Local

Late local rocker Evan Farrell rhapsodized by Japonize Elephants in Bloomington, Ind.

-
0

japonize ele 1 P1010011 sml.bmp

Postcard from Bloomington: Japonize Elephants perform at a tribute to Evan Farrell at Bluebird Nightclub on Jan. 20.

By Dina Maccabee

A lot of emotions have been pouring out during the last month over the loss of once-Oakland-based musician Evan Farrell. I’m not even sure if the details that have been circulating on the Internet about what happened on Dec. 21 – when the Oakland house where Farrell was staying caught fire – are correct. For me, and I think for everyone, there are bigger questions than how the blaze started – like what is death, anyway? And how do I sort out my empathy for Farrell and his family from my own selfish fears and anxieties about living a worthwhile life and, ultimately, ceasing to exist?

evan2 sml.bmp
Evan Farrell. Photo by Jeremy Baron.

I played with Farrell in the Japonize Elephants, which why I made the trip to Bloomington, Ind., a week or so ago to participate in the Jan. 20 memorial for him. The Elephants started out in Bloomington – and Farrell had moved back a few years ago after playing with Rogue Wave, among others – so for most of the band, the trip represented an almost overwhelming mixture of grief and nostalgia, a chance to reconnect with old friends and places under heartbreaking circumstances. I had a different perspective as a newcomer eager to discover the birthplace of this fearlessly bizarre, creative, close-knit group, whom I started playing with about three years ago in the Bay Area, hoping to offer some support and comfort to Farrell’s closest friends.

evan 1 sml.bmp
Evan Farrell. Photo by Jeremy Baron.

While no one knew quite what to do in the aftermath of Farrell’s death, one thing that seemed obvious was to get together and play music. It felt a little wrong to be excited about playing an Elephants reunion show back in Bloomington, with band members arriving from California, Colorado, and New York – but without Farrell. You could say we were getting back together because he would have wanted us to. But, of course, really, we wanted to. How else to recapture some of the absurdity, spontaneity, mirth, and adrenaline that were Farrell’s trademarks, on and off stage?

evan3 sml.bmp
Evan Farrell in pink with Japonize Elephants.

Venus

-
0

BREAKFAST OF BLANDNESS Brunch is a vulnerable meal: you’ve probably just woken up, and you might be unshowered or hungover. Regardless of your daring at dinner, brunch requires only consistency.

My friend gets that from Venus in Berkeley. I can see why: the coziness of the brick walls, lined with local artists’ work; the long wait and bustling interior that allude to the establishment’s popularity. She swears by the chicken sausage scramble with the morning glory muffin. The scramble is decent, a good balance of sweet and salty, while the morning glory is an ostentatiously named bran muffin that, while moist, lacks, well, flavor.

Which is fairly representative of the problem with Venus. I really want to like it, but I always leave vaguely dissatisfied — full, but not satiated. The Harajuku scramble, with tofu, shiitake mushrooms, and other veggies, is as uninspired in execution as it is imaginative in concept (Gwen Stefani would not hollaback). The Indian brunch — curried carrot-zucchini-parsnip pancakes with akoori scrambled eggs — is lackluster. How, I ask, can curry be bland?

The cocktails are overpriced. The coffee is good — smoky and rich — but refills are few and far between. And then there was the Sunday I went. I ordered a Diet Coke; the server brought me organic diet cane cola. Now, I understand her forgetting to ask "Is Pepsi OK?" — but to bring me that flat, syrupy concoction (with a faint tinge of rum) was the last in a series of letdowns.

A weekend morning demands a dependably satisfying meal; Venus is reliable only in that it will disappoint me. (Ailene Sankur)

VENUS Mon.–Fri., 8 a.m.–2:30 p.m. (also Tues.–Fri., 5–9:30 p.m.); Sat.–Sun., 8 a.m.–2:15 p.m. (also Sat., 5–9:30 p.m.; Sun., 5–9 p.m.). 2327 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 540-5950, www.venusrestaurant.net

Serpentine

-
0

› paulr@sfbg.com

If you didn’t know that Dogpatch’s newest glam restaurant, Serpentine, is the younger sibling of the Slow Club, would you guess? Signals are mixed, and your answer might depend on whether you concentrated your attention on the menus or the physical particulars of the related pair. On the latter point, we have a sort of local restaurant version of Wills and Harry, the British princelings beloved of paparazzi: a confounding blend of similarities and dissimilarities, evidence that could go either way. If you squint, you suspect a family likeness, but you know you’re not looking at twins.

The Slow Club has always struck me as a descendant — a noisy one — of speakeasies. (Is there such a thing as a speakloudly?) The look is low, velvety, and slightly secretive; there are few windows, and the spot lighting is spare. Serpentine, by contrast, soars like a cathedral in its old industrial site. Brick walls? Yes, it has them, punctuated with vast factory windows that face the west and the afternoon sun, but there is also an exposed ceiling of poured concrete laced with electrical conduits. This vault of open space, rising a full two stories above the dining-room floor, might be a considerable factor in swallowing up noise; Serpentine looks like it should be deafening, but it isn’t, even when full. It helps, in this respect, that the floors aren’t reflections of the ceiling but are of burnished wood, warming and elegant and not quite as cacophony producing as poured concrete. Also warming: the wealth of votive candles, several to a table, that lend the restaurant a sense of rustic intimacy. It’s as if a country inn had decided to squat in one of Charles Dickens’s abandoned blacking factories.

Not many country inns, on the other hand, whether in Dickens’s time or our own, have served food quite as good as Serpentine’s. California cuisine has gone from novelty to cliché to beyond cliché and back again, but at Serpentine it does what all good cooking should do: cause you to pause, to notice, to inquire. What is that, and how did they do that?

"Is this tomato soup?" my companion asked, jabbing a spoon into the creamy puree that had been set before me. And the correct answer was: no, not tomato but carrot ($7.50), and not even carrot with ginger or curry but just plain carrot, adorned only with a few fried sage leaves. The soup’s color was difficult to make out in the dim light, so on that basis alone I granted a pardon on the tomato-or-carrot question, but there was also an aromatic fruitiness I would never have associated with plain carrot soup.

Interesting and unexpected ingredients enhance the restaurant’s spell. I’d never heard of spigariello; I would have guessed it was some obscure pasta shape, but in fact (according to the well-schooled server) it’s a toothy green from the broccoli family, composed by chef Chris Kronner’s kitchen into a handsome salad — with crumblings of blue cheese, bread crumbs, and a pepper vinaigrette — that resembled a small holiday wreath.

The menu doesn’t force you toward big plates, and many of the smaller plates are sizable and rich enough to satisfy. A plate of lamb riblets ($11.50), for instance, featured about a half-dozen pieces of achingly tender meat still on the bone, and that was plenty, even allowing for some shameless raiding from across the table. The raider and I did agree that the seasoning palette — of pickled shallots, feta cheese, and mint salsa verde — was missing something. A hint of sweetness was needed, a splash of balsamic vinegar, maybe, or some interesting honey.

Meanwhile, we shared the savory bread pudding ($11.50 with an add-on heap of mesclun), a baked, caramelized delight of some scale that glowed gold in the candlelight and spoke of sustenance on a wintry night. The pudding was fortified with roasted butternut squash, buttermilk, and blue cheese — a sturdy and honest combination. And, for a bit of spice, peeled prawns on a bed of white grits ($10.50) were dressed with poblano pepper sauce, a demure-looking, muddy green puddle that really lit up the room on making contact with a human tongue. At least that was this human’s experience.

For those of us who use a caloric equivalent of zero-sum budgeting — i.e., each indulgence must be offset by a savings — Serpentine is a forgiving place to eat. On the one hand, there are subtle lightenings to be found in un-looked-for places; a nice example of this was a sandwich of roast turkey slices and sauerkraut on rye bread ($9.50) that amounted to a reduced-calorie Reuben and reminded us, yet again, of turkey’s many uses.

And, on the other, there are the desserts, which, like good poems, depend on concentrated effects rather than volume to establish their place in memory. A particularly noteworthy example might be the chocolate-hazelnut tart ($7.50), an almost fudgelike (and not too huge; about the circumference of a baseball) disk trimmed by a fluted pastry crust and dotted with hazelnuts. The tart (served with a scoop of chocolate ice cream from Bi-Rite Creamery) was like an upper-crust relative of a dark chocolate–with–nuts candy bar: a Snickers wrapped in buttery pastry.

The crowd is eclectic. We noticed plenty of young people, but more than a few older folks too, parenty types in the company of adult children. As an adult who once took his parents to the Slow Club only to watch them struggle with the noise, I looked on these entourages with an odd mix of remorse and approval, though more of the latter than the former. Serpentine: same great taste, less deafening.

SERPENTINE

Lunch: Mon.–Fri., 11:30 a.m.–2:30 p.m.

Dinner: Tues.–Sat., 6–10 p.m.

2495 Third St., SF

(415) 252-2000

www.serpentinesf.com

Full bar

AE/MC/V

Well-managed noise

Wheelchair accessible

Note: Serpentine observes a no-reservations policy

Kuchar coup

-
0

› johnny@sfbg.com

The drawings and paintings of George and Mike Kuchar are brightly colored, bosomy, and bulbous bouquets of bodacious flesh. Those bountiful breasts belong to women in George’s 1962 painting Voodoo Ceremony and in his 1977 Missionary Attack, in which a topless lady sporting an octopus skirt threatens to spear another wearing tiger skin pants and leather boots. But in Mike’s art the big bazookas belong to men. Margaret Tedesco, whose [2nd floor projects] space is presenting work by the Kuchar brothers, says one local filmmaker who recently visited her gallery compared the nipples of the men in Mike’s drawings to pacifiers.

The counterlogic of that observation is perfect, even if the nipples of a man in Mike’s Gay Heart Throbs, No. 3 also look like flying saucers. In that acrylic painting a guy in black leather holds a gift of flowers behind his perky buttocks as he talks to a young blond buck busting out of his tied-up shirt and cutoff shorts like a male Dolly Parton — or like a country version of George and Mike’s fellow underground filmmaker Peter Berlin.

Early on in the poignant and pungent memoir Reflections from a Cinematic Cesspool (Zanja Press, 1997), George writes that his and Mike’s interest in art began when their mother gave them paper and pencils and told them to have fun. Though their materials have since switched to film, video, watercolor, marker, and acrylic, the fun remains: without even trying, Tedesco’s show is a rebuff to the unfortunate abundance of contemporary art spaces, big and small, that have lost a sense of pleasure. Both George’s commercial art schooling — which included a spell spent drawing the weather on television, detailed wonderfully in Reflections — and Mike’s commissioned work for gay publications like Manscape and First Hand possess great humor, as well as perspectives so distinct that they might reach out and playfully nipple-tweak one’s assumptions about female and male beauty.

"I don’t care too much for macho," Mike tells the poet and novelist Eileen Myles in a short essay Myles wrote for the [2nd floor projects] show. "I like cuddly; sweetness." That warmth radiates from pen-and-ink pieces such as the idyllic Beefcake BC, in which, as Myles notes, a man rides a brontosaurus as if it were a surfboard. In the G-rated Triassic Terror a tyrannosaur and a pterodactyl wreak havoc, but there are emotional undercurrents in Jungle Jeopardy, in which one Tarzan rescues another who is Christlike in his pain.

Taking a different comic book tack, George renders mythic creatures such as Bigfoot (who has pendulous pecs, of course) and the Jersey Devil. Like his twin brother, though, he’s not afraid to try a little tenderness. From 1976, Jon is subtly in thrall to the hills and valleys of its subject’s nude backside. The acrylic-on-canvas Bocko (1970) complements and perhaps predates Joe Brainard’s wonderful oil portraits of his boyfriend Kenward Elmslie’s whippet Whippoorwill — even if George’s beloved Bocko weren’t an Alsatian, he would still make an ideal cover star for J.R. Ackerley’s classic 1956 book My Dog Tulip (Random House). Add these once-hidden treasures to Bruce Conner’s assemblages and ink works and to the lively circles of Manny Farber’s paintings, and you have the seeds for a lively survey dedicated to art by Bay Area filmmakers and critics.

GEORGE AND MIKE KUCHAR: PAINTINGSDRAWINGSPAINTINGS DRAWINGSPAINTINGS

Through Feb. 24

For details go to projects2ndfloor.blogspot.com

Polite message from the surveillance state

-
0

› annalee@techsploitation.com

TECHSPLOITATION Say what you want about Google being an evil corporate overlord that steals all of your private data, turns it into info-mulch, and then injects it into the technoslaves to keep them drugged and helpless. There are still some good things about the company. For example, Google’s IM program, Google Talk, sends you a warning message alerting you when the person on the other end of your chat is recording your chat session.

Just the other day I was chatting with somebody about something slightly personal and noticed that she’d suddenly turned on Record for our chat. I knew everything I was saying was being logged and filed in her Gmail. In this case I wasn’t too concerned. For one thing, I wasn’t saying anything I’d regret seeing in print. I’m used to the idea that anything I say on chat might be recorded and logged.

What was different about this experience was that Google warned me first — told me point-blank that I was basically under surveillance from the Google server, which would automatically log and save that conversation. I appreciated that. It meant I could opt out of the conversation and preserve my privacy. It also meant that other people using Gtalk, who might not have had the expectation that all of their chat sessions might be recorded, would be enlightened.

It also reminded me forcefully that Google is a far more polite and privacy-concerned evil overlord than the United States government.

Right now members of Congress are trying to pass a law that would grant immunity to large telcos like AT&T that have been spying on their customers’ private phone conversations and passing along what they’ve learned to the National Security Agency. The law, called the Protect America Act, would allow telephone and Internet providers to hand over all private data on their networks to the government — without notifying their customers and without any court supervision of what amounts to mass wiretapping.

Last year the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued AT&T for vioutf8g the Fourth Amendment when a whistle-blower at AT&T revealed that the company was handing over private information to the NSA without warrants. That case has been working its way through the courts, and making some headway; in fact, it was starting to look like AT&T would be forced to pay damages to its customers for vioutf8g their rights. But the Protect America Act would stop this court case in its tracks by granting retroactive immunity to AT&T and any other company that spied on people for the NSA without warrants.

The whole situation is insane. First, it’s outrageous that telcos would illegally hand over their private customer data to the government. And second, it’s even more outrageous that when its scheme was discovered, the government tried to pass a law making it retroactively legal for AT&T to have broken one of the most fundamental of our civil rights: protection of our private data from the government.

Imagine what would happen if the phone and Internet systems in our country had the same warnings on them that Gtalk has. Every time you picked up the phone to make a call or logged on to the Internet, you’d get a helpful little message: "Warning: the government is recording everything that you are saying and doing right now." Holy crap.

The good news is that it’s not too late. The Protect America Act must pass both houses of Congress to become law, so you can still alert your local congress critters in the House that you don’t want retroactive immunity for telcos that are logging your private conversations for the NSA. Find out more at stopthespying.org.

And remember, everything you say and do is being logged. This polite message has been brought to you by the surveillance state.

Annalee Newitz is a surly media nerd who yells "Fuck you!" into her phone as often as she can — you know, just to let the NSA know how she really feels.<

Who wants change?

-
0

› steve@sfbg.com

On the rainy afternoon of Jan. 8, Mayor Gavin Newsom strode through the familiar Delancey Street Foundation complex’s main courtyard — a bodyguard holding his umbrella over him — and entered a conference room filled with local political luminaries just as the taiko drummers finished their performance.

A few hours earlier Newsom had taken the oath of office and given his second-term inaugural address during a lavish ceremony at City Hall, where he told the crowd, "Here in San Francisco our point of reference is often our minor political disagreements." But now he joined his fiancée, Jennifer Siebel, in the front row of a relatively spare ceremony to watch District Attorney Kamala Harris take her oath of office.

Although Newsom and Harris are more like political rivals than allies, their speeches sounded similar themes — accountability, unity, addressing systemic problems with common sense governance — and were liberal by national standards but safely centrist by San Francisco’s metric.

Yet these two top politicians, like many others in the Bay Area, have cast their lots with two very different national political movements, as the well-connected crowd was subtly reminded when Sen. Dianne Feinstein prepared to administer Harris’s oath of office.

The choice of Feinstein already seemed notable to those who remembered when she publicly chastised Harris for refusing to seek the death penalty for a cop killer in 2004. It was the old, white, establishment stalwart hectoring a rising black star from a new generation for a gutsy decision to stick with her professed progressive values.

But Feinstein now spoke admiringly of how women run the District Attorney’s Office and Police, Fire, and other departments. "San Francisco today is in the hands of women. Who would have thought?" the former mayor said, extending her hopeful assessment to mention that "a woman is likely to be our nominee for president of the United States."

There were murmurs from Harris’s corner and an awkwardness that hung thick in the air. This was because unlike Feinstein, Newsom, and most of the powerful establishment Democrats in San Francisco, who have endorsed Hillary Clinton for president, Harris was an early and high-profile supporter of Barack Obama.

That difference seems especially significant to San Francisco progressives and others who are wary of another Clinton returning to the White House and excited about the upstart candidacy of a younger black man who got into politics pounding the streets of Chicago as a community organizer.

Political endorsements are often like ideological tea leaves. Sometimes support stems from a personal relationship with the candidate, but usually it signals more of a philosophical affinity, a desire to either take a chance with something new or stick with a known quantity, which seems to be the case with this presidential primary election.

"It boils down to this: are you part of the Willie Brown, John Burton political machine, in which case you’re with Hillary, or are you part of the free-thinking folks who really want to see change?" Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin — who considers himself part of the latter group and has endorsed Obama — said to the Guardian.

Peskin noted that all of the elected officials in San Francisco who got their jobs through a Newsom appointment — Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Michela Alioto-Pier, Assessor Phil Ting, and Treasurer José Cisneros — have endorsed Clinton, whose campaign has been notorious locally for pressuring top Democrats to get on board.

"We are the campaign of inspiration, not obligation," said Debbie Mesloh, a former Harris spokesperson now on loan to the Obama campaign. "I think people are really tired of Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton."

But Elsbernd — like many other Clinton endorsers — played down the differences between the top two candidates and doesn’t see much symbolism in the endorsements, although he does acknowledge that those who prefer to work within the system tend to support Clinton, while those "who are always pushing the system to go further" seem to be backing Obama, or John Edwards in some cases.

"If Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton were on the Board of Supervisors, they’d probably be to the right of me," said Elsbernd, whom most observers consider the board’s most conservative member, later adding, "Whoever wins the nomination, San Francisco will be heavily supportive of [him or her]."

But Sup. Chris Daly — who, like Peskin and many others, backed Edwards four years ago and supports Obama this time — thinks an Obama victory would be hugely important both locally and nationally in terms of opening up the Democratic Party and the country to new ideas.

"Hillary Clinton clearly represents the establishment, closely aligned to the [Democratic Leadership Council], and Obama represents a change from that. If Obama wins, it would send a serious wave of change through the Democratic Party and open up opportunities for progressives," Daly told us.

He also said progressive Democrats are "like the redheaded stepchildren of the party," consistently marginalized by leaders like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Feinstein, and Newsom. Daly said he liked the policies and messages of Edwards and Dennis Kucinich but identifies with Obama’s roots as a community organizer and feels he’s the best hope for change. Daly said an Obama victory would "mainstream activist politics, which is what I practice."

Many Clinton supporters aren’t afraid of the establishment label, which progressives often use as an epithet and indicator of a brand of politics mired in status quo constructs.

"To me, that’s one of her strengths. She knows how government works and will be ready to lead on day one, and if that’s called establishment, that’s OK with me," said Laura Spanjian, a vocal Clinton campaigner and elected member of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee.

There are some mainstream candidates who have bucked the norm. Sen. Barbara Boxer, who is definitely to Feinstein’s left, and Pelosi have decided not to endorse any of the Democratic primary candidates. And Sup. Bevan Dufty, who is often a Newsom ally, has endorsed Obama.

"I truly feel he is unique among the candidates as far as being able to repair our relationship with the rest of the world," said Dufty, who said he identifies with African American politics, having been raised by a civil rights activist and later working for groundbreaking Congressperson and presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm and former mayor Willie Brown. "I think Obama is much better situated to bring about a new dynamic."

Eric Jaye, owner of Storefront Political Media and the top consultant to Newsom’s two successful mayoral campaigns, told us, "There’s no doubt that prominent endorsers, like Kamala Harris for Barack Obama or Gavin Newsom for Hillary Clinton, stake some political capital in their endorsements. But I don’t think it matters that much."

In fact, rather than altering local political dynamics or the careers of aspiring politicians, Jaye said, the split endorsements of local officials is positive: "We’ve hedged our bets, so whoever wins is going to love San Francisco and our top leaders."

Running on empty

-
0

› news@sfbg.com

The fourth floor of San Francisco’s City Hall feels remote. Dimly lit and strangely quiet, it conveys a sense of isolation from the powerful people who do their work in the lower levels of the building.

Here, in an unremarkable conference room, is where the San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force is conducting its second meeting. Two of its officers are absent, and only one member of the public has turned up to participate. It is an atmosphere that belies the issue’s cataclysmic potential.

The day’s breaking news headlines of oil reaching $100 per barrel for the first time in history is perhaps a harbinger of things to come. One year earlier the price was $58 per barrel. This dramatic increase in such a short span would devastate economies around the world if it continued at anywhere close to that rate.

Chairperson Jeanne Rosenmeier, an articulate, contemplative woman, reiterates the task force’s purpose: "Our charge is to examine how the city is going to handle rising oil prices and possible shortages. That is what we have been asked to do."

The assessment seems like an understatement, perhaps suggesting that the group is merely looking for solutions to how the average citizen could function better without an automobile. Yet in a society built on oil, the consequences of such an energy crisis are likely to be far more sweeping and problematic than merely high gas prices.

While considering models for the study the task force will prepare, Rosenmeier points to Portland, Ore.’s recently completed peak oil report and talks about limiting San Francisco’s effort to outlining the range of scenarios, from small impacts to large. She’s reluctant to acknowledge the extralarge scenario — massive worldwide social unrest and full-scale anarchy in the streets of San Francisco — which she argues would be harmful to the group’s focus.

Jan Lundberg, the task force member in charge of "societal functioning," politely disagrees. Insightful and exuding a sort of deeply ingrained experience, Lundberg has a goatee and a big mane of blond hair that make him look like a Berkeley-ish version of billionaire Virgin CEO Richard Branson. The resemblance is strangely apt when you consider that Lundberg has defected from more lucrative ventures. His family’s business, the Lundberg Survey, has been one of the premier oil industry research authorities in the world for the past few decades, but today Lundberg is volunteering his time to the task force.

"You have to look honestly at what we are up against," Lundberg tells the Guardian. "Only then can you come up with intelligent responses to what is occurring. If it is a tsunami coming, then you take action for a tsunami."

It might come as news to most San Franciscans that a team of seven relatively unknown, politically appointed volunteers is hashing out the hard realities and dire implications of a potentially massive energy crisis. When the Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution (with Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier absent) in April 2006 to acknowledge the looming phenomenon of the global oil supply being exceeded by demand, San Francisco was the first city in the country to do so. It was a precedent that received little attention from the media, perhaps shrugged off as just another wacky resolution steeped in San Francisco values.

For the next 10 months the task force will be preparing a study of mitigation measures to be considered by the city government for implementation into law. Much like the phenomenon of peak oil, their work will also be best assessed in hindsight. For now, some will see them as a team of Chicken Littles sketching a contingency plan for when the sky falls.

Yet if the scientific insights that compelled the Board of Supervisors to form the group prove prescient, then the report that the task force is producing may well be crucial to San Francisco’s very survival.

SLIPPERY SLOPE


Oil has acquired a bad reputation in recent years, as if the resource were not a fossil fuel found in the earth’s crust but a corrupt corporate tycoon spurring international conflicts and gleefully dismantling the ozone layer. Like addicts who blame the substance rather than the habit, we have come to forget that oil is one of the best resources the planet has offered.

"Oil is amazing stuff. The 20th century was basically founded on the wonders of petroleum," explains Richard Heinberg, a professor at New College of Santa Rosa and author of several books, including The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (New Society Publishers, 2003). "Oil is very energy dense and can be made into an amazing range of chemicals and products. Our entire way of life is soaked in petroleum," he says.

This point tends to get lost in the shuffle. It is often forgotten that more than just powering our cars, petroleum is deeply woven into the fabric of our daily lives. Adding up to a global consumption rate of about 86 million barrels per day, oil plays a starring role in agriculture, industry, infrastructure, and transportation. It heats our homes, paves our roads, and grows our food.

So what happens when the global demand for oil begins to outpace the supply? That’s the peak oil question.

"Peak oil is not theoretical. Everyone knows that oil is a nonrenewable resource," Heinberg explains, "so at some point our ability to continue increasing the supply will cease. Everyone knows that it will happen. It is just a matter of when."

Peak oil is inherently a geological concept, formulated by renowned geophysicist Marion King Hubbert. In 1956, as a researcher for Shell Oil, Hubbert presented his theory to the American Petroleum Institute, claiming that the oil output in the mainland United States would peak in the late 1960s or early ’70s. Though dismissed by his colleagues at the time, Hubbert was vindicated when US oil production peaked in 1970 and the nation became forever dependent on foreign sources of petroleum to meet its energy needs.

Hubbert had explained that the production of any petroleum reserve — a single oil well, a particular country, or even the entire planet — follows a similar bell-shaped curve (now referred to as the Hubbert curve). The logic is that as the supply is first tapped, there is a steady increase of oil output that ascends to a peak (or plateau), which represents the maximum amount of oil that will ever be produced from the designated source. As production descends the other side of the curve, the supply is not exhausted, but future yields will always be lower and more expensive to obtain.

For the past 10 years — as the price of crude oil has gone from $12 to $100 per barrel on the world market — scientists, geologists, petroleum experts, and concerned citizens have increasingly pondered the point at which the global oil supply will not only begin to wane but fail to keep up with surging demand.

Proponents of preparing for the impending peak in worldwide petroleum output often cite the steady decline of major oil field discoveries since the 1960s and the alarming number of oil-producing countries that have already hit their peaks. Considering the widespread role petroleum plays in the general day-to-day functioning of our society, an impending decline in overall global production is — to put it mildly — severely worrying.

"People assume that the other side of the peak will be an orderly transition," Lundberg tells us, "but we have no other experience to compare it to."

In 2005 the United States Department of Energy completed a study it had commissioned on the topic of worldwide petroleum depletion titled Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management. Popularly known as the Hirsch Report (for principal author Robert Hirsch), the study consulted a wide range of scientific and oil industry experts.

It painted a startling portrait: "The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking."

"It is one of the most important government reports of the last half century," Heinberg explains, "because it clearly indicates that this global event of peak oil is going to change everything."

Unfortunately, the Hirsch Report has been mostly ignored by Congress, the George W. Bush administration, and the DOE itself (which did not even publish the study for more than a year after its completion). However, the most troublesome aspect of the report is the fact that a sizable selection of the scientists and activists concerned with the topic believe that we’ve already hit the peak. They believe peak oil is happening right now.

PITCHING THE PEAK


"Most people in this country are energy illiterate," David Fridley says. "We can’t substitute millions of years of fossil fuels with something that we can manufacture in a factory, like biofuels. So most people don’t get this sense of anxiety about the situation we’re in."

Fridley knows a fair amount about energy. Currently a staff scientist leading the China Energy Group of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, he has spent a large portion of his career working in the Asian oil industry. His deep concern over the implications of peak oil incited him to play a key role in the formation of San Francisco’s task force.

"Having spent a year just thinking about this on my own," Fridley tells us, "and everyone around me telling me I was nuts, I decided to join a local group where I could at least meet up with others and see if we might educate people rather than just talking amongst ourselves."

In 2005, Fridley met Dennis Brumm — a veteran San Francisco activist with an address book containing an A-list of the city’s prime political players — who was looking to raise the city’s awareness of the issue.

Together with local activists Jennifer Bresee and Allyse Heartwell, they set their sights on bringing the issue of peak oil before the Board of Supervisors.

"Tommi Avicolli Mecca of the Housing Rights Committee is a friend of mine," Brumm explains, "so I invited him over to my house one night and had him discuss with us the personalities and quirks of the supervisors and their aides."

Having charted the terrain, Brumm’s small group soon began spending its Thursdays and Fridays for the next six months lobbying the supervisors at City Hall. When technical questions were asked, the group referred to Fridley’s decades-long experience in the industry for expert scientific analysis.

In April 2006, with backing from District 5 Sup. Ross Mirkarimi and District 1 Sup. Jake McGoldrick, the board passed Resolution Number 224, recognizing "the challenge of Peak Oil and the need for San Francisco to prepare a plan of response and preparation."

For Fridley, the resolution and the formation of the task force were matters of appropriate preparation. "We have two oil tankers come under the Golden Gate every day to fill up the local refinery tanks to produce the fuels that keep the Bay Area running," he says. "What would happen if those tankers don’t come in? Or they don’t come for a week? The city has no plan for that, but we have the ability to be better prepared."

HALF EMPTY OR HALF FULL?


When discussing the phenomenon of peak oil, Lundberg prefers to use the term petro collapse. It is a turn of phrase that quickly provides insight into his considerable sense of alarm for the days ahead.

"It is going to be a globally historic event," Lundberg says. "Imagine a nationwide version of [Hurricane] Katrina."

Although ominous in its predictions, Lundberg’s perspective is based on a long road of experience. While he ran the Lundberg Survey with his father in the 1970s, their widely read insider journal for the oil industry predicted the second great oil shock of the decade (in 1979). In the mid-1980s he moved on from the family business to form the Sustainable Energy Institute nonprofit in Washington DC, a move USA Today marked with the headline "Lundberg Goes Green."

As suggested by the title of the online magazine he currently edits — Culture Change — Lundberg has come to view the peak oil phenomenon as being primarily an issue of the American consumer lifestyle.

"We have this crazy way of life based on limited resources that are clearly becoming constrained," he says, "and we’re holding on to yesterday’s affluence without realizing that we have already walked off the cliff."

Chairperson Rosenmeier, one of Lundberg’s colleagues on the task force, is wary that such an explicitly bleak viewpoint may scare public attention away from the matter.

"You have to be careful with peak oil that you don’t immediately leap to ‘We’re all doomed and our economy is doomed,’<0x2009>" she says. "I think there is an intermediate phase, which is what we are being asked to address: the transition from business as usual."

An accountant by trade and a longtime Green Party activist, Rosenmeier ran for state treasurer in 2002, garnering about 350,000 votes. Setting an ambitious pace for her contribution to the report, she recently met with the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development to request an analysis of how oil prices are related to the orientation of San Francisco’s economy. For this reason, she appears less concerned with predictions than with producing a heavily researched and well-structured report.

"I have a very strong vision of what I want the report to look like," Rosenmeier says. "I want us to have a uniformity and a more quantitative approach. I do not want to address the disintegration of our society."

The disparity between the views of Lundberg and Rosenmeier reflects the vast spectrum of opinions on how peak oil will manifest, although the extremes go well beyond them: some call peak oil a liberal hoax, while others have converted all of their assets to gold and prepared well-stocked and well-armed bunkers where they can ride out the social and economic storm.

The Web site LifeAfterTheOilCrash.net is now getting as many as 23,000 hits per day. Creator Matt Savinar, a graduate of the University of California Hastings College of the Law, abandoned his law career as a futile concern when compared to the implications of peak oil.

"It is pretty simple," Savinar tells us. "What do you think is going to happen when the oil-exporting countries like Russia, Venezuela, and Iran say, ‘We cannot export any more because we need to keep it for our own people’? The US will react by starting a war."

Although Savinar gravitates toward the most drastic of peak oil’s potential implications, his concerns are shared by some high-profile figures. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.), who has started the small but significant Peak Oil Caucus in Congress, has quoted Savinar’s work in congressional session, while billionaire Richard Rainwater told Fortune magazine he regularly reads Savinar’s site.

Pessimistic about the prospect of mitigating the effects of peak oil, Savinar characterizes the efforts of the San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force as "throwing a wet rag at a forest fire." In swinging to the opposite end of the spectrum, the vast chasm between opinions on the matter manifests more clearly. Peter Jackson, the senior director of oil industry activity for the Cambridge Energy Research Associates, recently published the results of an in-depth analysis of more than 800 oil fields worldwide, concluding that the declining output rate of established fields is about half as low as originally expected.

"I think the danger of a peak [in global oil production] in the short term is minimal," Jackson tells the Guardian. "I think there are plenty of new developments on the books of oil companies, and the prospects for growth are good."

While Jackson acknowledges that at some point in the future it will be difficult to increase production, his optimistic viewpoint of the current situation helps to flesh out the dynamics of the overall discussion. As Heinberg explains it, "The debate really is between the near-peak and the far-peak viewpoints."

Yet even as Jackson attracts the ire of near-peak proponents such as Heinberg, he still acknowledges the need for swift preparation efforts. "There is still time to think about these issues and plan for the future," Jackson says. "But the sooner we do that the better."

EATING OIL, GROWING FUEL


Toward the end of the task force’s most recent meeting, the group discusses the city’s potential options for producing its own food supply. As Lundberg points out some of the particulars for pulling up pavement to plant crops, the exchange seems like an excerpt from Ernest Callenbach’s novel Ecotopia (Bantam, 1990).

"Streets cannot be pulled up as easily as driveways or parking lots," Lundberg explains. "There is soil immediately below a concrete driveway, whereas the earth beneath a street is much farther down."

This talk of tearing up asphalt to transform the city’s urban landscape into a viable agricultural venture may seem strange, until one considers how overreliant modern agribusiness has become on cheap fossil fuels.

"About one-fifth of all the petroleum we use goes into some part of our agriculture system," explains Jason Mark, the task force member focusing on the city’s food supply. "Whether that is through transportation and shipping, tractors and farm machinery, or the making of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides — it all demands oil."

Mark notes that the average American meal travels an estimated 1,500 miles from the farm to the dinner table, a startling figure that can be partly attributed to federal policies like the North American Free Trade Agreement that have encouraged export crops rather than diversified farming for local consumption.

"There is no way that San Francisco is going to feed itself in the short term," Rosenmeier says. "Food is going to be a gigantic issue."

In a larger sense, it already is. This past December the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations urged governments to take immediate steps to mitigate "dramatic food price increases" worldwide. Meanwhile, a recent cover story in the New York Times ("A New, Global Quandry: Costly Fuel Means Costly Calories," 1/19/08) cited "food riots" in more than half a dozen countries and asserted, "Soaring fuel prices have altered the equation for growing food and transporting it around the world."

In the US, the Department of Labor’s Consumer Price Index cited a 5.6 percent increase of national grocery store prices in 2007, echoing sizable domestic price spikes in milk, corn, and wheat supplies.

"In a situation where you have sharp increases in the price of fossil fuels, you are going to see spikes in the costs and perhaps even the availability of food," explains Jason Mark, a former employee of Global Exchange and a graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz’s renowned ecological horticulture program.

Mark now splits his time between editing the environmental quarterly Earth Island Journal and comanaging Alemany Farms. In his task force research, Mark plans to focus on two key challenges: increasing food production within San Francisco and improving both production in and distribution from the farms in the Bay Area.

"The city is pretty lucky because we are surrounded by all of this incredibly productive agricultural land," Mark explains. "If you were to draw a 100-mile radius around Potrero Hill, you could still have a pretty amazing diet."

Of course, the situation is far from simplistic. Climate change has proven to be a wild card in the equation, periodically negating dependable food supplies. Most recently, the entire Australian wheat crop collapsed due to a massive drought, affecting food imports around the world.

Less noticeable, though equally problematic, is the strain that biofuels are putting on food supplies. As increases in oil prices are stimuutf8g demands for alternatives, governments must decide whether crops should be used as food or fuel.

"Increasing our production of ethanol or biodiesel means direct competition with the food supply," Heinberg says. "In other words, we may see millions of people around the world going hungry so that a small percentage of the population can continue to drive their cars."

While such factors translate into a predicament as delicate as it is complex, Mark manages to elude pessimism. "I’m not one of these apocalyptic fetishists inciting for some sort of Mad Max scenario," he explains. "[The task force] is going to come out with a document that, although cautionary in scope, will be really optimistic about how SF can exist as an oil-free city."

GLOBAL WARNING


Amid a vast disparity of opinions from scientists and industry experts expounding both sides of the debate, the San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force plans to release its final report in October.

As with the issue of climate change almost two decades ago, the task force members face a long climb toward making an impression on an American population that has shown considerable reluctance to alter its lifestyles.

And while the deliberation over the onset of peak oil is likely to see little decline among skyrocketing energy costs and increasing geopolitical hostilities, the underlying truth may already be far less complicated.

"The era of cheap oil is over," Lundberg says. "Period." *

The next meeting of the San Francisco Peak Oil Preparedness Task Force will be on Feb. 5 at 3 p.m. in room 421 of City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton B. Goodlett Place, SF. Members of the public are strongly encouraged to attend.

————————————————————–

OIL ALTERNATIVES

In the event of sudden petroleum shortages, how do the alternatives stack up?

Ethanol: The Republican choice for weaning the nation off oil is a lucrative venture for red state constituents in the Midwest. However, the drawbacks are numerous. Corn ethanol requires almost as much oil energy to produce as it is meant to replace. Furthermore, it will require 4.8 billion — yes, billion — acres of corn to match the world’s current rate of annual oil consumption.

Hydrogen fuel cells: Touted by conservatives as some kind of miracle fuel because its tailpipe by-product is simply water vapor, hydrogen is a long way from being a viable fuel for cars, if that’s even possible. It takes even more energy to produce than ethanol and can explode in collisions.

Nuclear: Expensive and unpopular, nuclear power faces numerous logistical hurdles (particularly safety and long-term waste storage) that make it infeasible in the short and middle terms.

Natural gas: A major source of current United States energy consumption (25 percent nationally), natural gas is extremely difficult to ship, making importation from far-off sources impractical. Its supplies are running low in the US, and this nonrenewable fossil fuel is likely to parallel oil in its decline.

Wind: This clean power source is being quickly developed around the world as a major generator of electricity. Currently in the US, it accounts for about 1 percent of domestic electricity production, so offsetting the loss of fossil fuel plants would require a massive commitment. Downsides include the danger to migrating birds and the fact that sometimes the wind doesn’t blow.

Solar: This is Marion King Hubbert’s choice for replacing fossil fuels. It is a renewable generator of electricity, yet the shortcomings so far have been with finding more efficient and less toxic battery technology to store it. But improving research and strong consumer demand for solar panels point to a promising future.

The way to honor Matthew Shepard

-
0

OPINION Nearly 10 years ago Matthew Shepard was crucified on a fence in Wyoming because he was gay. Recently a bill bearing his name failed to pass the United States Senate.

S 1105, the Matthew Shepard Act, would "provide Federal assistance to States, local jurisdictions, and Indian tribes to prosecute hate crimes." Its supporters are still pushing for its passage, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wants to see it approved early this year. Here is why Congress should not bother:

Nearly 1,500 hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation were reported in the United States in 2006. To reduce that number we do not need a bill that would give the local sheriff a cash grant after some kid decides to crucify another kid because he likes to kiss boys. We need education.

Our school system is structured with the implication of heterosexuality. Any information that be construed as other than strictly heterosexual is rarely taught. James Baldwin is widely read in schools for his writings on the difficulties of living in a racist world. His writings on the difficulties of living in a homophobic world, however, are largely ignored. "The Fire Next Time," an essay on how to "end the racial nightmare" that blacks endure, is more widely read than Giovanni’s Room, which begins with the gay lover of the main male character about to be guillotined.

Most students know Alexander the Great as one of the most important generals of history, conquering most of the known world by the time of his death at 33. Some know of his three wives. Few know of Hephaistion, his lifelong companion, with whom it is widely acknowledged he had a sexual relationship. Through such selective edits of history, students learn (falsely) that heterosexuality is the norm and has been throughout time.

With this background, is it any wonder that hate crimes based on sexual orientation accounted for more than 15 percent of all hate crimes reported in the US in 2006?

These statistics will not be affected by reactionary laws. The Matthew Shepard Act will not change them. It will not allow him to celebrate another birthday. Nor will it help to ensure that no more children are robbed of their birthdays. The best it can hope for is to make sure their persecutors spend their birthdays in jail.

We expect schools to teach our children about history, math, and English and, by extension, about society. When they learn about Alexander but not Hephaistion, about "The Fire Next Time" but not Giovanni’s Room, about the Seneca Falls Convention but not Stonewall, they come to understand that heterosexuality is expected, that it is normal. And few children wish to be abnormal.

What we need in our schools is a curriculum that acknowledges the different sexualities and perceptions of sexuality that have existed in history. Tell the students about Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room and Alexander the Great’s Hephaistion. From there, why don’t we let the students decide for themselves what is "normal"?

Matthew Shepherd’s attackers are serving consecutive life sentences in prison. S 1105 might send more people to prison with them. But it cannot prevent them from committing the crimes. Education might. And wouldn’t that be a better legacy to leave Shepard?

Christina Luu

Christina Luu is a student in the Economics Department at Stanford University. She is also a fellow of the Roosevelt Institution’s Center on Education, the nation’s first student-run think tank. She plans to graduate in spring 2010.

Guardian lawsuit: Opening statements

-
0

The Guardian v. SF Weekly trial swung into high gear today with both sides presenting opening statements and the first Guardian witnesses taking the stand. The early presentations gave a clear sense of where the trial will go.

Ralph Alldredge, representing the Guardian, laid out the essence of the case:

Over the past 11 years, the SF Weekly, later joined by the East Bay Express, have systematically sold ads below cost. The cost-cutting was so dramatic, he said, that during that period the two papers lost a total of $25 million, and those losses have been escalating.

That, he explained, was not because the people who run the Weekly and ran the Express are bad managers. It’s because they were attempting to damage the locally owned competitor. “If you’re not trying to make a profit,” he asked, “what are you trying to do?”

In fact, while the Weekly lawyers have argued consistently (and would argue later in the day) that the market is packed with different competitors, and that the Weekly didn’t see the Guardian as its only or even primary competition, internal memos show that Weekly and New Times staffers were obsessed with beating the Guardian. The memos consistently refer to the “battle” and “the way” and use terms like “frontal assault.” And those memos weren’t discussing the entire universe of competition – they focused only on the Guardian.

In fact, New Times executives put together a quarterly “Guardian report” focused entirely on how well the Weekly was doing taking ads away from the local paper.

In just one instance that Alldredge mentioned, The Weekly inked a deal with Clear Channel in 2005 that was designed in part to take ads away from the Guardian. Under the terms of the deal, the Weekly would get the bulk of the company’s alternative weekly ads – and “the competing paper [the Guardian],” a memo from a Clear Channel official states, “gets 15% to 0.”

H. Sinclair Kerr, attorney for the Weekly, didn’t deny that his client had sold ads below cost; in fact, he admitted it, right up front. But he insisted that all of those sales were perfectly legal because they were done either to increase the paper’s market share or to meet competition.

Kerr posted a graphic showing that the Bay Area is home to more than 140 newspapers and scores of radio and TV stations, and he argued that all of those outlets were part of the Weekly’s competition. “The reason we were selling below cost,” he said, “is because that’s the only price we could get.”

However, memos from his clients that were presented by Alldredge don’t mention any other newspapers or other types of media. It appears clear from the evidence presented so far that the Weekly and New Times executives considered the Guardian their single most important competitor.

The presentations today suggest that the trial will come down to the question of intent and the damage that the Weekly and its chain owners have done to the Guardian.

The Timeless Women of Any Old Time

-
0

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Presenting: the Any Old Time String Band, playing Friday and Saturday nights at the Freight & Salvage Coffee House in Berkeley

Through our 40 years at the Guardian, we have had a virtually endless sea of bands in one way or another connected to the Guardian and our staff, from cartoonist Dan O’Neill at the old Red Garter band in North Beach in the l960s to the Any Old Time String band in the l970s to the Artichokes in the l980s to the Pink Mountain band of today.

The band folks liked the Guardian because they could work during the day in a friendly environment, often on special shifts, and then play late into the night in the clubs. No questions asked if they came in late or dozed on the job.

My favorite was the Any Old Time String band, a delightful blues group led by two talented ladies who worked in bookkeeping and then for me as my associate, Kate Brislin and Valerie Mindel. Kate stayed in town and developed her singing and playing talent while Valerie, who married our managing editor Mike Miller, took her bass along with Mike, who took a a peripatetic executive position with Reuters. They have toured the world from Kansas City, to Chicago, to Hong Kong twice, to Toronto, New York, and currently in Tokyo. Valerie, always the organizer, either put together a group wherever she landed or joined up with a local or did both. She was and is indefatigable.

Bronstein kicked upstairs?

-
0

TN-399068_Bronsteinpic.jpg

That’s what it sounds like. The Chron reports that editor Phil Bronstein, who has been a key part of the operation since Hearst bought the paper in 2000, is “leaving his post to take a larger role in the newspaper division of Hearst.”

His new title will be “editor at large.” His job duties haven’t quite been established yet.

It’s funny — a year ago, I would have said the paper desperately needed new direction. The Chron was flailing, heading nowhere, losing circulation and tons of money. But in the past few months, we’ve actually seen some life — opinion pieces and campaigns on the front page (bad ones, for sure, like Chuck Nevius’s crap on the homeless, but at least they were taking on issues), better design, some decent City Hall pieces etc.

So now we get a new editor with deep local roots. I’m holding my breath.

Cassis

-
0

› paulr@sfbg.com

In the Big Book of Troubled Restaurant Spaces, there will have to be a long chapter (with footnotes!) devoted to 2101 Sutter. Since the mid-1990s this unassuming but hardly forbidding site has been home to Nightshade, Laghi, Julia, Winterland, and now Cassis, and I might be forgetting a few. The comings and goings have been many and hasty. Why the address’s occupants should have such a nomadic bent, one after the other, isn’t obvious when considering the physical particulars. 2101 is a perfectly nice setting, a sort of fat reverse L with the entryway, bar, and small dining area on one axis and, on the other (beyond a psychedelic screen that resembles strips of vinyl studded with disks of glass, like a hippie’s belt collection), a larger dining area with an exhibition kitchen. The kitchen had been covered over during the brief Winterland era, the picture-window opening plugged with drywall, but now the view is back, and we notice a pizza oven among the other handsome implements.

Yes, pizza, though Cassis (as the name suggests) is a French restaurant. But the cooking isn’t generic French; the street signage advises us that the restaurant serves "cuisine niçoise," and Nice is a French Riviera town quite near Italy. The city’s most famous contribution to culinary annals is probably the salade niçoise, that likable jumble of tuna, red peppers, quarters of hard-boiled egg, and black olives, but the city is nearly as pizza crazy as Rome, and that’s saying something. To sit at an outdoor table at one of the many cafés along Nice’s pedestrian promenade, drinking chilled rosé and eating thin-crust pizza, could be the ultimate experience niçoise.

Cassis can’t match these plein air atmospherics, of course. For one thing, it’s in San Francisco, which is not an alfresco town, and for another, it sits in a remarkably nondescript building in a neighborhood filled with nondescript buildings. Even if you could sit at a sidewalk table, you almost surely wouldn’t want to, since Sutter and Steiner are not, to say the least, charming pedestrian promenades, while nearby Geary Boulevard is a roaring sluice of automobile traffic. So, inside! The big horseshoe bar is welcoming, the outer dining area relaxed — but you like to see your chefs in action, and that means a table in the main dining area, beyond the hippie-belt screen.

The screen is a Winterland holdover, but subtle changes to the sleek chill of that restaurant’s design have brought some cheering warmth to Cassis. The return of the open kitchen is one; another is the faux brickwork on the support pillars. The rise in ambient temperature has, like global warming, caused a palpable shift in the mammalian population; gone are Winterland’s droves of 30-year-old, gelled-hair, tech billionaires in black mock turtlenecks, and in is an older contingent, rather Pacific Heights–looking. These are people who might not have responded too enthusiastically to Winterland’s sea urchin foams but are perfectly happy with Cassis’s simple but intense lobster bisque (a steal at $6.25), enriched with cognac, or the pissaladière ($7.50), the classic tart of caramelized onion that’s like a solid version of French onion soup.

The master of the kitchen is Stephane Meloni, who opened the restaurant last year with his brother, Jerome. Jerome runs the front of the house. The brothers grew up in Nice, which among its other winning attributes is not far along the coast from Cassis, a picturesque, cliff-hanging village. Hence the restaurant’s name. Those with total recall might remember that there was another Cassis in the city in the mid-1990s, a bistro in Cow Hollow. But there is no other connection between the two places.

I would have dispensed with the coil of fried onion atop the pissaladière. It had been fried to toughness rather than crunchiness, could not be cut, and was generally an inconvenience. Otherwise, the kitchen didn’t miss a step; the cooking is a series of gentle euphonies, polished versions of bistro favorites. (There is a real difference in France between a bistro and a restaurant, and les frères Meloni calling their place a restaurant isn’t a casual choice.)

Duck confit ($22.50) is a rustic staple on many a bistro menu, but here the leg (good crispy skin!) was accompanied by a boneless half breast grilled to a gratifyingly steaklike medium rare. Lending the plate architectural interest and style: a cylinder of gratin potatoes, looking like a pillbox.

Potatoes — fingerlings — got a more natural treatment with the roasted monkfish ($23). They were simply steamed, halved, and thrown into a peppercorn sauce, velvety but with sharp edges. Lying at the edge of the sauce pool was a bundle of pencil-thin asparagus (too early to be local, I’m afraid), baby pattypan squash in green and yellow, and a fine dice of tomato. I would give this combination no better than a C for seasonality but an A for color and texture.

Even the small dishes are memorable. You hardly ever see panisses ($4.25) — the chickpea fries of Provence — anywhere, but Cassis’s are excellent: crisp outside, creamy within, and presented in a geometric stack. And spinach ($5), seared with garlic and shallots, unfurls on a long platter like a length of knotty, kelp-swaddled rope recovered from a long-sunken ship.

Cassis doesn’t seem to have generated the buzz of its most recent predecessors, and maybe this offers us a clue to its prospects. Although it’s a nice destination, it’s not a destination restaurant but a neighborhood one, and the neighbors, having reclaimed the space after a long struggle, seem to be pleased. Everybody likes a new chapter.

CASSIS

Tues.–Thurs. and Sun., 5:30–10 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 5:30–11 p.m.

2101 Sutter, SF

(415) 440-4500

www.restaurantcassis.com

Full bar

AE/DISC/MC/V

Moderately noisy

Wheelchair accessible

Video Mutants: Eight for 2008

-
0

› johnny@sfbg.com

1. CORY ARCANGEL


Arcangel’s Super Mario Clouds (2002) uncovers the beauty of Nintendo clouds. Go to our Pixel Vision blog this week (www.sfbg.com/blogs/pixel_vision) for an interview with Jacob Ciocci of Arcangel’s sometime collaborators Paper Rad and an interview with Arcangel that discusses his recent video and performance projects, such as The Bruce Springsteen Born to Run Glockenspiel Addendum.

2. PHIL COLLINS


Dünya dunlemiyor, the Istanbul, Turkey–set entry in Collins’s World Won’t Listen trilogy of Smiths karaoke videos, wowed those who saw it at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2006. The entire trilogy is now on display and garnering raves (including an Artforum essay that pinpoints the lustiness that breaks through even the most programmatic of Collins’s endeavors) at the Dallas Museum of Art. Here’s hoping we get to see it soon.

3. SARAH ENID


Based in San Francisco but often out in the world, Enid has a roving eye. She’s made comic horror short works (in 2005’s Lovelorn Domestic she’s a mute woman with a giant bird that pecks out her husband’s eyes) and more recently ventured into the realm of new age relaxation videos — 3-D ones, to boot. The results are as amazing as they are soothing.

4. DAVID ENOS


One of San Francisco’s best underground talents, Enos has used videotape to craft a number of hand-drawn and hand-spliced animated shorts. Music biography is one recurrent subject: Enos’s trademark deadpan charm adds magic to illustrated and condensed life stories of Jim Morrison (complete with writhing snakes), Dennis Wilson (with a cameo by Charlie Manson), and Leonard Cohen. Look for a Guardian profile of Enos — as well as one of his frequent collaborator Enid — later this year.

5. GEORGE KUCHAR


Ryan Trecartin (see Super Ego) would never have star-wiped himself into art world stardom if not for the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink video aesthetic of Kuchar, who has made hundreds of videos since he and his brother Mike helped create underground film. Based in San Francisco and a teacher at the SF Art Institute, Kuchar has taught or influenced every local video person on this list, and his movies continue to be as funny as anyone’s in this issue, and only slightly less energetic than Trecartin’s (maybe a good thing).

6. ANNE MCGUIRE


She’s channeled Judy Garland — in 1997’s tears-and-laughs cabaret spree I Am Crazy and You’re Not Wrong — and survived. She stalker-serenaded Joe DiMaggio when the slugger was still alive and walking through the Marina (in 1991’s Joe Dimaggio, 1, 2, 3). In addition to these potent short performance works, she’s also unleashed some gargantuan formal projects, such as a pair of features — 1992’s Strain Andromeda and 2007’s Adventure Poseidon The — that rearrange Hollywood films from back to front, treating each shot like a card in a deck.

7. PAPER RAD


You haven’t lived until you’ve been berated about CD-ROMs, DVD menus, and coolness by the cranky-voiced animated character at the beginning of Paper Rad’s 2006 DVD Trash Talking (Load). Turns out that rant is just the preamble to a gloriously anarchic explosion of primary colors and pop-cult iconography that has prompted a thousand commercialized graphic design rip-offs, none of them one-millionth as inspired. Paper Rad recently made mashup lively again with the Umbrella Zombie Datamosh Mistake (now on YouTube). Go to their Web site — www.paperrad.org — for visual pleasure seizures and to get a taste of their new 20-minute video, Problem Solvers.

>>Watch Paper Rad’s “umbrella zombie datamosh mistake”

8. MATT WOLF


Wolf crosses into the realm of full-length features with Wild Combination, his subtly poignant documentary portrait of late musician Arthur Russell, which has been accepted at this year’s Berlin Film Festival. But his 2003 short video Smalltown Boys was a standout at a recent Internet-vid group show at SF Camerawork, and his Web site (www.mattwolf.info) is a treasure trove of such clips, both found (he uncovers Ryan Phillippe’s time as the first gay teen on American soaps) and made by him (his 2004 Imitation of Imitation mimics the costume-jewelry waterfall from the credits of Douglas Sirk’s 1959 Imitation of Life).

>>Back to Video Mutants: The Guardian video art issue

Guardian vs. SF Weekly

-
0

It’s extraordinary how the SF Weekly can take a clear legal defeat and try to turn it into a victory.

On Jan. 17 the judge in the Guardian‘s lawsuit against the SF Weekly and its parent corporation refused to bar the Guardian‘s key expert witness from testifying. The ruling was a clear victory for the Guardian — the Weekly had tried desperately to keep accountant and economic expert Clifford Kupperberg from taking the stand to present evidence of how much the Weekly‘s predatory pricing has damaged the Guardian.

And yet the Weekly‘s Snitch blog trumpets the ruling as "The SF Bay Guardian‘s Shakedown Hits a Snag," arguing that Kupperberg had somehow repudiated his own testimony.

The Guardian is suing the SF Weekly and Village Voice Media, formerly known as New Times, for predatory pricing in violation of California business law. The suit charges that the Weekly, with cash support from the 16-paper chain, sold ads below cost for many years in an effort to harm the locally owned competitor.

The trial got under way last week with early motions on the evidence. Here’s what actually happened in Superior Court Judge Marla Miller’s courtroom Jan. 16 and 17:

Kupperberg, following well-established standards, had developed two scenarios to explain how much the Guardian has lost due to the Weekly‘s practice of selling ads below cost. One of the scenarios uses data from members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, information that the papers share with one another once a year to establish industry financial benchmarks.

The SF Weekly‘s lawyers argued that part of the data — the material from the AAN — wasn’t reliable, so Kupperberg agreed to use his other standard (including New Times’ own figures in 17 different markets) instead. He also added data from two other Bay Area alternative papers and from local retail sales statistics to buttress his conclusions. His data suggest damages of $5 million to $10 million.

After the SF Weekly lawyers argued for hours that Kupperberg be disqualified, Judge Miller ruled clearly and unequivocally against them. Kupperberg will be able to testify, and his damage estimates will be admissible.

That’s a big victory for the Guardian.

And while the Weekly lawyers demanded extra time and sought to delay once again a case that’s been in the works for more than three years, Miller moved forward and started the jury selection process Jan. 17.

If this is how the SF Weekly and the VVM folks from Phoenix are going to cover the trial, we’re going to have to spend a lot of time correcting the record, although we’d prefer to simply let the case speak for itself.

How to save the Housing Authority

-
0

OPINION After repeated media attention to the myriad problems at the San Francisco Housing Authority, Mayor Gavin Newsom asked the agency’s director, Gregg Fortner, to resign. An interim director, Mirian Saez, was appointed to fill his shoes until a national search is conducted to find a permanent replacement. The mayor has announced replacements for two of the seven commissioners; one of the new appointees, Dwayne Jones, is a senior Newsom staffer.

As an affordable-housing advocate who works with residents of public housing, I am overjoyed at the prospect of change at the agency. No matter who is chosen to be the new director, a few key changes should be seriously considered for the city’s largest low-income-housing provider. Here are some suggestions:

1. Appoint commissioners who get it and care. The mayor could have made sweeping changes after he asked the SFHA commissioners to submit letters of resignation. Instead, he used the opportunity to appoint someone who is on his payroll. As long as political connections continue to trump experience, understanding, and compassion, tenants will suffer. What about having a public process in which residents and the community can nominate candidates? How about sharing the power to appoint housing commissioners with the Board of Supervisors, as is done with some other city commissions?

2. Listen to the residents, damn it! While it is refreshing to see the mayor look for solutions to the rampant problems at the SFHA, a panel of national experts is hardly necessary. The best experts are right here. They are residents, and they are clamoring to have their voices heard. Conduct a local survey, have regular open meetings, encourage the formation of resident councils, work with service providers and community groups that reach out to residents, and allow for resident participation as much as possible.

3. Talk among yourselves. The same lessons we learned after Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina apply to this disaster as well. City agencies that serve public housing residents are often unaware of the major issues at public housing developments. The Departments of Building Inspections and Public Health, for instance, should be monitoring conditions and reporting to the mayor and the supervisors. The Mayor’s Office of Housing should be working closely with the Redevelopment Agency, the Office of Community Development, and the Human Service Agency as they plan for the demolition and rebuilding of distressed projects. City officials and agencies shouldn’t have to pull teeth to get basic information from the SFHA.

4. Tell Nancy Pelosi and her colleagues to fight like hell. Whoever leads the Housing Authority in the future will always have a defense against charges of not addressing poor conditions because Congress keeps hacking away at the Department of Housing and Urban Development budget. We have powerful congressional representation in San Francisco; let’s push harder.

5. Step up to the plate to provide local resources to improve public housing. As hard as we fight to leverage more federal funds, it is nearly certain that the SFHA will still be severely underfunded. We can no longer rely solely on federal funds to house our lowest-income residents. A commitment to creative and innovative local funding solutions must continue or we will see an increase in the exodus of African American families, which the mayor claims to be committed to curbing.

Sara Shortt

Sara Shortt is executive director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco.

From fryers to fuel

-
0

› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY At Ar Roi Thai in Nob Hill, about 75 gallons of oil are left over every month from the creation of the restaurant’s deep-fried cuisine, according to manager Theresa Shotiveyaratana. But instead of dumping it, the business donates its gunk to the newly established SFGreasecycle, which converts it into biodiesel that is now used to power San Francisco city vehicles such as Muni buses and fire engines.

As of Dec. 31, 2007, the city completed a yearlong project proposed in Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Biodiesel Initiative, which called for all 1,600 municipal vehicles to run exclusively on B20, a mixture of 20 percent pure biodiesel and 80 percent traditional petroleum diesel. The blend is compatible with most modern-day diesel engines and reduces carbon monoxide emissions by 12 percent and the particulate matter found in smog by 20 percent.

But most of that biodiesel hasn’t been generated locally: the city is halfway through its three-year master fuel contract with San Francisco Petroleum, which gets the stuff from soybean oil produced in the Midwest.

"It’s really not enough that a city looks at using biofuels to offset fossil fuels," said Karri Ving, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s biofuels coordinator and one of SFGreasecycle’s three staff members. "We don’t want to go from one environmentally disastrous fuel to another. We want less shipping miles from the middle of the country."

That’s where SFGreasecycle, a $1.3 million program put into action by the SFPUC last month, comes in. It picks up used fats, oils, and grease (known in the program as FOG) at no charge from wherever people are willing to spare them. The list currently comprises mostly eateries, from chains like Baja Fresh and locals like Ar Roi, but also households, high schools, a synagogue, and museums such as the de Young.

About 170 restaurants have signed up so far, allowing the organization to collect an average of 5,000 gallons of so-called yellow grease — or what comes straight from the frying pan — per month. Furthermore, its efforts are a way of keeping congealed grease out of sewer pipes, which costs the city roughly $3.5 million in cleanup efforts per year, according to the SFPUC.

Ving said the organization has even loftier goals in mind. By the beginning of 2010 it aims to collect 100,000 gallons of grease per month. That’s about 20 percent of the five to six million gallons of diesel that the Department of the Environment estimates the municipal fleet burns per year.

Mark Westlund, the spokesperson for the Department of the Environment, said using the grease as a replacement for the imported fuel is a real possibility as they have "an almost one-to-one conversion rate."

SFGreasecycle uses four biodiesel treatment plants in the Bay Area to convert the grease to usable fuel. And sticking with its zero-waste goals, it donates the small amount of unusable, low-quality grease to the plants, which convert it into methane, which in turn powers these facilities.

Eric Bowen, chair of the city’s Biodiesel Access Task Force, shares Ving’s sentiment that "not all biodiesel is created equal," he told us. The task force is working with the Board of Supervisors to expand the local sources of biodiesel when the fuel contract expires in 18 months and to look into building a production facility in the city, where none currently exist.

The United States Department of Energy estimates that biodiesel contains roughly 8 percent less energy per gallon than petroleum diesel, although that translates into only about a 1 percent difference in mileage and performance.

Bowen said using biodiesel is a win-win situation since it acts as a natural solvent to clean fuel filters. And "the improved lubricity extends the vehicle life," he said. But before they use biodiesel for the first time, diesel tanks must be cleaned out, which the Fire Department found costs $2,000 to $3,000 per tank.

SFGreasecycle also complements the city’s Climate Action Plan, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. "The goal is not just to make San Francisco sustainable," Ving told us, "but to develop a program that can be implemented by other municipalities."

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

Editor’s Notes

-
0

› tredmond@sfbg.com

There’s a January report from the San Francisco Controller’s Office that says the city’s transportation policy is failing.

It doesn’t say that in so many words — that might have gotten some media attention — but the implication is clear.

The report is on the taxicab industry, always a fascinating topic, and it’s filled with charts and graphs discussing how much money the cab companies make and how little the drivers make. But in the middle of all of that is a remarkable paragraph that says:

"The resident population in San Francisco appears to be increasing. Since 2000, the Department of Finance reports it has grown by 4.7 percent, or by approximately 0.6 percent per year. Although the Census Bureau believes San Francisco lost population from 2000 to 2005, it too has reported population increase since 2005. Muni trips have slightly declined over the same period — a cumulative negative change of 2.5 percent — while vehicle registrations in San Francisco have increased by 1.5 percent. This suggests that residents may be substituting away from mass transit and into private and personal transport modes."

That reads like, well, a Controller’s Office report, but here’s the translation: More San Franciscans are driving cars. Fewer are taking Muni. It’s not exactly shocking news to anyone who pays attention to traffic patterns in town, but it’s a serious indictment of city policy.

The statistics show a couple of things. One is that the city is, indeed, getting richer — generally speaking, wealthier people are more likely to use private cars. Another is that Muni hasn’t been performing: all of the national and local data show there’s a direct correlation between on-time transit service and ridership (and of course there’s a direct, or rather inverse, correlation between the number of people riding Muni and the number of cars on the streets.)

But what it says to me is that city hall doesn’t really consider the car glut a top priority.

There is no official city goal to reduce the number of cars in town or the number of car miles traveled or the number of vehicles on the streets. The city Planning Department continues to base its land-use decisions on projections of increased car traffic (which has to be accommodated with more garages). Nobody’s calling for a five-year plan to turn the trend around.

It’s going to be a big year for transit policy: the city’s Transit Effectiveness Study comes out in February, and the report on congestion management should be done in June. Perhaps the supervisors can use that information to create goals, timelines, and programs that will reduce — instead of accommodate — cars on the streets.

I’m part of the problem, and I know it: I drive a car, and I drive it too often. I do it because it’s difficult to get my kids to and from school on a bus.

That’s one of the tricky parts of this equation (school buses in a city where everyone has choice and kids from any neighborhood can go to any school), but I have to say, the parking lot at McKinley Elementary School is packed every single morning with people driving schoolkids. You’d think the city could work with the San Francisco Unified School District — maybe organize car pools. Maybe the mayor’s $130,000 per year global warming coordinator could get involved.

We could start with a citywide survey: Why do you drive? Where? What would get you out of your car? Aim for 5 percent per year. It’d be better than what we’re doing now.

Delete key

-
0

› sarah@sfbg.com

San Francisco’s recent move to a new, privatized electronic campaign finance database will make it more difficult to track amendments to reports on political spending, a change that has caused a conflict between top-level staffers at the Ethics Commission.

In a Jan. 10 memo sent to all of the appointed members of the Ethics Commission, fines collection officer Oliver Luby wrote, "The transition to a NetFile-created database will result in large amounts of deletion of campaign data from the Commission’s database, both in the future and retroactively.

"This data deletion will destroy the ability of the Commission and the public to systematically perform computerized reviews of finance changes made via amendment," Luby wrote, adding, "Coincidentally, the biggest beneficiary of this lack of disclosure will be the clients of NetFile."

Many large campaigns use NetFile to electronically file their finance statements, and last year the Ethics Commission decided to have the company take over the city database, which officials with the Department of Technology and Information Services say is failing.

To illustrate his concerns, Luby sent a report to commissioners and staff Jan. 2 identifying more than $2 million in transactions that political committees, including the 2003 campaigns Gavin Newsom for Mayor and Kamala Harris for District Attorney, reported between 1997 and 2007 by using post-filing-deadline amendments, sometimes in violation of the law.

"If there is any way for the Commission to convince NetFile to provide a database and filing system that will not delete data, I recommend pursuing it," Luby concluded. "Otherwise, this problem is an indicator that the cost savings obtained by using NetFile, instead of SF DTIS, were inflated."

But Ethics executive director John St. Croix didn’t appreciate Luby’s input and defended the choice of NetFile.

"DTIS determined that it would be very expensive and unrealistic for them to create a new system since they didn’t have the man power or the time. And to buy it elsewhere, like from the city of Los Angeles, would have been expensive, so we looked at the private vendors," he told the Guardian.

St. Croix signed a three-year, $90,000 per year contract with NetFile on Oct. 31, 2007, and told us, "If we don’t go with NetFile, we won’t have anything,"

David Tristan, deputy director of Los Angeles’ Ethics Commission confirmed that his city’s in-house system, which costs $30,000 per year, is not a turnkey operation: "It was built as a filing, audit, enforcement, and compliance tool, and it’s a good system, but we encourage that you have a systems person."

St. Croix claimed Ethics auditors are not losing any tracking capability. "The way the old system works, a global assessment is no longer available," St. Croix told the Guardian.

Acknowledging that his staff will have to take more steps to do a comprehensive "global search," St. Croix said Luby "is negating the fact that we will be able to display lobbyist reports, statements of economic interests, and all our scanned filings."

If a modification to the NetFile contract is required, St. Croix said, "We’ll try to get the city to pay for it." But, he claimed, "there is no basis for the idea that there is a sinister relationship between the filers and NetFile."

NetFile founder David Montgomery confirmed that NetFile, which accounts for 50 percent of the state’s electronic filings, provides services to filers, such as political committees supporting candidates and measures, and governmental agencies.

"But the data filed belongs to NetFile’s customers. We’re just providing a management service," Montgomery told the Guardian, dismissing conflict-of-interest concerns. "That’s like saying that because Joe Smith cheated on his income tax, we need to sue TurboTax."

Noting that amendment-tracking capabilities are on NetFile’s long-term wish list, Montgomery said, "We want to make sure everyone is happy with the transition, but some people don’t like change."

Joe Lynn, who was campaign finance project for the Ethics Commission when San Francisco went online, believes NetFile represents a degradation of Ethics audit capacity. "The biggest fine issued by the SF Ethics Commission, and the biggest in California, involved this principle, the auditing of an amendment," he said, referring to the $100,000 fine that a Pacific Gas and Electric Co.–funded committee incurred from the city (plus $140,000 from the state) when its amended filings showed it failed to disclose $800,000 in last-minute donations from the utility to help defeat a 2002 public power measure. Ethics auditors caught one of PG&E’s violations, while the media, using Ethics’ amendment review tools, caught the other.

"But thanks to the way NetFile’s system is set up, it doesn’t have the capacity to display amendments the way we do," Lynn said. "This demonstrates the dangers of privatization."

Lynn said NetFile’s less sophisticated ability to track amendments stems from the fact that it was set up in 1998 to help committees fill out campaign finance reports, "and not from what makes sense for public disclosure.

"It’s unfortunate, but not necessarily negligent, that this fell through the cracks," added Lynn, who suggests the Ethics Commission should work to resuscitate its amendment-tracking ability by requiring that committees filing amendments fill out a form stating just how filings have been amended.

"We need to have ordinance," Lynn said. He doesn’t buy the argument that NetFile’s system is adequate just because it’s used by San Jose, Santa Clara, and San Bernardino.

"San Francisco should have a first-class system," Lynn said. "This is another mechanism by which a committee can skirt the law."

Robert Stern at the LA Center for Governmental Studies worries that by signing on with NetFile, San Francisco will lose "the ability to find electronically information on what was changed and to see whether voters had this amended information before an election and what they were learning through amendments afterwards."

Luby also worries that because Ethics’ old database won’t have technical support, it could irreparably break down in the future and that even if it remains functional, "auditors will have to look in two places to see every local contribution Chevron made."

Luby e-mailed his concerns to management Dec. 7, 2007, then provided them with his detailed analysis Jan. 2 — submissions that raised St. Croix’s ire.

"I cannot attest to the accuracy of the information in this report," St. Croix wrote in a Jan. 11 memo to the commission. "I believe that many of its conclusions are inaccurate and many are spurious. Further, the information appears to be based on false assumptions and the language implies dishonest motives that are quite simply non-existent."

But St. Croix’s reply earned a swift rebuke from Luby’s union, Service Employees International Union Local 1021. "We believe the report was written in accord with Mr. Luby’s previously recognized duties," SEIU work-site organizer Cristal Java wrote Jan. 15.

Claiming St. Croix implied that Luby’s report was a "misuse of City resources," Java added, "While Mr. Luby’s act of forwarding his report may not satisfy the technical requirements of filing a complaint, we believe that Mr. Luby’s bringing of a report about work-related problems to your attention was whistleblowing."

Luby said St. Croix "is attempting to discredit his amendment review report because its results reflect that Ethics staff dropped the ball when the new database’s minimum system requirements were provided to NetFile. Mr. St. Croix doesn’t want to own up to the mistake."

Money for nothing

-
0

› news@sfbg.com

Nedir Bey, a close confidant of the late Your Black Muslim Bakery founder Yusuf Bey, received public funds for his anemic 2002 run for the Oakland City Council but faced little scrutiny from election officials for suspect political contributions and spending.

The discovery appears to be one more example of the Bey empire’s alleged scams and schemes uncovered by the Chauncey Bailey Project since the eponymous journalist’s August 2007 murder, which law enforcement sources have linked to the bakery.

For five years the Fair Political Practices Commission in Sacramento sat on a request to investigate alleged campaign finance irregularities committed by Nedir Bey — who owes the city of Oakland $1.5 million in another matter — then dropped the probe because too much time had elapsed.

Bey ran for the Oakland City Council’s District 4 seat in March 2002 but got only 268 votes. He received $14,178 in public matching funds for his campaign despite questions raised by the head of Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission about the sources of the candidate’s contributions.

In August 2007, however, the FPPC sent a letter to Bey announcing it would not be taking any action against him, “given the age of this case and our current enforcement priorities.” Bey refused to comment on any of the main points in this article.

FPPC spokesperson Roman Porter said he could not say why the investigation lagged as long as it did, other than to say that a former enforcement official refrained from pursuing the case. Porter said the official closed a large number of cases to decrease a backlog, but Bey’s wasn’t one of them.

A new chairman and enforcement team came on board last year, but by that time the statute of limitations had already expired on two of the matters contained in Oakland’s complaint and there wasn’t enough time left to investigate the third matter before the statute of limitations ran out, Porter said.

Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission executive director, Dan Purnell, passed the case to Sacramento instead of completing the investigation locally. City law gives the Public Ethics Commission the sole authority for civil enforcement of the Limited Public Financing Act, which contains regulations for disbursing matching funds.

Purnell suspected irregularities in Bey’s campaign expenditures as early as January 2002, 10 months before he asked the state FPPC to initiate an investigation.

The March 2002 election was the first in Oakland to offer public financing to candidates who agreed to abide by voluntary spending limits. Candidates in the election could qualify for up to $14,700 in matching public funds from a special account established by the city to help defray the cost of running for office.

Matched contributions had to be $100 or less. The Committee to Elect Nedir Bey reported it had raised a total of $14,517, of which $14,178 was eligible for matching funds. The campaign reported it spent a total of $39,741 on the election.

Documents obtained from the FPPC through a public records request show that of 145 contributions, 123 were made with $99 money orders with sequential numbers, all apparently purchased from the same location over a four-day period between Jan. 14 and 18, 2002. Only 22 donations to Bey’s campaign were written on personal checks.

Purnell asked Bey prior to disbursing the matching funds if the money orders were purchased at the same time in bundles and if anyone other than the donor had purchased them. Bey declined to comment for this story, but he explained to Purnell at the time that the donors were transported to the store en masse to buy the money orders, and he promised no one else had obtained them for the donors.

Bey also assured Purnell that the listed contributors were adults who gave their own money, as required by law, although 26 donors listed their addresses as either 5832 or 5836 San Pablo, locations used at that time by Your Black Muslim Bakery.

Once Bey got the money, he stopped filing required campaign finance statements with the city. When he eventually filed them in September 2002, the forms offered no detailed accounting of the $39,741 worth of expenditures. Nor did Bey explain the gap between the amount spent on his campaign and the contributions received, which came to $28,695, including the public matching funds.

Often the bulk of election costs come from fees paid to consultants, printed campaign materials, fundraising events, and office rental. Bey’s committee paid all but $500 to a person by the name of Vaughan Foster, who provided no address or further identification. Foster reportedly received $27,000 for salary, $11,000 for circuutf8g petitions, $241 for voter registration, and $1,000 for phone banking.

Bey’s birth name is Victor Foster.

The Public Ethics Commission received a complaint and ultimately voted in August 2002 to forward the matter to the state FPPC after a stormy hearing during which Bey told the commissioners he was “not a professional politician,” as the Contra Costa Times reported. He also told the commission he “would not bow down to [them].”

In an Oct. 10, 2002, letter to state authorities, Purnell wrote, “The commission believes this matter is important because the commission relies on the content and accuracy of campaign statements to help administer its matching fund program.”

The FPPC has moved to subpoena bank records and other materials during the intervening years. But in August 2007, nearly five years after Purnell’s initial request and four years after he forwarded hundreds of pages of documentation from the campaign to Dan Schek, an FPPC investigator, Bey received a letter declaring the case closed.

Jean Quan, the District 4 incumbent who ran against Bey in 2002, said she didn’t recall him stumping widely or knocking on doors in the area’s neighborhoods. She was surprised he raised $15,000 from private donors to begin with and said he didn’t appear to spend much of it on campaign signs.

“I ran into a few fliers of his,” she said, “but nothing that would cost $30,000.”

According to the city’s municipal code governing elections, the Public Ethics Commission is supposed to “promptly advise” the city attorney in writing, as well as the “appropriate prosecuting enforcement agency,” of any evidence of criminal violations.

The law states, “any person who knowingly or willfully misrepresents his or her eligibility for matching funds … is guilty of a misdemeanor.”

The law also gives the local commission broad latitude to recover the funds, including penalties and fines not to exceed $1,000 per violation, and authorizes the commission to sue the candidate.

But none of that was done in Bey’s case, Purnell said. The matter was referred to the state because the Ethics Commission does not have the authority to enforce state elections laws, which at that time appeared to be Bey’s most obvious violation, Purnell said.

“To make a criminal complaint we have to prove intent,” Purnell said.

He said he was never pressured by anyone to refer the matter to the state instead of local authorities. Back then he had no idea who Bey was, that he was connected to Your Black Muslim Bakery, or that he had defaulted on a $1.1 million economic revitalization loan from the city of Oakland just a few years before running for the Oakland City Council, Purnell said.

“I didn’t know Nedir Bey from Adam,” Purnell said, adding that he later learned of Bey’s background from a November 2002 article in the East Bay Express.

“What I recall him telling me was that it was a big grassroots effort on his part, that many of his contributors were poor and lived in a complex and he organized them to go down there [to buy the money orders],” Purnell said. “It sounded plausible.”

The city’s original public financing ordinance was less restrictive regarding matching contributions than it is now, partly because of the Bey case. Contributions made by money order are no longer eligible for matching funds and now must be made on two-party checks drawn on the bank account of the contributors.

In the past, Bey has represented himself as a “spiritual adviser” to the late Antar Bey, who was briefly head of Your Black Muslim Bakery. Other bakery associates face numerous criminal charges in Alameda County, including torture, kidnapping, real estate fraud, and the Aug. 2, 2007, killing of Oakland journalist Bailey, who was working on stories about the Bey empire.

Most recently Nedir Bey served as president of the school site council for Fruitvale Elementary School.

Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, said the understaffed FPPC couldn’t investigate every small-time municipal election.

But, he said, “when the ethics commission realized the FPPC wasn’t acting on the case quickly, then Oakland really should have begun looking at it.”

Cecily Burt is a staff writer for MediaNews, one of the Guardian‘s partners in the Chauncey Bailey Project. For more information and to read past stories, go to www.sfbg.com/news/chaunceybailey.

Video Mutants: Ryan Trecartin streams/flows into onlive timeslot, TOtal nowhere emotion expansion

-
0

In this week’s Super Ego nightlife etc. column, as part of our Video Mutants issue, I handheld display my growing obsession with young artist Ryan Trecartin, who somehow squares club culture and diverts the neon identity parade into a tributary of parodied obnoxion (with Internet hyperquotes). By which I mean, “Damn! I think I just got dissed in a nextdoor dimension, but I like it that way.”

I-BE AREA (Double Jamie, Ramada Omar, and Sally Man Pause)

Ryan – who’s represented by the bigtime Elizabeth Dee Gallery in NYC – has a total Pro Tools grasp on irreality and its obverse reality, what’s beneath people performing, and his video work combines Mardi Gras parade giddiness (he spent time living in New Orleans), Web 2.0 blank paradise, and head-trip introspection with way incredible about me’s. Electronic ghosts, phased identities, realtime spots and trailers .. the online is performed in trashy afterlife/live/death here, and it wears a sparkling wig. Plus, Ryan does fabulous things with windows. JK/JK

I like to think there’s a deep current of nightlife reference running through feature-length works like A Family Finds Entertainment and I-BE AREA. Although who the hell knows? Ryan’s worked with at least one local beloved club presence, Patrik Sandberg — of ‘90s-flashback pirate radio show “Cobain in a Coma” and “drugged out goth shoegaze dream pop party” Spaced, at the Knockout — who plays space-waif gift-giver Craig Ricky in I-BE AREA and tells me that Ryan’s “holding a mirror up to a generation that lives a significant part of their lives online, in a way that makes fun of but also adores it. Not only that, I can’t stop quoting him.”

OK Agreed. And more than guilty above. So, yeah, I freaked and zoned and freaked again when Ryan agreed to answer some art critic avatar agenda questions over one whole e-mail about his digital video mental.

SF Bay Guardian: In I-BE AREA, the Wood Shop is like the most nightmarish gay dance club I’ve never been to. I dream about it a lot. How did you put together the Wood Shop scenes?

I-BE AREA (WoodShopBoys Ramada Omar and Jamies Band)

Ryan Trecartin: It was a three shoot workout, in a space called The Woodshop Drama Room one of three rooms that make up Jamie’s Area which is a conceptual part-Cyber-hybrid Platform that obeys and functions with in both laws of Physics and virtual-non-linear reality and potential in Web 2.0/ultra-wiki communication malfunction liberation flow, add-on, and debate presentation. The main structure is the character Jamie her self- a total control damage freak with independent log-ins, muse extension people, and live-links. The Wood Shop is a situation stage where pho-male-cyber-gays login to over posted anti-productive decisive message board dead-end faggoting activities. Jamie has a composer status in this scene during another timeslot using her saw and wood dictating with wireless momentum control and influence over her haters at work, while mirroring in Dark Jam Band form, on cell-phone with Ramada Omar in Class Room separated by a closed Window (3 time slots being viewed). The Wood Shop Fags search-out wanting a free channel edge and perform a permanent Window opening on Ramada Omar Freeing it to an independent Multi-tasking shape shifting reality pool. The actual shoot was really fun. It had a script but was the most abstract shoot of the whole movie-lots of improvisations and an everyone talked at the same time, making a don’t be quiet on the set situation. Like planed home video- script-destruction theme over goal. My favorite part is when Solomon (black hair pig-tale mall goth wig) has a brick ready for the Break Down, in cell phone placement and says nothing about someone calling him on his phone an “Said”, over and over like it’s a presidential victory speech with supporters and reason promoting a total nowhere emotion expansion with self eating content, saying… what?—don’t use hotmale log out to log In father fucker.

Guardian v. SF Weekly: trial update

-
0

It’s extraordinary how the SF Weekly can take a clear legal defeat and try to turn it into a victory.

Yesterday the judge in the Bay Guardian’s lawsuit against the SF Weekly and its parent corporation refused to bar the Guardian’s key expert witness from testifying. The ruling was a clear victory for the Guardian – the Weekly had tried desperately to keep accountant and economic expert Clifford Kupperberg from taking the stand to present evidence of how much the Weekly’s predatory pricing had damaged the Guardian.

And yet, the Weekly’s Snitch blog trumpets the ruling as “Bay Guardian shakedown hits a snag,” arguing that Kupperberg had somehow repudiated his own testimony.

The Guardian is suing the SF Weekly and Village Voice Media for predatory pricing in violation of California business law. The suit charges that the Weekly, with cash support from the 16-paper chain, sold ads below cost for many years in an effort to harm the locally owned competitor.

The trial got underway this week, with early motions on the evidence. Here’s what actually happened in Superior Court judge Marla Miller’s courtroom Jan. 16th and 17th:

Kupperberg, following well-established standards, had developed two scenarios to explain how much the Guardian had lost due to the Weekly’s practice of selling ads below cost. One of the scenarios used data from members of the Associate of Alternative Newsweeklies, information that the papers share with each other once a year to establish industry financial benchmarks.

The SF Weekly’s lawyers argued that part of the data – the material from AAN — wasn’t reliable, so Kupperberg agreed to use his other standards (including New Times own figures in 17 different markets) instead. He also added data from two other Bay Area alternative papers and from local retail sales statistics to buttress his conclusions. His data suggests damages of $5 million to $10 million.

And after the SF Weekly lawyers argued for hours that Kupperberg be disqualified, Judge Miller ruled clearly and unequivocally against them. Kupperberg will be able to testify, and his damages will be admissible.

That’s a big victory for the Guardian.

And while the Weekly lawyers demanded extra time and sought to delay once again a case that’s been in the works for more than three years, Miller moved forward and started the jury selection process Jan.17.

If this is how the SF Weekly and the VVM guys from Phoenix are going to cover the trial, we’re going to have to spend a lot of time correcting the record.

For more context and background on the case, and to see one of our key legal motions and read the story on the case from the Daily Journal click here.

Titties on fire, fashion aflame

-
0

By Candice Chan

Flaming bras. Typically not my first apparel choice to strut about town, but after attending last night’s Hot Couture: A Fusion of Fire and Fashion, put on by The Crucible, I am seriously considering it.

hot1.jpg

In its 9th anniversary show, the center combines work by local clothing and jewelry designers with impressive blacksmithing – fire-spewing tail spikes, anyone? – to create an incendiary spectacular which ensures that everyone gets a little somethin’ somethin’. Think Cirque du Soleil meets Hades meets fashion week in New York.

hot2.jpg

Messy Marv at large

-
0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Even the short list of elite Bay Area rappers — say, Too Short, E-40, Keak Da Sneak, and Mistah FAB — must include the Fillmore’s own Marvin Watson Jr., a.k.a. Messy Marv. Since selling 15,000 units of his debut, Messy Situations (Ammo, 1996), at age 16, Mess has consistently earned impressive independent numbers: his solo discs Disobayish (Scalen/Sumday, 2004) and Bandannas, Tattoos, and Tongue Rings (Scalen/SMC, 2005) both sold 20,000, while his collaboration with San Quinn, Explosive Mode (Presidential, 1998), has moved more than 50,000.

Mess began 2007 with Da Bidness (Gateway/SMC), the creation of a supergroup formed with Keak and PSD, which, according to SMC’s Will Bronson, was last year’s best-selling local independent disc, at 19,000 and counting. Mess’s current project, Draped Up and Chipped Out 2 (Scalen/SMC), dropped at the year’s end. By mid-December, Draped was the number one independent and number 13 overall album on the Music Monitor Network, which tracks sales from major United States indie chains.

The soundtrack to an uncompleted film, Draped consists mostly of songs by Mess — spitting alongside national talent like Mike Jones, Juvenile, and Sean Paul — plus tracks from local heavyweights like G-Stack and B-Legit. Despite its various hands, the disc still has an album feel, containing some of Mess’s best work since Bandannas. Highlights include his singles "My Life Is a Movie," which showcases a hook by the late Mac Dre, and "Sei Luv," a rare foray into romantic R&B. With multiple business ventures in the works — including a clothing line and a reality TV show — and perpetual major-label interest, Mess is as likely as any Bay rapper to go nationwide.

Coming from the Fillmore’s projects, however, presents challenges most artists don’t face. When I spoke with Mess, he was fresh out of Santa Rita Jail, where he spent the past year on a weapons charge.

"I was charged with felony possession of a firearm, my second firearm case," he said. "The deal was three years’ state pen, but my legal defense got me a year. Now I’m back out, trying to turn my negative situation into a positive.

"Jail didn’t stagnate anything as far as my label Scalen," continued Mess, who even recorded a Draped intro behind bars. "They had a phone so I could do my business and my time. I have a strong team behind me."

Nonetheless, given California’s three-strikes law, another felony gun charge could land Mess serious prison time. When asked if he’s worried, however, he got a little heated.

"Now you sound like the SF police," he said — the last thing a rap reporter wants to hear. "Are we trying to make people think I don’t care about going to jail?" he asked, citing his displeasure with a May 15, 2007, San Francisco Chronicle article implying his gun toting had ruined his career opportunities.

"I felt real exploited by that article," Mess said. "I said I’d rather be caught with than without, any day. The way the murder rate is, it’s like that. I don’t regret any of it. I’d rather people read about me in jail than read about me dying or being shot."

He has a point. I absolutely hate guns, as do SF voters, who passed Proposition H — banning possession and sale of firearms within city limits — in 2005. But Prop. H was struck down Jan. 9 by the First District Court of Appeal, based on a challenge by the National Rifle Association, for conflicting with state law, and I think it’s hypocritical to condemn rappers for carrying guns in a society that refuses to ban them. Street rappers like Mess have to maintain a presence in the hood to preserve their credibility and fan base. But money and fame make them targets for violent crime.

"We need some kind of protection," insisted Bay legend Spice 1, who was shot in the chest during a Dec. 3, 2007, attempt to break into his Escalade while he slept inside. The bullet pierced his lung, leaving him in critical condition, though he’s now out of danger and recovering.

"Entertainers should get a break, but we can’t even wear [bulletproof] vests," added Spice, who has had six gun charges, including four in California that predate the three-strikes law. "Marv ain’t trying to jack nobody. He’s trying to protect himself."

In any case, despite the risks, Mess has no intention of abandoning his hood. Beyond the usual rapper’s neighborhood pride, he has taken on an active role in attempting to turn negatives into positives. Aside from using his label to employ youths whose criminal records and/or poor education make getting jobs nearly impossible, he’s put out two volumes of Fillmore Nation (Scalen/SMC, 2006) to help young rappers launch their careers. He intends to donate a portion of the profits to two Fillmore community centers.

"When I got my position in the music industry, I didn’t turn my back on the kids," Mess said. "I’m out here with these kids, these criminals, and they look at me as hope because I was the same way. When they look at me, they can say, ‘If Messy Marv can do it, I can do it.’<0x2009>"

All told, I think San Francisco — or at least the Fillmore — is better off with Mess on the street than in a cell.

Showdown at 55 Laguna

-
0

› sarah@sfbg.com

Time is running out on attempts by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, State Sen. Carole Migden, and Assemblymember Mark Leno to secure greater affordable-housing levels from the University of California, which wants to build private residential units on its UC Berkeley Extension campus at 55 Laguna in San Francisco.

Since the school site closed more than three years ago, critics have questioned how the UC’s plan for the campus, which served a public use for more than 150 years, will benefit the community, while preservationists succeeded in getting the campus awarded historic landmark status.

But with the UC claiming "unrestricted power to take and hold real and personal property for the benefit of the university" in a public statement, the city’s regulatory power is limited. The San Francisco Planning Commission is scheduled to consider the project Jan. 17, including the demolition of Middle Hall Gymnasium, the oldest building on the campus, and Richardson Hall Annex. But local and state legislative officials are focused on trying to get more affordable housing at the site.

Although negotiations were still ongoing at Guardian press time, the UC’s plan was to demolish the two historically landmarked buildings on the 5.8-acre Hayes Valley campus and build 450 new housing units, 16 percent of them to be offered below market rates, about the minimum number under the city’s inclusionary-housing law.

"But we’re pushing hard at the bottom line," said Mirkarimi, who, along with Migden, Leno, the city’s Planning Department, the Mayor’s Office of Housing, and affordable-housing activists, has been meeting with developer A.F. Evans and Openhouse, a local nonprofit that intends to build an 80-unit, market-rate, LGBT-friendly, senior residential community on the site.

"And we are trying at a separate venue to appeal to the UC Regents to be more sensitive and cooperative in what their bottom line profitability level is," Mirkarimi, whose District 5 includes Hayes Valley, told the Guardian.

Mirkarimi said he’s in favor of preserving all five buildings at the site but that both the Planning Commission’s Landmark Advisory Committee and the Board of Supervisors have voted to preserve only three. "We are trying to be pragmatic yet clear as to what our objectives are in trying to make a complex deal that’s triangulated by UC Berkeley, A.F. Evans, and Openhouse, with UC as the big daddy in the room.

"UC can do almost what UC wants. But the city’s leverage comes from UC asking for housing to be built and requesting a zoning change at a site that has become a magnet for grime and crime," Mirkarimi said. "It would also be negligent for UC to let this site remain in its current condition.

Under state law, the UC is exempt from city and county zoning and building codes if it builds educational facilities or projects that are deemed to be in the public interest. But according to officials with the City Attorney’s Office, the UC is not exempt from such codes if it turns over its land for private development.

And then there’s the city’s claim that it never conveyed the title to Waller Street, which lies between Buchanan and Laguna streets and is essential to the project, giving opponents some leverage. The UC disputes the city’s claim, but Mirkarimi maintains that the Board of Supervisors’ control of the street "provides a contingency plan if we are not making progress. And either way, UC is going to have to pay for the right to Waller."

The UC’s 55 Laguna project manager Kevin Hufferd confirmed that he is having "ongoing discussions with state and city officials" but declined to comment further.

"Frustrating" is how queer affordable-housing activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca described the last-minute discussions about the 55 Laguna development plan. "A.F. Evans claims it won’t be making any money and that they can’t do any more," Mecca told the Guardian. He attended a Jan. 11 meeting with the company at which, he claims, the developers offered to increase affordability levels to 19.5 percent but Mirkarimi pushed for more.

"To his credit, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi keeps saying this is unacceptable," Avicolli Mecca said, also lauding the Mayor’s Office of Housing for trying to make Openhouse’s project "100 percent affordable."

Currently, Openhouse’s development includes no below-market-rate units, a situation Avicolli Mecca claims the MOH hopes to change "through bringing in subsidies."

"Obviously, we are not against queer senior housing," Avicolli Mecca said. "The issue is that this is a lousy deal. What are we getting? Nothing, but UC gains a lot of money. There’s a crazy need for affordable housing and no way to justify this plan."

Filmmaker Eliza Hemingway, whose documentary Uncommon Knowledge records how the UC shuttered 55 Laguna with no input from — and little concern for — staff, students, and the surrounding community, believes that people have lost sight of the public use issue.

"They are worn down by the struggle, by trying to find a compromise because the space is empty, but the question remains: why is a public campus being privately developed?" Hemingway told us. She mourns the loss of educational programs and spaces that benefited the community and the lack of transparency that has marred the UC’s plans.

"For there to have been such huge barriers to the public process over what is a huge amount of public land is unfortunate," Hemingway said.

Cynthia Servetnick of the Save the UC Berkeley Extension Laguna Street Campus told us her group is prepared to file a lawsuit under the California Environmental Quality Act if the project as currently proposed is approved.

"We’d rather see a project that has 40 percent affordable housing at 50 percent [area median income] than a lawsuit, but $38,000 a year [which would be the annual income requirement for seniors, the disabled, and people with AIDS to be able to afford one of Openhouse’s units] is too high," she said, noting that the proposed units are small but could go for $4,000 a month, rising to $7,000 monthly for those who need more services and staff.

Claiming that recognition of the campus as a historic landmark assists project sponsors in accessing preservation incentives, including federal tax credits, Servetnick said, "A.F. Evans has its [environmental impact report] complete and is clearing the way for 450 units, but they could do that and save all the historic buildings, thus having the same profitability but more affordability. It’s now or never. This is a new term for the mayor, we have a new city planning director, John Rahaim, and officials open to negotiating a win-win."

Migden was even more blunt. "Poor old queers need a place to retire too," she said. "Either Evans and the UC up the affordability level to 40 or 50 percent and guarantee that some of the senior LGBT units are subsidized, or the project dies."

As of press time, A.F. Evans, Openhouse, the SF Planning Department, and UC representatives had not returned the Guardian‘s calls.

Deferring to Mirkarimi to make an official announcement, Leno said, "I know that the meetings have been ongoing and that the issue of affordability is a priority, and I’m hopeful that we will have an agreement among all stakeholders shortly."

1...252253254...294Page 253 of 294

48hills.org is the official publication of the non-profit San Francisco Progressive Media Center.
Contact us: info@48hills.org