting executive director for the SF Bicycle Coalition Renee Rivera said that the Mission in particular has benefited from the crowds at Sunday Streets. “Everyone is enjoying the outdoor activities the event has to offer but, at the same time, are going to get ice cream, stopping for tacos or getting to enjoy all the merchants on 24th and Valencia,” Rivera said.

There are three more Sunday Street events following the Mission neighborhood closure. The Great Highway and areas of Golden Gate Park will be closed on August 22 followed by the Western Addition on September 19. The series will conclude on October 24 with the closure of the Civic Center and Tenderloin areas.

Newsom’s ambitions trump local needs

Zelda Bronstein
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Newsom’s ambitions trump local needs

I guess that’s nothing new, and I could have written the same headline dozens of times over the past couple of years. But in this case, the Bay Citizen has a nice scoop — Newsom personally scuttled a deal that would have created a $50 million annual stream of affordable housing money because he didn’t want to be on record supporting any new taxes.


The Bay Citizen story, which also ran in the New YorkTimes, doesn’t go quite as far as to say that the tax issue scuttle the whole thing, but I think it’s pretty clear that’s what happened. The deal — a highly unusual agreement between warring parties — involved an increase in the real-estate transfer tax on high-end buildings. The private developers agreed to support it — if the housing advocates would allow some of the money to be used to subsidize the requirement that developers build affordable housing along with market-rate units.


I’m no so into subsidizing private housing developers, but the money would be coming from people who sell high-end properties. At any rate, whether it was a good deal in the end or not, Newsom’s own staff was involved in making it happen — and the mayor only killed it for one reason.


He doesn’t want his Republican opponent this fall to accuse him of raising taxes.


That’s a hell of a way to run a city. 

SF business community just opposes government

Sasha Cuttler
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21

Mayor Gavin Newsom and his business community allies often accuse progressive members of the Board of Supervisors of being too “ideological” in their proposals, particularly when they involve revenue or regulations. But a looming battle over reforming the city’s business tax – one of three new revenues set for a special Budget & Finance Committee meeting tomorrow (7/9) at 11:30 am – shows that an ideological aversion to taxes of any kind drive Newsom and the business community more than their stated concern for “jobs” and the “economy.”

Board of Supervisors President David Chiu crafted his measure – which creates a progressive structure for the currently flat payroll taxes and uses small commercial rent tax to spread the tax burden among more businesses (only 10 percent of which now pay the payroll tax) — specifically to decrease the business tax burden on small businesses and protect private sector jobs while also bringing in about $35 million more into the city, which will save some city jobs and thus help the local economy.

City Economist Ted Egan and the Office of Economic Analysis confirmed that Chiu’s carefully crafted measure does just that, noting that it was based on recommendations made last month in a report by his office and two private accounting firms that was jointly commissioned by both Chiu and Newsom.

“The proposed legislation modifies the Progressive Payroll option in the Controller’s report, to achieve greater revenue growth while minimizing private sector job growth,” concludes Egan’s analysis. And that’s the idea of this legislation, to save some city jobs and services without hurting the private sector. Egan found this tax reform would on balance have no impact on private sector jobs.

But the Small Business Commission, driven by anti-government zealots in their community, wants even greater concessions and to minimize government revenues, demands that Chiu is now considering giving in to, with sources close to the negotiations saying they will amend the plan to exempt more small businesses and lower the revenue projection to more like $28 million.

“There are members of the small business community that are averse to any taxes,” Regina Dick-Endrizzi, director of the city’s Office of Small Business (which staffs the commission), told us.

She said the commission isn’t opposing or supporting the measure, and while she said the business community isn’t ideologically opposed to government, she did admit that “they are just not sensitive to keeping city workers employed.”

And that’s a terribly selfish and self-defeating attitude that hurts the local economy and the services we all depend on. The problem is the small business community — which is supported by the Bay Guardian and beloved by all as a key job creator — is being used by conservative ideologues and large corporations and lured into joining their anti-government crusade. This has to change, and this legislation is a good opportunity to talk about the real ideological barriers that are hindering common sense solutions to this city’s problems.

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