Local Archives — Page 277 of 294 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The McClatchy Strib: RIP? WTF? Pruitt’s Folly, big-daily blues, and the invasion of the stripper-flippers

January 10, 2007

By Bruce B. Brugmann

The above head was on the best analysis so far of the McClatchy sale of the Minneapololis Star Tribune to an unknown New York private equity firm with no newspaper holdings nor experience.
It was written by Steve Perry, longtime editor of City Pages, the alternative paper in Minneapolis, and ran in Monday’s edition.

It is a classic alternative press story by an editor who is also good reporter and it shows once again the indispensable value of an alternative paper that is fulfilling its real mission to be alternative to and competitive with the local monopoly daily. No other daily or magazine, in Minnesota or probably anywhere else, will do this kind of excellent media criticism and local power structure reporting and analysis. And nobody will follow the story as City Pages will undoubtedly do.

Let me cite one paragraph of Perry’s report to make the point. Perry sets Pruitt up with some self-immolating quotes and asks the question: “So again: How exactly does selling off this paper at this moment, for considerably less than prevailing industry standards would have dictated, constitute prudent fiscal management?”

Perry provides some answers: “Mike Meyers thinks he knows the answer: It makes no sense at all. The paper’s 57-year-old economics reporter is a figure legendary around the newsroom for his gruffness, acuity, and anti-sentimentality. (‘Don’t ask me how I feel about the sale,’ he growled by way of a howdy=do when I phoned him.
‘I don’t deal in feelings. What matters is the set of facts surronding the sale, which are very clear.’) He has no compunction about sharing his theory of events (‘no, on the record. I hate people who go off the record’), which is simple and to the point: McClatchy management fucked up and put itself in a position where it had to sell something to pay its tax bill.”

And then Meyers and Perry lay out their answer to the question headline that led the story: “PRUITT’S FOLLY: IS THERE A SMOKING GUN IN THE STRIB FIRE SALE?”

Note: Why is the silence out here so deafening–owners, managers, staff, unions– in commenting publicly on the capers of the Galloping Conglomerati (Hearst, Singleton, McClatchy, Gannett, Stephens) who are moving as quietly as they can, sealing key documents in a critical federal court case, to set up a regional monopoly? If anybody knows anybody who wants to talk publicly, let us know at the Guardian. Meanwhile, I am getting no comment from Hearst corporate via Chronicle Publisher Frank Vega and Chronicle Editor Phil Bronstein. Soon, I will tell you why. B3

City Pages: The McClatchy Strib: RIP. WTF?

Funny business

January 9, 2007

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

The world has rushed headlong and with questionable taste into 2007. Whatever else that implies, it wouldn’t be funny if not for SF Sketchfest. The annual comedy showcase, which sails in buoyantly every January, grows fresher by the year, despite being nearly as old as this increasingly passé century.

Admittedly, the Bay Area has several admirable places to go for comedy — evergreen locales like Cobb’s, newer nooks like the Dark Room, and a couple yearly improv festivals, for example. But since its inception in 2002, SF Sketchfest has not only made room for more, it’s featured unique programming that only gets savvier.

"Each year we like to add new elements," cofounder David Owen says, "new acts, new venues, new styles of comedy, new workshops and interactive events." Audiences, meanwhile, have responded with enthusiasm. Houses are packed, and the lineup is almost always impressive. To run down the roster of SF Sketchfest 2007 is to press nose to glass and ogle the comedy candy on display: Upright Citizens Brigade’s Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh; MadTV ‘s Andrew Daly; Mr. Show ‘s David Cross and Bob Odenkirk (albeit in separate acts); Naked Babies (with Rob Corddry of Daily Show fame); a tribute to Paul Reubens (that’s Paul "Pee-wee Herman" Reubens, of course); and much more.

Although Owen says the plan was always to grow SF Sketchfest into something bigger and better, he and colleagues Janet Varney and Cole Stratton originally conceived of the project in narrower, rather pragmatic terms — namely, as a means of getting their own act, the comedy troupe Totally False People, an extended run on a downtown stage.

"We frankly couldn’t afford to rent a theater on our own," he says. "So we teamed up with five other Bay Area groups — and we called it SF Sketchfest." Six years later, Owen looks back on this modest scheme with some justifiable awe. "When we were first putting it together, I don’t think we ever dreamed it would be where it is today."

There was plenty of magic even in that more low-key first year. But SF Sketchfest almost immediately reached out to national acts, which have seemed only too willing to oblige. The program has since blossomed into a sweet-smelling potpourri of wit from around the country while staying true to its original impetus by giving ample room to local groups such as Kasper Hauser, Killing My Lobster, and deeply strange soloist extraordinaire Will Franken.

If casting their net nationally while maintaining the fest’s original commitment to local acts takes considerable work ("Every year it’s a bit of a jigsaw puzzle," Stratton says, "only we don’t have a picture to work off of"), Sketchfest’s directors have, to their credit, repeatedly struck a fine balance, producing a formidable mix of major headliners and more up-and-coming comedians. "It gives audiences a chance to see groups they love with potentially the next big thing, and it gives the performers enthusiastic, packed houses," Stratton says, explaining the strategy. "We probably put together 50 calendars before we can put a lock on things, but it always comes together beautifully."

"We’re so particular about what we program every year," Varney says. "There isn’t a show in the calendar that we’re not incredibly excited about." Still, Varney cites among the festival’s particular strengths this year its "more interactive side," including workshops in comedy screenwriting (with The Baxter ‘s writer-director-star Michael Showalter), sketch writing (with San Francisco’s Kasper Hauser), and an improv master class (with Upright Citizens Brigade’s Matt Walsh). "These are seriously respected people offering their expertise," she says. Moreover, she promises with understandable confidence, "The workshops are going to be tremendously fun."

Then there’s TV-style audience participation. "Some of the performers from the ‘Comedy Death-Ray’ show [David Cross, Maria Bamford, and Paul F. Tompkins] will be doing their version of the old ’70s game show Match Game. Jimmy Pardo hosts the show, and it’s a really fun, relaxed environment where the audience gets to both participate and to see the comedians think on their feet," Varney says.

"And of course," she adds, "we’re really excited to honor Paul Reubens at this year’s SF Sketchfest Tribute." The event — which in years past has saluted the likes of Amy Sedaris (2004), Dana Carvey (2005), and Cross and Odenkirk (2006) — includes an audience Q&A with Reubens after he has a sit-down conversation with journalist Ben Fong-Torres.

Closing night builds to a crescendo of sorts with a program of music and comedy, featuring Kids in the Hall veteran Bruce McCulloch (2005’s hilarious opener, back for more with accompanist Craig Northey) and two returning Los Angeles acts, the fine duo Hard ‘N Phirm and comedy rapper Dragon Boy Suede.

"Sketch is very strong right now," Stratton notes. "I think sites like YouTube are ushering in a new wave of sketch groups. High-quality cameras and editing equipment are readily available, so a lot of funny things are being produced and immediately snatched up online." It’s had a feedback effect on the comedy circuit. "A lot of groups mix their filmed stuff with live performance and tour festivals with it, a trend we’ve noticed increasing in the last few years. With festivals popping up in Chicago, Portland, Seattle, New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, and Vancouver, sketch is in high demand." *

SF SKETCHFEST

Jan. 11–28

Various venues

$10–$50

(415) 948-2494

www.sfsketchfest.com

Surreal genius

January 9, 2007

Are Kasper Hauser’s members the funniest people in San Francisco? Just try not busting a gut over the sketch troupe’s new SkyMaul: Happy Crap You Can Buy from a Plane, a takeoff on the SkyMall catalogs you find on airplanes. An uncanny takeoff. It’s stuffed with lovingly photographed faux products (including Our Safest Electric Jungle Gym, a steal at $599.99) and excessively cheerful copy (for the Racial Globe Toaster: "Press any country, and your toast will toast to the shade of its inhabitants’ skin!").

If you’ve seen Kasper Hauser live, you’ve witnessed their ability to write sketches that mash up the familiar and the absurd. And then there’s Kasper Hauser’s Web site, www.kasperhauser.com, which further showcases their talent for injecting surreal elements into a variety of media: short videos ("A Solution for Male Camel Toe") and the popular Kasper Hauser Comedy Podcast, plus a takeoff on Craigslist that’s equal parts bizarre and hilarious. The busy comedians are also working on a pilot proposal for Current TV.

As the quartet prepared for SkyMaul-themed shows at both the Chicago and San Francisco Sketchfests (local performances are Jan. 17, 19, and 21), I visited KH HQ in the Mission, where Dan Klein, Rob Baedeker, James Reichmuth, and John Reichmuth — former Stanford classmates who’ve been performing together since 2000 — chatted about parody, creativity, and the importance of staying staunchly San Franciscan. (Cheryl Eddy)

SFBG Have you noticed that audiences have more awareness of sketch comedy, given the rise of festivals like SF Sketchfest? Or do people still want to yell things out like it’s an improv show?

JOHN REICHMUTH I don’t really like to use the word sketch very much because it usually gets a bad reaction. That is what we are, but people take that as sort of a euphemism for "quick and undeveloped" and "over the top." "Zany." We hate the word zany — random, zany, silly. Those are just words that mean that the person did not watch you. [Other members laugh.] I think that each city that has a sketch fest has seen [awareness of the form] grow. Clearly, it’s happened in San Francisco; what you have is an audience with much more clearly defined expectations.

SFBG What can audiences expect from this year’s show?

ROB BAEDEKER With SkyMaul, we adapted material from the book and then used some old characters and sketches and sort of cobbled together a show that’s new in most ways.

JOHN REICHMUTH It’s a narrative about the company, the imaginary [SkyMaul] company, but it’s surreal like we are. It just sort of transcends time and space and physical laws.

SFBG How did you come up with the premise for the book? Obviously, everyone who’s been on a plane has seen a SkyMall catalog.

DAN KLEIN We’d fly to festivals, basically, and we’d grab the SkyMall….

JAMES REICHMUTH We would write captions above [the photos] and try to crack each other up.

KLEIN We have a great book agent, Danielle Svetkov, who actually came to us and said, "You guys gotta have a book in you somewhere." When we gave her the proposal, we had two offers in two days.

JOHN REICHMUTH We also started the proposal with the words "fuck you." [Everyone laughs.] It said "Fuck you. No, I’m serious. Fuck you — that is such a great idea."

BAEDEKER That was all in quotes, and then it said, "That’s what people say when they hear that we’re working on this book."

JOHN REICHMUTH That is actually how we pitched it. The first words of our pitch were "fuck you." But one of the things that we deal with now is wanting to make sure people read the book — we don’t want people to think that it’s just funny photos but to find the little gems in the writing.

SFBG Anything that didn’t make it into the book?

JAMES REICHMUTH Our publishers suggested very few changes contentwise. There were two products that they said no to: al-Qaeda action figures, which I’m sure someone has done, and the "One True Cock Ring." But that was more of a Lord of the Rings copyright thing.

SFBG You’ve obviously found ways to channel your creativity into a variety of avenues, not just live performance. How has living in San Francisco influenced you?

JAMES REICHMUTH As a comedian, staying in San Francisco is to really choose to have a different kind of career. The biggest choice you make as a comedian is to not move to LA or New York.

JOHN REICHMUTH It takes you off this track where you’re waiting for someone else to validate you or make you into a star or something. You just make your own business. You create something different.

SFBG You’ve performed in SF Sketchfest every year since its inception. What’s your take on the festival?

JAMES REICHMUTH If you look at the lineup now, it’s one of the best comedy festivals in America, without question. Their ambition every single year is astounding, and it’s all Dave Owen, Janet Varney, and Cole Stratton who just make this happen. The thing that’s so great about it is that it’s not just sketch comedy — it’s basically everything but straight stand-up. And straight stand-up is the one kind of comedy that everybody in America has seen way too much of. So anything they see at the festival is bound to be surprising to them as well as being at least as funny as anything they’ve seen before.

SFBG When you’re writing, do you have a pretty good sense of what’s going to be funny to an audience?

KLEIN There have been a couple of things that have made all four of us laugh over and over and just — if the audience doesn’t laugh at some point, you just gotta give up and move on.

JAMES REICHMUTH It’s pointless to say something like "Well, that audience didn’t get it." It’s either a success or a failure. Finding your audience is one thing, but it’s, like, they laughed or they didn’t. We try to avoid being hack or cheap —

JOHN REICHMUTH Or topical.

JAMES REICHMUTH In the end, it’s just all about laughs.

KLEIN If you can get the whole audience, then you get them crying and laughing so hard they’re spitting on the people in front of them.

JOHN REICHMUTH As a comedian, I think getting people to spit stuff out is number one. *

High tide

January 9, 2007

› kimberly@sfbg.com

Let’s face it: half the kick of discovering a little-known noodler or late-night four-tracker lies in the shock of the unknown. Jaded ears perk up at the sound of some never-was untouched by time, history, or, hell, pop itself — after all, musical obscuros like High Speed and the Afflicted Man, one of Wooden Shjips guitarist Ripley Johnson’s favorites, were far from popular.

Wooden Shjips itself — give or take that copycat culture–jamming "j" — might have easily slipped past notice. I first heard their 2005 three-song 10-inch, Shrinking Moon for You, by chance when Holy Mountain honcho John Whitson spun the disc at Hemlock Tavern — the ears pricked up to a dusty, droning cluster of fuzz, the hips jiggled along with those sleigh bells until the second guitar shrieked to the foreground. Hark, the groovy in extremis, raw ’60s-style teenage-riot drama of the Velvets or Spaceman 3. I was told it was a single by a local band that was giving away its searing psych stomp to anyone who e-mailed for a copy. I seem to remember dutifully firing off a message later. No response.

No wonder — Johnson ran through the original 300-copy pressing of Shrinking Moon after raves from music sites and blogs such as Dusted and Siltblog and the random high-five by Byron Coley in Wire. The next Wooden Shjips recording, the 2006 7-inch "Dance, California"/"Clouds over Earthquake," garnered further positivity, completely spoiling Johnson’s original plan of a worldwide free musical giveaway — a goodwill crusade of vinyl shareware, if you will, that embraced its own mystery.

"It became a little tricky once people started writing about it, like on blogs and stuff," Johnson said last week, chilling on a chilly SF evening with bassist Dusty Jermier in Eagle Tavern’s beer garden. "Then record stores wanted to carry it, but if it’s free, you can’t really sell it to them, and they wouldn’t take it for free."

Most artists should be so unlucky. But Johnson explained, "It was important to be consistent. Since no one knew the band, there was no way to sell them, so the initial idea was to just give them away, and if I couldn’t give them away, I actually had a plan to leave them on bus seats and in libraries. It didn’t work out that I had to do that.

"I mean, the one thing I didn’t want to end up with was a box of records that just sat in my closet, because I’ve been there before."

But it is fun for the treasure-trawling music collector geeking out on the thrill of discovery, which Johnson can relate to. "I think the other big inspiration was from private press records from the ’60s and ’70s — people who’d make their own record, maybe 100 copies, and it would be forgotten, and then 30 years later people would discover it and decide it was the greatest record they’d ever heard," he said, citing High Speed and George Brigman on San Francisco’s Anopheles Records as inspirations. "Just press the record, make music — why wait? Why do you need a label? Why do you need people to like you to make a record? You can just make it, and if people don’t like it, maybe they’ll like it in 20 years."

Instead, "there was a lot of going down to the post office every day and mailing out records, which is really fun to a certain degree," he continued. "It’s cool to be contacted by people all over the world." They’d PayPal him shipping and extra money to coax him to send his single as far afield as New Zealand, Japan, and Lebanon. All of which has led to a forthcoming full-length for Holy Mountain, singles for Sub Pop and France’s Pollymaggoo imprint, and shows at South by Southwest — after Wooden Shjips play their first show at Cafe du Nord on Jan. 15.

"We’re actually having goals thrust upon us," said Johnson, a Wallingford, Conn., native who works as a systems administrator at CNET. "We’re sort of drowning in goals at this point — a lot of offers to put out records, show offers."

It’s a radical change from Johnson’s last, late ’90s band, Botulism. "We would pretty much clear rooms," he recalled. The first "iteration" of Wooden Shjips, which began a few years ago, consisted of nonmusicians. Johnson wanted bandmates who would bring the willingness to learn but leave the ego at home. "Musicians are a pain in the ass," said the grinning guitarist, who confesses he did want to "dictate a little bit." Unfortunately, nonmusicians also didn’t often come with the dedication. "In fact, in the first version our drummer quit because we started talking about playing shows," Johnson added, chuckling.

Making music — white label or no — continues to be the focus: Johnson, Jermier, "nonmusician" keyboardist Nash Whalen, and drummer Omar Ahsanuddin have already begun recording on a creaky eight-track reel-to-reel in the SoMa practice space they share with the Fucking Champs. And perhaps Johnson will find use for the box of Botulism singles he has in his closet, selling them as Wooden Shjips juvenilia. "I’d rather just revert to the old plan and put them on bus seats or in the library," he said with a smile, "and see if people discover them on their own." *

WOODEN SHJIPS

Mon/15, 9 p.m.

Cafe du Nord

2170 Market, SF

Free

(415) 861-5016

Dark days indeed

January 9, 2007

French noir rarely darkened, deepened, or explored more nuanced shades of gray and shadow than in the films of Jean-Pierre Melville. From his breakthrough gangster ode, Bob le Flambeur (1955), through 1962’s underrated Le Doulos to the trio that put Alain Delon’s icy beauty to proper use, Le Samouraï (1967), Le Cercle Rouge (1970), and Un Flic (1972), Melville infused the genre with a rigorous, formal power while simultaneously shooting quickly, stylishly, and on location. In the process he inspired new wavers–to–come with his resourceful quasi-vérité derring-do.

Yet not all of the director’s films were caper exercises: Melville started his career with a 1950 collaboration with Jean Cocteau, Les Enfants Terribles — World War II loomed large over the onetime Resistance fighter’s imagination. Joseph Kessel’s Army of Shadows was the book he waited to shoot for 25 years after discovering it in 1943, and in 1969 the filmmaker applied his eminently masculinized brand of hard-boiled cool as well as his compelling yet oppressive sense of landscape and character — and their interplay — to the text. The stunningly beautiful and shockingly poignant product finally saw its release in the States last year, and it says as much about Melville, his cold dreamscapes, and his idealistic though traumatized response to war (and resistance) as perhaps The Big Red One, Battle Royale, and even Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! might say about the works of kindred battle-scarred directors Sam Fuller, Kinji Fukasaku, and Russ Meyer, respectively. Here Melville, who later told an interviewer he never intended to make a film about the Resistance, and Kessel — also the author of that psychosexual romp into the subconscious of an immaculate bourgeois, Belle du Jour — use wartime experiences the director later described as "awful, horrible … and marvelous" to illustrate a piercingly conflicted existential love letter to the past that fellow Resistant Albert Camus could have signed off on.

The past, as it turns out, was both enthralling and dreadful. Melville’s camera almost vibrates with the morose shock value of Army of Shadows‘s opening long shot: German troops filing through — or defiling — the Champs-Élysées. From there Melville jumps to a van carrying a gendarme and a dark figure in spectacles, and the cop personably remarks on the convenience of their concentration camp destination and how it can now be used to house prisoners of France’s Nazi occupiers — until he spies the handcuffs on his traveling companion and catches himself. The viewer is pulled into the deceptively friendly scene, lulled by the bland banality of evil — and French complicity — while Melville continues swinging between points of view, from the soft gray matter of the forgetful cop to the blunt-object reverie of a French concentration camp commander dealing with the other man in the vehicle: Resistance leader and civil engineer Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura).

The director finally settles mainly in the mind of Gerbier, who, as played by onetime wrestler Ventura, can’t shake an antihero veneer despite his upper-crusty suits. The watchful Gerbier bides his time in the camp, gauges the prisoner demographic makeup, and begins to hatch an escape plan with a young Communist, until he’s suddenly summoned to the area’s Nazi headquarters. His act of daring there — based on a story told to Melville by a Gaullist deputy — almost leaps off the screen. The director calibrates the tension, engineers its release, then does it once again in an exquisitely loaded scene between a Vichy barber and a customer, each playing at normalcy during insanity.

Army of Shadows reveals the rest of Gerbier’s shadowy group with the offhand vibe of a chat with the local gendarme, and they’re more a gang than an army, including the stalwart Felix (Paul Crauchet); former Legionnaire Le Bison (Christian Barbier); the quivering Le Masque (Claude Mann); the boldly heroic, Marianne-like Mathilde (Simone Signoret, portraying a loosely sketched Lucie Aubrac); playboy Jean François Jardie (Jean-Pierre Cassel); and network chief, Jardie’s seemingly ivory-tower intellectual, deep-undercover brother, Luc (Paul Meurisse as a Jean Moulin figure). We find ourselves less in a traditional war film than embroiled in a tangle of arduous trips to England to visit a sequestered Charles de Gaulle, sudden arrests, subsequent betrayals, and then methodical hits, executed by the underground fighters, who operate under a code as rigid as any other gangster’s in Melville’s Guyville.

In an interview for the book Melville on Melville, the director bristled when he was reminded that some French critics equated the Resistants with thugs. Still, anyone familiar with Melville’s films will recognize the fighters’ toughened miens, accustomed to operating outside the law — and the feeling of dread at having to strangle a onetime compatriot quietly with one’s bare hands (when a previously arranged killing floor is now a few audible steps away from crying babes and frolicking schoolchildren). The dread here emerges from the fact that these ordinary citizens are compelled to commit both heroic and horrific acts: much like the jitterbuggers at the USO canteen that Gerbier crashes during a brief trip to England, these underground fighters — otherwise known as "terrorists" to the Nazis — are caught in an exhilarating and ultimately tragic tango with their occupiers.

Melville’s underground fighters resemble thugs because they’re operating in a similar mise-en-scène at the fringes of their occupied country’s laws. "A lot of people would have to be dead before one could make a true film about the Resistance and about Jean Moulin," the director told writer Rui Nogueira. "Don’t forget that there are more people who didn’t work for the Resistance than people who did." Nonetheless, Melville never shies away from his truth, gazing at the foes and fighters with equanimity, as when Gerbier confesses that his only love is for the chief, is forced to run from a Nazi machine-gun firing squad, and orders the death of a deputy who succumbed to weakness.

Though Melville’s cinematographer Pierre Lhomme, who supervised the 2004 digital restoration of the film, did a remarkable job recreating the film’s steely blue, brown, and gray palette, it’s the sound design that stands out today — for example, the rush of the ocean as Gerbier and Felix march a traitor down a small seaside town’s cobbled streets to his death. Wheels, motors, and heels clank like that dread old mechanism, the march toward denouement, a.k.a. death, found in any noirish plot. "You — in a car of killers," Gerbier sighs, regarding his beloved boss at Army of Shadows‘s close, one that reduced Kessler to tears when he read the biting coda added by the filmmaker. "Is nothing sacred anymore?" Melville achieved a sense of closure in making Army, certainly — and it rings true to his sense of manly fatalism like the clang of a cell door. (Kimberly Chun)

ARMY OF SHADOWS Thurs/11, 7:30 p.m., and Sat/13, 8:20 p.m. PFA, 2575 Bancroft, Berk. $4–$8. (510) 642-5249, www.bampfa.berkeley.edu

Careers and Ed: Look Ma, no grants

January 9, 2007

› culture@sfbg.com

Starving is overrated. No matter how romantic your notions of the long-suffering, misunderstood artiste, it’s hard to get around the fact that you’ll never get that big one-person show if the rain reduces your paintings to gesso mush because you don’t have a roof to put over them.

Enter the grant provider. Part john, part pimp, and possessing all the bureaucratic zeal of the most exacting mafioso, a grant foundation can seem like an ambivalent overlord to struggling creative types: while most artists want and need grant money, they may find expectations frustratingly impossible to meet. When you factor in an ever-increasing conservatism in the arts-funding world, it’s enough to make anyone wonder how to take artistic risks while still being kept in acrylic paint and photo fixer, much less food.

"That’s the thing about the arts these days. It’s so hard to get your project off the ground," Chesley Chen, a 38-year-old independent filmmaker, says over a piece of Safeway strawberry-rhubarb pie ("It’s surprisingly good") in his Sunset District flat. "The vast sum of money goes to sustain these megalithic art houses rather than nurturing local artists." Chen points out that because of today’s conservatism, most organizations are looking for safe projects to fund — ones lacking controversy and with an obvious social relevance.

It’s ironic, then, that Chen’s latest project is about as socially significant as it gets and yet he’s still struggling to secure meaningful funding. After being moved to tears by a piece in Harper’s last year written by a Ugandan woman suffering from AIDS, Chen began an e-mail relationship with Beatrice Were, an HIV-positive Ugandan mother who started the Memory Book Project for similarly afflicted women. Shunned by their communities because of the AIDS stigma, these mothers are given the chance by Were’s organization to share their thoughts and dreams for and with their children.

Chen soon realized what a powerful documentary the story would make. Problem was Chen found that most funding groups require a pitch reel to give an indication of what a finished project will look like — a logistical impossibility given Were’s location. But for Chen, abandoning the project wasn’t an option, so he was forced to look for alternatives.

SCORING DEVELOPMENT SUGAR DADDIES

Some organizations do offer seed money for projects, but these grants are extremely competitive and definitely for those who don’t mind plenty of demands and hand-holding. Creative Capital (www.creative-capital.org) is unique in that it views its funding model not as a philanthropic effort but as a venture capital investment. Founded in 1999 and offering grants in multiple disciplines, the organization usually works with its artists over a period of three to four years and offers advisory services, continuation funds, and even a yearly retreat. In return, each funded artist agrees to share a small percentage of profits with the group, which is used to fund other works — but only if their project turns a profit. The average grant is for $35,000, but out of roughly 3,000 applications a year, Creative Capital only awards about 50 grants.

For filmmakers, the Independent Television Service (www.itvs.org) offers research and development funding on an ongoing basis in conjunction with PBS. The grants cover expenses such as travel, script development, and the crucial fundraising reel. The group concedes that these funds are "extremely limited and highly competitive," but for those lucky chosen few, the ITVS offers something no other grant provider can: a "comprehensive public television launch" that provides marketing, publicity, station relations, and outreach support. In other words, people actually get a chance to see your work when it’s done.

For the record, Chen has been turned down for both. "With the exception of walking my dog, I don’t think I left my home for three or four days," he remembers. After the initial bout of earth-shattering depression, he decided that if he had to, he would shoulder the whole $60,000 budget himself and just go into debt. "Bankruptcy is not the most desirable thing, but there are worse things to go bankrupt for."

PIMPING POTENTIAL DONORS’ INCENTIVES

Chen decided to get a fiscal sponsor, a strategy he used to help fund his documentary Sandman, which aired on KQED last year. On paper, fiscal sponsorship seems like a counterproductive measure — the artist ends up actually paying the sponsor, not the other way around. But sometimes it makes real financial sense. Because of a sponsor’s nonprofit status, any person or organization making a donation will be able to write it off come tax time. Donations are made to a foundation under the project’s name, the foundation processes the paperwork, and then it gives the money to the artist less a fee. Essentially, the artist is piggybacking on the organization’s charity status. Any nonprofit can offer fiscal sponsorship, but it’s a good idea to go with one that knows what it’s doing — this will involve the IRS, after all. Another big benefit: sponsorship allows the artist to apply for grant funding that is usually only available to tax-exempt organizations.

For Memory Book, Chen is partnering with the San Francisco Film Arts Foundation (www.filmarts.org), which takes 7 percent of funds raised for its fee. This is higher than the 4 or 5 percent fee some foundations charge, but Film Arts makes up for it with a speedy turnaround time. Instead of having to wait for his money for up to seven or eight months, Chen will get it "as soon as the checks clear." Attaining a Film Arts sponsorship can be an arduous two- or three-month process, but the organization’s criteria are based more on fiscal feasibility and sound planning than inherent artistic value. If your fundraising outline consists of, as Chen puts it, a "cupcake sale every Saturday," you’ve got problems.

For fiscal sponsorship for all disciplines, check out the New York Foundation for the Arts (www.nyfa.org), which sponsors artists nationwide, offers assistance in everything from fundraising and budgeting to bookkeeping services, and has a detailed online database of available grants, NYFA Source.

SHAKING THAT DIY MONEYMAKER

Now that you’re nonprofited up, what’s the next step? For Chen, that was the $60,000 question. First he made sure his current lifestyle wasn’t going to siphon any money away from his project. "I cut out all luxury items," he says. "I stopped going to movies." He budgeted $20 a week for groceries (including pie). "I let my hair grow," he continues. "People wanted gifts for weddings. That wasn’t going to happen. Their present was me not starving."

Then Chen talked to a friend who mentioned she had experience arranging benefit dinners for various causes and asked if he was interested. "It was such a foreign idea," he says. "But she took care of almost everything." That included securing a private chef (who donated his services and provided his home for the feast), contacting retailers such as Mission District specialty grocery Bi-Rite Market (which donated the meat and produce), and convincing wine wholesalers to donate three bottles of vino per course. Students from City College’s culinary department volunteered to serve the 16 guests, who each paid a minimum of $250 to attend. From the dinner alone Chen raised $3,500. It might not sound like much, but put it in perspective: the Uganda hotel for his crew of four will cost $2,000 for the 21-day duration of the shoot.

Chen soon realized that directly soliciting in-kind donations might be the way to go. "Once I got over that initial reluctance, it was actually quite easy," he says. The dinner invitations were sent via e-mail, but Chen snail-mailed subsequent requests for cash for a more personal touch. First he sent requests, complete with self-addressed stamped envelopes, to the wealthiest people he knew, followed by the mere well-off, and finally, friends who may only be able to pitch in $10 or $20. He figures he’ll have raised upward of $10,000 before heading to Uganda this month.

Soon he’ll have his precious fundraising reel, which he plans on using in pitches to the Sundance Documentary Project and possibly HBO. Then, who knows? Maybe he’ll splurge and treat himself to a haircut. *

For more information on Chesley Chen’s Memory Book documentary or to make a donation, e-mail him at ccc@chesleychen.com.

Careers and Ed: Hard on the job

January 9, 2007

› culture@sfbg.com

Just a short walk northeast from the Hall of Justice in SoMa lies an internationally renowned palace of forbidden pleasure.

The nondescript four-story stone building is the headquarters for Kink, an online enterprise specializing in the production of short, sexy, streaming BDSM videos, available for a monthly subscription fee. Started by British bondage aficionado Peter Ackworth about a decade ago, Kink is home to such fetish favorites as Hogtied, Fucking Machines, and Ultimate Surrender (in which the winner of a female wrestling competition in a Greco-Roman setting gets to fuck the loser). It’s also — perhaps surprisingly — a great place to work, according to the people who work there. And that’s not just those strapped down in front of the cameras talking.

Granted, when you were young and dreaming of a fabulous career in film, porn might not have been your chosen niche. But if you’re looking for a job in media and are unenthused by the paltry postings on Craigslist offering the opportunity to work in the lackluster world of industrial video production, you might want to broaden your options. There used to be a steadier stream of work shooting commercials and Hollywood films on location here, but the high costs have caused that flow to taper off. Still, the Bay Area harbors a vibrant industry creating DVD and Internet adult content.

Crack all the jokes you want about the sleaziness of the porn business, but there’s some real dedication behind it. I used to have a job where I regularly interviewed people about their jobs: dot-com jobs, to be specific. Most of the time, the Web guru, marketing guru, or whatever guru I was interrogating would stare at me with a Stepford wife’s eyes and tell me what a blast it was to work at blobbity-blah.com. All the while I could hear the voice in his or her head blaring, "If my stock options end up amounting to nothing more than toilet paper, I’m gonna be pissed!"

Many local erotica production studios, on the other hand, offer a positive and creative work environment, upward mobility, and good pay with full benefits for everyone from customer service representatives to IT workers and video editors.

ONE HECK OF A DAY JOB

As I’m guided through the maze of sets at Kink — a jail cell, a dirty bathroom, a dungeon with vaulted ceilings reminiscent of the Doom video game, even a sci-fi room — I pass workers who are going about the business of making naughty fantasies come to life. Production assistants in black jumpsuits prepare sets for shoots. Set builders in flannels construct a booth in the back lot for the imminent Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas. A model naps in the green room before his close-up.

In the office space where the postproduction editors work with the directors to piece together videos on large, brilliant flat-panel monitors, everyone I see looks like someone who could be working at an indie rock record label. They’re hip, young, hard at work, and having a good time.

I get to interview some of them on the canopied roof deck, replete with a bar, heat lamps, and a hot tub. Kelly Schaefer, a young woman with jagged layers of blond locks jutting to her chin, tells me she’s worked at Kink for about a year. Now the lead production assistant, in charge of scheduling and training all the other PAs for shoots and making sure everything runs smoothly, she started out as a model, performing in Kink’s Ultimate Surrender. The former Good Vibrations sales associate still models, because she really enjoys the wrestling. But she’s also working toward becoming a full-fledged producer.

Schaefer has a rep around Kink for being motivated, which is partly why she was able to move into a different role with greater responsibility. Since she didn’t have a background in production, being a model helped her get a foot in the door. For those interested, Schaefer says, "It’s a great company if you’re just getting started in BDSM." Kink follows the BDSM credo of safe, consensual, and respectful play and trains its PAs to make sure that all models are treated well, taking care to stop the shoot when limbs fall asleep during difficult poses involving mouth gags and rope.

Her coworker Guillermo Garcia, a videographer and PA, got his start by taking a number of production and editing classes in Final Cut Pro at City College. In addition to gaining more experience in lighting a soundstage on the job, the dreadlocked musician from Medellín, Colombia, says he enjoyed scoring the theme to Ultimate Surrender. He also has to make sure all the gadgets for the Fucking Machines series are in proper working order and, truth be told, clean the sex toys.

PERKS AND PACKAGES

Over at Colt Studios, which is in a converted warehouse near Potrero Hill that also houses an accounting firm, a team of 19 people works hard to produce slick and beautiful photos, calendars, and videos of handsome, masculine guys.

President John Rutherford, who got his degree in broadcasting at San Francisco State, realized that making internal videos at Hewlett-Packard with straight guys wasn’t in his future. He started working at San Francisco’s famed hardcore gay porn company Falcon Studios just as he was coming out. Rutherford said he aims to run a team of creative and self-directed people who are serious about attaining company goals. He likens working with porn to a nurse working with blood. "I can’t even watch Nip/Tuck, but here I think, ‘Hey, that’s a great picture; that’s a big dick.’ " It’s all in a day’s work.

His business partner, Tom Settle, says, "Our customer service agents get the question at least once a day: ‘Well, what’s it like to work there?’ People have a fantasy that models walk around servicing our customer service agents all day…. We’ve had people come to work here looking for the forbidden fruit. When they find out it’s not what they expect, they think, ‘Well, I could never tell anyone I work here.’ "

Not that it’s dull working at Colt, a company with a 40-year history of male erotica production, mind you. The elegant offices are filled with fine art. Georgia, Rutherford’s beagle, roams freely. The staff is urbane and witty.

Kim Ionesco, a Colt customer service rep who is starting to work more in marketing, jokes that she never thought her career would flourish in male porn. "I didn’t hit the glass ceiling," she exclaims, sipping a Red Bull. When she started working at Colt, all her lesbian friends began clamoring for DVDs starring Chris Wide, a hot property in Colt’s exclusive stable. She had no idea her girlfriends would know who he was. Then again, she quips, "I appreciate nice, polite, good-looking gay men." So why wouldn’t other dykes feel the same way?

Even straight IT professionals such as Aaron Golub find working in male, mostly gay porn surprisingly refreshing too. Previously, he worked as an IT director at a multinational company but quit because, as he explains, "I did not feel like what I was doing was noble. I feel more guilty about generating junk mail. I’ve never sat there and said, ‘Oh, I need some advertising,’ but I’ve definitely felt like I needed porn. I feel like what we’re doing is for people who really, truly want it. Where I worked before, I didn’t feel like that was truly the case."

Aside from working toward the common goal of providing customers with images of Colt’s much-admired, wood-chopping manly men, the twentysomething IT whiz gets to work with technology on the cutting edge. "We’re doing things you don’t do when you’re developing a site for IBM." He wouldn’t tip his hand, but basically he means that by making downloads and streams seamless and infallible, online porn is on the forefront of content delivery.

When I ask him if working in porn might cause some stigmatization with future employers, he says, "I’m in a different boat than actors or directors, because my skills are very transportable. I’m not in a situation where I’m going to have to present a reel." He also echoes what every other worker I interviewed told me.

"I wouldn’t want to work for someone who has a problem with what I do." *

www.kink.com

www.coltstudiogroup.com

Careers and Ed: Bio the people, fuel the people

January 9, 2007

› culture@sfbg.com

Cars suck. I have stickers that say so and a venerable beater of a bicycle that underscores the point. But for every one of the approximately 40,000 bicycle commuters in San Francisco, there are more than 10 registered car owners, and just wishing they didn’t exist won’t make it so. But I’m no hater. I’m sure glad my plumber drives a van, for instance, and my gardener roommate wouldn’t get very far without a pickup truck to haul all that gravel and mulch. Still, the environmental, economic, and just plain moral implications of using anything that relies on petroleum for fuel have become increasingly difficult to justify — especially since interest in and access to alternative fuels are on the uptick. Last year’s mayoral biodiesel directive, when implemented, will make San Francisco the national leader in biodiesel use for municipal vehicles. In fact, the demand for biodiesel in the Bay Area could soon outstrip the current supply, and as far as getting in on the ground floor goes, the time has never been better to be involved with biofuels.

Of course, a lot of people get into biodiesel not as a career move but as a form of activist self-sufficiency that hearkens back to the ’70s return-to-the-land movement. The notion that one can power a vehicle on homemade fuel made from recycled cooking oil and a few bucks worth of drain cleaner is nigh-irresistible to penny-pinchers and political progressives alike, and the accessibility of the technology is such that even the least mechanically minded can pick it up with minimum instruction. Some instruction could be beneficial, though. Considering that two of the three major ingredients of biodiesel are highly toxic and flammable (methanol and lye), it may well behoove nascent home brewers to hone their skills in a structured environment, which local biofuel advocates are conveniently providing.

BIODIESEL 101

Jennifer Radtke knows her biofuels. Despite an incongruous educational background in Slavic languages and poli-sci, she has become one of the Bay Area’s premiere authorities on brewing biodiesel and running a biodiesel station, and she has offered courses and internships in both since 2003. As one of the cofounders of the women-owned Berkeley cooperative BioFuel Oasis (which serves as a station for more than 1,600 regular customers) and an instructor for the Real Goods Solar Living Institute and the Berkeley Biodiesel Collective, Radtke is committed to the biodiesel community. She teaches five different classes covering almost every aspect of the biofuel biz for beginners and advanced users alike. Though many of her classes are held in Berkeley, you can occasionally find her holding forth in Golden Gate Park’s SF County Fair Building.

For tyros to the technology, Radtke teaches a one-day introductory class covering biodiesel usage, sustainability, and home brewing. At a typical class, she opens with a presentation on biodiesel basics, listing the benefits and drawbacks of using biodiesel. Even to a nondriver like myself, the benefits appear to outweigh the disadvantages by a hefty margin.

Lower emissions and a higher rate of biodegradability are things I take for granted when thinking about biodiesel, but I certainly didn’t realize it’s less toxic to the human body than table salt when ingested and less irritating to the skin than a 4 percent soap-and-water solution. Biodiesel’s flashpoint (the temperature at which it ignites when exposed to flames) is over 300 degrees Fahrenheit — the flashpoint of petroleum-based diesel is about 125 degrees. Most interesting to me and my low-to-no-maintenance requirements is finding out biodiesel is a natural solvent that cleans out the fuel tank and filters. (Can I get it to do my dishes too?) With bennies like these, who can fault biodiesel for its unfortunate tendency to burst through rubber fuel lines (discontinued since 1994) or eat through your slick new paint job? Such inconveniences seem minor in comparison to those created by toxic, flammable petroleum-based fuels.

After a comparison discussion of biodiesel to petroleum diesel and SVO (straight veggie oil), Radtke demonstrates home brewing and discusses the chemistry involved. After a lunch break, the students brew their own one-to-two-liter batch. Starting out with a quantity of recycled cooking oil, the class tests for water and free fatty acids, a process known as titration. (When water is present in the oil, the home brewer runs the risk of making soap instead of fuel.) Titration determines whether the used oil is too rancid or has been broken down too much by high fryer heat. If the oil is deemed usable, students concoct a test brew, mixing the heated oil with methanol (wood alcohol) and sodium hydroxide (lye). Here especially is where the presence of an instructor comes in handy.

Unlike the finished product, the chemical components of biodiesel have a very low flashpoint, and their toxicity is much higher. Methanol in particular can be harmful, even deadly, if improperly handled, and for this reason alone, many biodiesel advocates are still skittish about taking the last step toward home production. After walking beginners through a safe mixing procedure, Radtke discusses washing and filtering the biofuel and assessing its quality. She also discusses how to dispose of byproducts and offers additional educational resources. For people who want to practice brewing bigger batches (20 to 40 gallons) and a get a more in-depth overview of the small production industry, a three-day advanced course is occasionally offered, often on an on-demand basis.

ORGANIC MECHANICS

It doesn’t take long for the would-be home brewer to want to start tinkering with processors. For the mechanically unsavvy, Radtke offers an equipment-building workshop for five participants at a time (often in conjunction with co-instructor Alan Pryor of the Berkeley and Alameda Biodiesel co-ops or alternatively through Real Goods). Hoarding industry secrets doesn’t seem to be an issue for biofuel distributors teaching people how to make their product. In fact, a common denominator among backyard biodiesel advocates seems to be their genuine desire to spread the knowledge of their chosen vocation far and wide. Plus, as Radtke points out, most of her processor-builder students actually come from outside the Bay Area, some from as far away as Southern California, where stations like BioFuel Oasis and the SF Biofuel Cooperative have yet to materialize.

This is a paradox that Radtke and Melissa Hardy, also of BioFuel Oasis, hope to address in their upcoming five-day intensive class, How to Start Your Own Biodiesel Station (Feb. 18–23), walking students through the process, from procuring fuel and testing it to applying for the required permits and necessary funding. Other topics of interest to the budding entrepreneur include zoning and taxation laws, equipment building and maintenance, and even market development. By the end of the course, participants should have a clear vision and a working business plan to get them started in the distribution biz.

In addition to that course, BioFuel Oasis holds monthly fuel filter–changing workshops on-site (next scheduled for Jan. 21). Since biofuel has such a solvent effect, cars that have just recently switched over from regular diesel run the risk of clogging from the leftover residue dredged out by the introduced biofuel. For a $10 to $20 sliding scale fee and about 30 minutes of time, attendees learn to replace their filters, a much preferable option to waiting until they clog on the freeway. Registration and information for any of these classes can be found on the following Web sites: www.backyardbiodiesel.org, www.biofueloasis.com, and (for classes connected with the Solar Living Institute) www.solarliving.org.

MASTERS OF THE BREW

Of course, even the acknowledged masters of their craft were once beginners too. For Jennifer Radtke and dozens of other home brew aficionados in the Bay Area and around the country, the force behind their fascination is one Maria "girl Mark" Alovert. With a background in grassroots activism, girl Mark is one of the nation’s most vocal proponents of home-brewed biofuels and the inventor of the ubiquitous appleseed processor, which can be made cheaply from an old hot-water heater and a handful of hardware store components. Her self-published Biodiesel Homebrew Guide is considered the definitive guide to home brewing, and her two- to four-day seminars for beginners and advanced students alike fill up months in advance. In addition to teaching and touring, girl Mark is a member and sometime moderator of several biodiesel forums and the instigator of a peer-reviewed home-brewing and equipment-building Web site known as the Collaborative Biodiesel Tutorial (www.biodieselcommunity.org). A schedule of her classes and tour dates can be found online at www.girlmark.com and www.localb100.com.

For San Franciscans who’d like their introduction to biofuel to be a little closer to home, the San Francisco Biofuels Cooperative (www.sfbiofuels.org) offers once-a-month orientation meetings where interested parties can get practical advice on everything from where to buy a diesel car to how to advance the biofuel community’s agenda. More than 200 members strong, the co-op’s pumping station shares a location with Incredible Adventures (www.incadventures.com), a local adventure tour company that runs its biofueled fleet all the way to Baja. Co-op members can pay the premium price for biodiesel at the pump (currently $3.65 per gallon) or volunteer a couple hours per month to purchase their biofuel for less. Hailing from the old People’s Food System, former Rainbow Grocery cofounder and SF Biofuels Cooperative Board of Directors member Bill Crolius is also a driving force (with Ben Jordan and Trevitt Schultz) behind the People’s Fuel Cooperative (www.peoplesfuel.org), a biodiesel delivery operation. Taking the long view on energy sustainability, Crolius envisions a future in which even biodiesel will be obsolete, but for the interim, he and his co-op compatriots believe it serves an essential role in weaning people off fossil fuels.

David Dias, advanced transportation and technology project coordinator at City College, organizes workshops on a variety of alternative fueling technologies, including biodiesel, natural gas, and SVO. He also heads the Biodiesel Conversion Club, an extracurricular group dedicated to converting muscle cars such as El Caminos into biodiesel road warriors. Most of the workshops cost money but are open to the general public. Contact Dias for details at (415) 550-4455 or ddias@ccsf.edu.

For nondrivers this is something of a nonissue, but for people who aren’t quite ready to give up the family car or rely on their vehicle the way contractors do, the siren song of home brewing is a seductive one. It doesn’t take much space either: a corner of your garage or the back of a toolshed will do. In light of our national crude addiction and the wars being waged on its behalf, biodiesel is a compelling product; and while there is a San Francisco–based large-scale biodiesel production company in the works (www.sfbiodiesel.com), the reality is that low-cost biodiesel on demand is still a few years away — a reality that makes home brewing an attractive solution and, in time, perhaps even the ultimate answer. *

Careers and Ed: Cocktail frosh

January 9, 2007

› culture@sfbg.com

Swanky-ass bars, high-end restaurants, sex, drugs — they’re all great things to love about San Francisco, but they can be cruel and constant symbols of failure to the scrilla deprived. With one-bedroom apartments currently priced at about $1,600 a month, cell phone bills hovering in the $75 to $150 range, and PG&E. religiously raping us for half our salaries, it’s amazing anyone can afford to live in this city, let alone enjoy its vast array of entertainment. But San Francisco has a secret. Unlike most cities, San Francisco pays its waiters, bartenders, and bussers almost $10 an hour. Add to that a healthy tip stash, and there’s at least a little disposable income to hit the town with.

Of all the jobs the service industry has to offer, bartending rules. We’re talking potentially $200 to $500 for six hours of work. OK, count me in. The major problem, though, is acquiring the skills to qualify. San Francisco has almost as many service-industry schools as it does bars and restaurants. Would I get scammed if I enrolled in one? With the ultimate goal of becoming a bartender, I spent a month researching the cultlike world of barkeep education, starting with a quest for the perfect school.

THE SEARCH

In order to minimize any money and time investments, I first looked for Web classes and free tutorials. I should have known better. Looking for a free or relatively inexpensive online course in bartending turned out to be a bigger waste of time than the hours I logged scouring the Internet for free porn as a young man. The sites of my youth always promised girl-on-girl action, fist-fucking, and bizarre fetish acts but only generated advertisements for sketchy online subscriptions or outrageously expensive chat sessions. The same was true, metaphorically, of www.bartendingcollegeonline.com, www.ebartending.com, and www.zizoo.com. Each one taunted me with screen shots and personal testimonies but wouldn’t give up the goods without a credit card number. So I passed on the virtual cocktail-slinging and set about finding a real-world educator.

ABC Nationwide Bartending School (www.abcbartending.com, 1-888-262-5824) looked promising but seemed a little too corporate for my taste. Other schools, such as National Bartenders School (870 Market, suite 828, SF; 415-677-9777, www.nationalbartenders.com), seemed legitimate but didn’t quite have the attitude and style I associate with the glamorous life of a bartender. I want to be Tom Cruise in Cocktail, not the sad barkeep from Billy Joel’s "Piano Man." I want to serve mojitos, cosmos, and lemon drops to drunk yuppies, ending every night with fistfuls of easy cash and invitations to cologne-drenched orgies. Glamour! Eventually, I seemed to find perfection in the San Francisco School of Bartending (760 Market, suite 833, SF; 415-362-1116, www.sfbartending.com), a school run and taught by local SF bartenders — sort of a FUBU for mixologists.

It works like this: for about $300 (a slow night’s tips for the average SF bartender) you get hands-on training and insider information from a seasoned professional. The classroom simulates an average pub, with music, neon beer signs, and a supersize bar with a pouring station for each student. There’s homework every night, a daily quiz, and a final exam. Near the end of every minisemester, students get a consultation with a professional résumé builder who has magical contacts to the city’s premier restaurants and bars. It’s a boot camp for bartenders, taught by some of the toughest and most knowledgeable drill sergeants around. The slick Web site, affordable price, and sense of community won me over. After a few simple clicks I was all signed up for a two-week course ($295, financing available).

ORIENTATION

When I arrived at the SFSOB bright and early on a Monday morning, I was immediately greeted by Gretchen Mitchell, a veteran bartender who has served in more than 50 restaurants and bars in her 19 years in the industry. She wasted no time getting started. "All right class, answer me this: if someone comes up to my bar and tries to get a slow screw up against the wall, what am I going to do?" There were blank stares all around as the other students and I tried to think of the right answer. "Should I give a knowing smile and assume the position?" she said. "Hell no! I don’t think so. A Slow Screw Up Against the Wall is a mixture of sloe gin, vodka, and orange juice with a splash of Galliano. I know this, not because I have it memorized, but because I think like a bartender, and that’s exactly what we’re going to teach you to do over the next two weeks. Now get behind your stations and get ready for some action." She paused, then added, "You’re gonna thank me, guys. In no time at all you’ll be having ‘creamy sex on the beach’ with a whole gang of ‘redheaded sluts.’ And ladies, you’ll be serving up expert ‘blow jobs’ and ‘screaming orgasms.’ " With that, class had begun.

LEARNING TO POUR

I usually wait until around noon to have my first alcoholic beverage, but today was different. It was only 9:30 a.m., and here I was under the soothing neon lights of a real bar. Credence Clearwater Revival played in the background as I wiped down my section of mahogany, filled my ice chest, and got ready to make some drinks. Mitchell passed out laminated cards with pictures of simple drinks like tequila sunrises and screwdrivers and then drew our attention to overhead computer monitors. She was now the patron, and the other students and I were the all-powerful barkeeps. Laid out before us were soda guns, ice scoops, and quick-access mixers. Behind us were countless bottles of fake alcohol, glasses, and towels. We were ready.

"All right, guys, here’s how it’s gonna work: I’m going to walk you through the first couple of drinks, show you how to measure an accurate one-ounce shot without a cup, demonstrate the proper way to hold things, and so on. Then the computer is going to take over for a while. But before I do all that, I want to see what you already know." Mitchell took a breath, looked around, and then said, "Make me a screwdriver right now."

It seemed like an easy request, but as I fumbled around looking for orange juice and vodka, I realized I didn’t know how to mix them correctly. Mitchell watched as we tried to bullshit our way through the exercise. Some scooped ice with their glasses (a major no-no), poured in the orange juice, and then topped the concoction off with a haphazard shot of vodka. Others grabbed the vodka with two hands and then apprehensively poured it into an empty glass before adding the other ingredients. Our new sensei watched in disgust. Soon there were 11 crappy-looking screwdrivers sitting on the bar. The lesson behind the exercise was unmistakable: we didn’t know shit.

We spent the rest of the morning learning proper pouring techniques, standardized orders of mixing, and some light terminology. After lunch we came back and stumbled through a simulated happy hour during which the computer flashed orders while Mitchell marched to and fro shouting suggestions. I thought it would never end. With sweat pouring down my face, fake liquor soaking my shirt, and freezing hands, I poured drink after drink until Mitchell suddenly screamed, "Last call!" The computer stopped flashing. "Good job, guys," she said. "Shift’s over. Now clean up your stations and go home. Remember today’s lesson: bartending is a lot more complicated than you think. It’s not just Bukowski. It’s F. Scott Fitzgerald too."

The rest of the week followed a similar pattern. Mitchell lectured the class on a particular aspect of bartending and then turned the computer on and paced back and forth as we struggled to make drinks. Her teaching style grew warmer over time; eventually, she replaced her cold commands with a soft hand and a helpful voice. Under Mitchell’s guidance mixing drinks became second nature. I could pour a mai tai in a second. Mojitos, cosmos, dirty martinis — I could shoot them all out with ease. By the fifth day I felt like a pro, but I wondered if it was going to work. Would a two-week bartending course be all I needed to get a job? I sought the advice of some experienced bartenders.

THE REAL WORLD

According to Cory Norris, a bartender at an Irish pub in the Mission, the answer is no.

"Man, people come in with those certificates, acting like professionals, but once they get behind the bar, they’re fucking lost. The only way to get good at bartending is to jump in the fire. Those classes only work for people with big tits and blue eyes."

Another bartender, Tommy Basso, owner of Delirium, reiterated Norris’s sentiments. "You can’t learn bartending at a fucking school, kid. You’re gonna get back here and choke. You’re gonna have five dudes mad doggin’ you in the corner ’cause you forgot their beers, two chicks at one end of the bar stealing your cherries, two others chicks distracting you with their tits in the middle, and 20 drinks to make. You’re not gonna know what the fuck to do. Those schools are bullshit."

Basso and Norris scared me. Had my $300 been spent in vain? Had I been duped? In an attempt to assuage my anxiety, I went back to the SFSOB and asked Shawn Refoua, one of the other instructors there, about the real-world difficulties of gaining a foothold behind the bar. Refoua was familiar with the antischool attitude. "There is a scholastic component to every trade." he said. "I mean, can it really be true that bartending is so magical that you can only learn it in the field? That line of thinking just doesn’t make sense." Refoua has been teaching classes at the SFSOB for almost two years and has seen hundreds of students get good jobs. Like most teachers there, he keeps in close contact with his students via the Internet, using his MySpace page to notify them of job openings and changes in the industry. "I wouldn’t worry about people who say bartending schools don’t work," he said. "It’s true that a lot of people either fall into bartending or lie their way in. Maybe that’s why there are so many shitty bartenders around here. Many states actually require certification, you know."

As an SFSOB teacher, Refoua could be a little biased, of course. And real-world bartenders naturally look down on newbies. Any smart-ass could conclude, though, that both have good points. A self-taught bartender knows how to deal with a drunken crowd, and a school-taught applicant comes equipped with a deep understanding of liquor ratios, bar etiquette, and efficient pouring techniques.

I now feel confident enough to submit my résumé to all the places in my SFSOB counselor’s little black book. I can shake, stir, pour, mix, blend, and guess the ingredients in foreign drink names with ease. As far as handling belligerent drunks — well, I’m not worried in the slightest. My friends have taught me well. Just last night I had to stop one of them from jumping out of a fourth-story apartment, slap another in the face for throwing an egg at my girlfriend, and convince yet another to not buy more cocaine at 4 a.m. Bar owners of San Francisco, prepare yourselves. There’s a new cocktail jock in town. *

Off the record

January 9, 2007

› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Among the mansions and box stores popuutf8g Silicon Valley are several major tech firms at the heart of a stock option backdating scandal that has metastasized through corporate America over the last two years.

The hall of shame includes Juniper Networks, McAfee, Nvidia, Brocade Communications Systems, and most notably for this story, a Mountain View–based firm called Mercury Interactive, which came under scrutiny in late 2004, making it one of the earliest companies identified for allegedly tampering with the lucrative stock options given to employees.

While some of the half-billion-dollar backdating mess at Mercury has appeared in the business press already, additional details contained in a civil lawsuit filed by investors are under seal in Santa Clara County Superior Court, and three news outlets want them opened up by a judge.

"These companies fleeced investors, and the public has a right to know," Karl Olson, an attorney for the outlets, told Judge James Kleinberg during a hearing Jan 5. Olson is representing the San Francisco Chronicle, Bloomberg News, and the Recorder legal newspaper. He added the defendants have "not shown an overriding interest that supports sealing any of these records."

Attorneys for the company and its fallen former executives have not cited trade secrets or proprietary information — commonly used excuses in corporate litigation — as reasons for keeping the filings sealed. Instead, they seem to be worried the documents will paint an even more sordid picture of executive misdeeds than what’s already come out, and they want to block the press from telling the full story.

But there is an interesting irony to the Chronicle insisting it is entitled to access this information. The newspaper’s parent company, the Hearst Corp., asked a federal judge to withhold from the public some of its own company records unearthed amid a federal civil suit leveled against it and other media giants over the summer.

San Francisco real estate mogul Clint Reilly filed an antitrust claim against Hearst and its rival–cum–business partner, Denver-based MediaNews Group, owner of several Bay Area newspapers, arguing that a bid between the companies to share business expenses was illegal. The Guardian has joined an effort with the nonprofit Media Alliance to unseal records related to Reilly’s suit.

But in the Mercury case, attorneys for the company and its former executives complain individuals not listed as defendants "would have their identities revealed and be implicated in alleged misconduct."

Mercury certainly would like to forget its troublesome past. Computer giant Hewlett-Packard is closing out its purchase of the company for $4.5 billion, taking on Mercury’s liabilities and obviously hoping to put the backdating matter to bed.

Nationwide, somewhere between 150 and 200 companies (reports vary) are internally investigating options problems or have received inquiries from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the federal agency charged with ensuring publicly traded firms reveal essentially every major move they make.

Mercury was founded in 1989 and produces business software for companies worldwide. In another bit of irony, Mercury specializes in making a group of applications designed to help corporate clients fully comply with the new federal financial disclosure rules passed by Congress as part of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act following Enron’s implosion.

Amnon Landan, the former Mercury CEO who resigned in November 2005 under pressure following an internal probe, is said to have exercised $5.5 million worth of options and sold 1.04 million company shares for a total of $73.6 million "during the period of wrongdoing," according to another suit filed by investors in federal court last spring.

Two additional executives resigned at the same time as Landan. The list of plaintiffs in the federal suit, which charges that Mercury’s backdating imbroglio greatly damaged the company’s market value, includes the retirement system for New Orleans municipal employees.

The value of a stock option is determined by its closing price per share on the day the option is granted. Instead of listing that particular date when the options are later exercised, backdating an option generally involves picking a spot earlier on the calendar. That way, employees of companies that make it big can reap huge windfall profits far bigger than they were entitled to receive. As Duke law professor James Cox somewhat famously described backdating, it’s like betting on a race and knowing who the winner will be.

Silicon Valley’s start-ups during the tech boom relied on hopes and dreams more than directly available cash assets to flashpoint their growth. To attract the best executive talent around, they offered stock options in exchange for hefty salaries. If the top suits performed well from the beginning, when the stock price was low, they could sell the shares much later when their value had climbed sky-high.

But some of the still relatively young companies that dot the fringes of Highway 101 where it weaves toward downtown San Jose are today being charged with failing to inform investors and government regulators just how many zeros were involved in those enriching IOUs.

Defense attorney James Kramer made an important point about backdating, however, to Judge Kleinberg during last week’s hearing. "There is nothing about backdating that is illegal," he said. "The issue is whether you properly account for it."

Yet Mercury didn’t properly account for more than $567 million in compensation expenses over a 12-year period in its SEC filings. And that’s what is illegal. The IRS heavily taxes earnings from backdated stock options, which are akin to tax-free bonuses that aren’t reported to the SEC. Investors say the failure to disclose the backdating exposed the company to heavy tax penalties, money that came from shareholders.

"Throughout the development of the options scandal, Mercury Interactive has been one of the most significant companies for the public to watch, due to both the primacy and seriousness of its options problems," Recorder reporter Justin Scheck wrote in a declaration to the judge last week. The Recorder, which serves about 20,000 readers in the state’s legal community, asked Jan. 5 for Kleinberg to open the records.

Recorder attorney Olson, who regularly represents the Chronicle in such open-records cases, argued in a memo to the court that the desire to shield top Mercury execs from "adverse publicity" and "potentially embarrassing corporate documents" doesn’t justify withholding up to 17 exhibits that Mercury wants to keep away from the press and the public. Petitions submitted to the court regarding the sealed portions of the case are public and were obtained by the Guardian last week.

The defendants’ attorneys said the investors signed a confidentiality agreement early in the suit so that evidence could be more freely exchanged with Mercury during discovery, and they want that promise kept.

"The plaintiffs in the [Santa Clara] suit are not roving attorneys general who are tasked with pursing every defendant who they believe has done something wrong or caused harm to someone else," Brandon Wisoff, a defense attorney in the case, said in a phone interview. "The purpose of a derivative suit is for a shareholder to recover on behalf of a corporation in which he or she owns stock, because he or she is indirectly impacted by any harm that allegedly occurred to the corporation."

The Santa Clara suit’s status as a derivative claim could lead Judge Kleinberg to toss it out, since HP has purchased Mercury. For that reason, Wisoff says, documents produced before the sale aren’t going to be used in court and so shouldn’t be accessible to the public.

"Non-defendant third parties also would have their identities revealed and be implicated in the alleged misconduct" if the records were opened, attorney Thomas Martin wrote in a declaration to the court. In other words, the documents could suggest how much was known about the problems with backdating at Mercury. And that might be of concern to more than just the company’s investors.

Martin, who declined to comment over the phone for us, is representing Kenneth Klein, a former Mercury chief operating officer who left the company in 2003 and has not officially been linked by Mercury to backdating problems but is nonetheless listed as a defendant in the Santa Clara suit.

Thomas and the other defense attorneys argue the investors’ court filings openly cite sealed discovery material, which presumably includes references to Klein’s alleged involvement in or knowledge of backdating, given his status as a defendant, as well as the names of others possibly listed in the documents. They’re arguing Mercury and its executive defendants could not publicly rebut suggestions made by the media about their involvement.

While Kleinberg seemed sympathetic to the notion that the press doesn’t always do the best job reporting on civil allegations, he said it’s a fact of life that most civil complaints — even ones that say "very outrageous things about people and institutions" — fall into the public domain.

But Amber Eck, an attorney for the investors who are now advocating for the filings to be opened, says the complaints made in the suit are far from frivolous and the company’s own board investigation identified who had participated in the misconduct and who knew about it. She said the whole story hasn’t been told.

"There’s a lot saying there was backdating and the amount of the [SEC financial] restatements," Eck said in a phone interview. "But what I was explaining to the judge was that as far as the details on the manner and the process in which it happened … that isn’t really out there yet, and that’s contained in our complaint and the exhibits."

Janet Guyon, an editor at Bloomberg News in New York who has watched the options backdating scandal unfold, told the judge in a declaration that the public deserves a "window into this litigation" to ensure fairness for investors who are expected to trust promises of transparency made by public companies.

"More than 80 companies have announced earnings restatements totaling over $8.8 billion, including $84 million most recently by Apple Computer, which admitted it forged documents recording a directors’ meeting to award its CEO backdated options," Guyon stated. "At least 65 executives or directors have resigned and 300 lawsuits have been filed against 100 companies. Yet little light has been shed on how this practice got started and why it continued." *

Declaration by Bloomberg News editor Janet Guyon to judge Kleinberg on why the Mercury records should be unsealed.

Declaration by local reporter Justin Scheck on why the Mercury records should be unsealed.

Application by attorney Jared Kopel for defendant Kenneth Klein on why the records should continue to be sealed.

Declaration by attorney Thomas Martin for defendant Kenneth Klein on why the records should continue to be sealed.

Mayor Chicken

January 9, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

The format is always the same: Mayor Gavin Newsom shows up at a carefully scouted location somewhere in the city with his perfect tie and perfect hair. He brings a cadre of department heads in tow, sending the clear message that he can deliver government services to the public. He takes a few questions from the audience, but the format allows him to deflect anything tough, to delegate any problems to department heads, and to offer a thoughtful “we’ll look into that” when the need arises.

There is no substantive discussion of anything controversial — and no chance for anyone to see the mayor debate contentious issues.

This, of course, is by design.

Newsom has made it very clear during his first term as mayor that he can’t take the heat. He is the imperious press release mayor, smiling for the cameras, quick with his sound bites, and utterly unwilling to engage in any public discussion whose outcome isn’t established in advance.

He has become Mayor Chicken.

So don’t expect any leadership from Newsom during an upcoming series of what the Mayor’s Office is calling “policy town hall meetings” that have been hastily scheduled this year, beginning Jan. 13 in the Richmond District with a discussion of homelessness. The town hall meeting is just politics as usual for Newsom. Since taking office in 2004, he’s held eight of these stage-managed events.

“He does a good Phil Donahue shtick,” says Sup. Chris Daly, recalling one such town hall meeting Newsom held in Daly’s District 6 after he was elected mayor. “Scripted town hall meetings are smart politics for Newsom.”

Scripted events weren’t what Daly had in mind when he wrote Proposition I, which calls on the mayor to appear before the supervisors once a month to answer questions. And these campaign-style events certainly weren’t what voters had in mind Nov. 7, 2006, when 56.42 percent of them approved the Daly legislation, which asks the mayor in no uncertain terms to appear “in person at regularly scheduled meetings of the Board of Supervisors to engage in formal policy discussions with members of the Board.”

Examiner columnist Ken Garcia — a conservative hack who regularly sucks up to Newsom — recently dismissed the voter-approved measure as “a silly, obvious stunt to play rhetorical games with the mayor,” which is how the Newsom camp would like to spin things. But Daly recalls how when he first mentioned the idea of a mayoral question time — back when Willie Brown was still in Room 200 — he was sitting next to then-supervisor Newsom, “who thought it was a great idea.”

It’s hardly an unprecedented concept. Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, meets with his city’s assembly 10 times a year and presents a detailed report on initiatives and progress. But now Newsom is mayor, suddenly Daly’s idea doesn’t strike him as all that great any more.

While it’s easy to accuse Daly of playing political games, it’s not so easy for Newsom — who loves to talk about the “will of the voters” — to dodge Prop. I. Newsom’s decision to snub voters and avoid real debate was so obvious that he got beat up on both the Chronicle and Examiner editorial pages, on several prominent local blogs, and in television broadcasts. Perhaps that’s why he decided this week to show up and give a speech at the Board of Supervisors inauguration Jan. 8, the first time in years he’s set foot in those chambers. He’s trying to look like he’s complying with voters’ wishes when he’s really doing nothing of the sort.

THE “KUMBAYA MOMENT”

It didn’t have to be this way. As board chair Aaron Peskin’s legislative aide David Noyola told the Guardian, immediately after Prop. I passed, Peskin tried to “depoliticize the issue” by becoming the sponsor of a motion to amend board rules.

Peskin’s motion aimed to make space on the board’s agenda for the mayor every third Tuesday so he could address the supervisors on policy matters — a matter he planned to discuss at the Dec. 7 meeting of the Rules Committee.

But two days earlier the mayor took his first jab at ducking the intent of Prop. I. He sent the supervisors a letter in which he claimed that to truly serve the public interest “we should hold these conversations in the community.”

Next, Newsom sent staffers to the Rules Committee hearing, where members discussed how not to force the implementation of Prop. I down the mayor’s throat — and the mayor’s staff claimed they’d be happy to work with the committee to that end.

As a result of this “kumbaya moment,” as Noyola calls it, the Rules Committee decided to continue the item to the following week to have more productive conversation. Meanwhile and unbeknownst to them, 19 minutes into the hearing, the Mayor’s Office of Communications issued a press release outlining Newsom’s intent to hold a town hall meeting in the Richmond District on Jan. 13 — which the mayor said would substitute for complying with Prop. I.

“The Rules Committee was blindsided by the mayor’s press release,” Noyola says.

The mayor, of course, said that all the supervisors were welcome to attend his town hall event and participate in the discussion, giving the appearance he was happy to debate but wanted to do so out in the neighborhoods. But that was a lie: Newsom and his staff knew very well that under state law, the supervisors were barred from participating in any such event.

According to the Brown Act, if a quorum of supervisors wants to be somewhere to discuss business that may be before the board in the future — such as homelessness — and if it wants policy interactions, the clerk must give notice that the supervisors intend to hold a special meeting.

The board actually discussed Newsom’s invitation, and board clerk Gloria Young estimated it would cost $10,000 to $15,000 to staff. It also raised serious procedural and legal questions for the board.

In other words, Newsom knew the supes couldn’t just show up and ask questions.

“But if the mayor wants people to just sit and attend a presentation in the background, like at a speech or a Christmas event, then special meeting notice isn’t needed,” notes Noyola, explaining why Peskin ultimately dismissed the mayor’s invite as “childish” — and why Peskin now says he’d support making question time a charter amendment, thereby forcing the mayor to comply with the will of the voters.

WHO’S PLAYING GAMES?

While the Newsom camp continues to dismiss the Daly-authored Prop. I as “political theater,” the supervisor is quick to counter it’s the Mayor’s Office that’s playing games.

“They claim political theater, but if that’s what it takes to get serious policy discussions going, then so be it,” says Daly, noting he has had one private discussion with the mayor in two years, while Sup. Geraldo Sandoval has not talked to him at all. “Newsom claims he has an open door to his office, but so do I — and he’s never been to mine. For the mayor to refuse to discuss important policy items and hide behind ‘I’m afraid of Chris Daly’ is pathetic. Willie Brown probably would have come.”

Daly also observes that San Francisco’s government is structurally unique within California because it represents a city and a county.

“It’s an awkward setup in which there is little formal communication between the board and the mayor,” Daly says, “other than when the board forwards legislation to the mayor for him to approve or veto.”

It’s a structural weakness that hasn’t been helped by the fact that in the three years since he was elected, Newsom only appeared before the board twice — this week and for the board inauguration two years ago — both times giving a brief speech but not engaging in dialogue. It’s an anomaly without precedent in the history of San Francisco. (It’s customary for mayors to deliver their State of the City speeches in the board chambers, but Newsom has done all his at venues outside City Hall.) Most mayors also make a point of occasionally appearing at board meetings (Willie Brown would sometimes even take questions from the supervisors).

On Jan. 8, Newsom slipped in at the last minute and sat next to Peskin until it was his turn to make some brief remarks, an opportunity that immediately followed public comment, during which a baseball-capped woman pleaded with the supervisors to “please kiss and make up with mayor.”

After Peskin welcomed “the 42nd mayor, Gavin Christopher Newsom, to these chambers where you are always welcome,” Newsom rose — and was hissed by a few members of the audience.

“This is a city that’s highly critical of its leadership and that expects greatness from its leaders,” the mayor said. “I have great expectations of 2007…. The key is to work together on the things that unite us…. I look forward to engaging with each and every one of you.”

WORKING TOGETHER

This isn’t just politics — there are serious issues involved. Without the monthly question time the Board of Supervisors requested and the voters approved, it’s hard for the city’s elected district representatives to figure out if this mayor actually supports or even understands the issues he claims to champion.

Last year, for example, Newsom was happy to take credit in the national press for the universal health care package that actually came from Sup. Tom Ammiano. But when Ammiano got blasted by business leaders, Newsom didn’t rush to defend the plan; it was hard to tell if he even still supported it.

Business leaders didn’t like that the proposal required employers to provide health care insurance. But Newsom’s own staff recognized that without that mandate, the plan would never work. Did the mayor support it or not?

The situation prompted Sup. Ross Mirkarimi to characterize the mayor’s proposal as “a one-winged aircraft that doesn’t fly,” and it was left to Newsom’s public health director, Dr. Mitch Katz, to confirm that both the voluntary and mandatory pieces of the legislation are joined at the hip. “One can’t successfully move forward without the other,” Katz said at a July 11 board meeting, which Newsom, of course, did not attend.

Since then, the mayor’s commitment to the amalgamated health care package has been thrown into question once again, this time thanks to a lawsuit the Golden Gate Restaurant Association filed only against the employer mandate aspect of the legislation.

The GGRA, which filed its suit the day after the election, is a Newsom ally that funneled more than a half million dollars in soft money into Rob Black’s unsuccessful campaign against District 6’s Daly and into Doug Chan’s coffers for his disastrous fourth-place showing in District 4.

Asked if he knows where the mayor stands on the city’s universal health care plan, Ammiano told the Guardian, “We’ll be meeting with Newsom in the new year and asking for a press conference in which we both pledge to give our continued support for all aspects of plan, but that’s not yet been nailed down.”

Ammiano’s experience is one example of repeated communication breakdowns between Newsom and the board, which have severely hindered policy discussions and the cause of “good government” to which Newsom so frequently pledges his fealty. As a result, Newsom has often ended up vetoing legislation only to reveal in his veto letter that all the legislation needed was a few minor tweaks — changes he might have just asked for had he been more engaged.

Consider how a year ago, Newsom vetoed legislation designed to limit how much parking could be included along with the 10,000 units of housing that were to be built in downtown San Francisco. The legislation was proposed by Newsom’s planning director, Dean Macris, and supported by every member of the Planning Commission but one.

When Newsom caught heat from downtown developers over the measure (see “Joining the Battle,” 2/8/06), he sent surrogates to muddy the waters and make his position unclear until after it was approved by the board. Newsom vetoed the measure, then proposed a couple prodeveloper amendments that hadn’t been brought to the board discussions.

“I’m trying to get the political leaders to come to an agreement because the city needs this,” a frustrated Macris told the Guardian at the time.

A few months later the board was similarly blindsided when it tried to approve legislation that would have created a six-month trial closure on Saturdays of some roads in Golden Gate Park. Newsom’s board liaison, Wade Crowfoot, worked closely with bicycle advocates and sponsor Sup. Jake McGoldrick to modify the legislation into something the mayor might be able to support.

Everyone involved thought they had a deal. Then, for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear, Newsom vetoed the measure. One of the reasons he cited was the fact that voters had rejected Saturday closure back in the 1990s, before the construction of an underground parking garage that still never fills up.

“For what it’s worth, what really sells it for me on this issue of the will of the voters was the shit I went through after Care Not Cash, when the voters supported it and [my critics] did everything to put up roadblocks. And I was making a lot of these same arguments, you know, so this hits close to home,” Newsom told the Guardian a few days after he vetoed Healthy Saturdays.

His words seem ironic: he loves the will of the voters when it suits his interest but not when it requires him to act like a real mayor.

This isn’t the first time Newsom’s been selective in honoring what the voters want: he also refused to hold up the Candlestick Park naming deal with Monster Cable, even though voters rejected it through Proposition H in 2004.

Last October, Newsom’s veto of Mirkarimi’s wildly popular foot patrol legislation led to a humiliating 9–2 override in November, but not before he’d dragged San Francisco Police Department chief Heather Fong with him through the political mud and created an unpleasant rift between himself and his formerly loyal ally Sup. Bevan Dufty.

Newsom has tried to spin his refusal to engage in question time as something other than defiance of voters by proposing the upcoming series of town hall meetings.

“Bringing these conversations to the neighborhoods — during nonwork hours — will allow residents to participate and will ensure transparent dialogue, while avoiding the politicized, counterproductive arguing that too often takes place in the confines of City Hall,” Newsom wrote in his Dec. 5 letter.

But even the Chronicle and the Examiner — neither of which have been supportive of progressives in City Hall — have condemned Newsom for ducking this fight. On Dec. 18, Chronicle editorial writer Marshall Kirduff opined, “There is no end of topics to discuss — a Muni overhaul, a new neighborhood coming to Treasure Island, police policies, the ever-with-us homeless. The city could do with more debate even at considerable risk of dopey rhetoric. That means the mayor should step out of his office, walk across City Hall and face the supervisors. It’s time to bring on the questions.”

Meanwhile, Daly notes the mayor has been spending excessive time out of state, not to mention making frequent trips to Southern California. “I think we should subpoena the guy; he doesn’t know what’s going on,” Daly quips.

A classic example of Newsom’s cluelessness about the local political scene occurred live on TV shortly after 59 percent of San Francisco voted to impeach President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Asked during a Nov. 16 City Desk News Hour interview with Barbara Taylor about Proposition J’s passage, Newsom said, “I am told Congress is going to come to a halt next week, and they’re going to reflect on this new San Francisco value. Before you impeach the president, you should consider the guy who would become president. Why don’t you start with the top two?”

Yup, it’s definitely time to bring on those questions. *

Newsom’s first town hall meeting takes place Jan. 13 at 10 a.m. in District 1, Richmond Recreation Center, at 251 18th Ave., SF.

Cops behaving badly

January 5, 2007

By Tim Redmond

Three interesting items today that reflect on the state of the SFPD:

David Hill is convicted of second-degree murder in the killing of Officer Isaac Espinoza. That means he’ll get life without parole — but not the death penalty. From the start of this case, D.A. Kamala Harris refused to push for death, in part because she doesn’t support the death penalty but also because she insisted that it was very unlikely a jury would return a verdict of first-degree murder here. The cops went batshit on her. Guess what? She was right.

The feds put a 60-year-old woman in prison for cutlivating medical marijuana — with the help, Fog City Journal charges, of of a San Francisco cop. Yet another example of the SF cops working with the feds to contravene local law.

The Chron finally reports on the resignation of OCC director Kevin Allen but missed the larger point: The Police Officers Association apparently cheered Allen’s resignation, which was based in part on health issues. When will the chief tell her troops to stop acting like thugs?

SUNDAY

January 4, 2007

Jan. 7

STAGE

Chinese New Year Spectacular

This touring New Tang Dynasty TV (NTDTV) production arrives in San Francisco just in time to usher in the Western new year with a Far East twist. Combining classical Chinese dance, Western ballet, orchestral accompaniment, and a cast of hundreds, the full-blown pageantry of “Myths and Legends” kicks off the year in a grand manner. You’ll watch cherry blossoms dance below the branches, serpentine dragons writhe across the stage, and teams of synchronized sword fighters prepare for the fray. (Nicole Gluckstern)

2:30 p.m., $28-$168
War Memorial Opera House
301 Van Ness, SF
(415) 392-4400
www.cityboxoffice.com

FILM

Notes on a Scandal

An educated woman in need of some distraction from her same-old domestic lot, Sheba (Cate Blanchett) decides to try teaching art at the local secondary school. There she makes two friends: Steven (Andrew Simpson), a working-class boy with some drawing talent; and spinsterish Barbara (Judi Dench), an imperious history teacher not liked much by students or staff but taken into confidence by the breezily trusting Sheba. Imagine prissy Barbara’s shock when she discovers that Sheba hasn’t really been so frank with her after all – she is, in fact, having a reckless affair with Steven. This juicy psychological near-horror story is adapted from Zoë Heller’s excellent novel What Was She Thinking? The movie’s minor flaws are more than compensated for by a gold-plated cast. (Dennis Harvey)

Now playing in Bay Area theaters

FRIDAY

January 4, 2007

jan. 5

MUSIC

Indian Jewelry

Rat-king and knife-play imagery, the nagging buzz of badly handled electronics, and LA primitivo beats circa early ’80s Gun Club – such are the signs of Indian Jewelry. Recent sounds from last year’s Monitor album, Invasive Exotics, show a group in expansion mode, branching out into a fine, mind-faltering drone that Brightblack Morning Light doubtless can get with. Hey, any band that uses “instruments” such as pandemonium, war rattles, and pizzazz can play in our jewelry box anytime. (Kimberly Chun)

With Clipd Beaks and USA Crypt
9:30 p.m., $7
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk, SF
(415) 923-0923
www.hemlocktavern.com

MUSIC

Tribute to Townes van Zandt

If it weren’t for Townes van Zandt, there wouldn’t be alt-country. Van Zandt, who has affectionately been called the Texas Bob Dylan, perfected the art of storytelling through song, crafted frequently covered tunes such as “Pancho and Lefty,” and inspired multiple generations of songwriters to follow in his impossible-to-fill footsteps. This show will see local musicians celebrate his legacy and commemorate the 10-year anniversary of his death. (Hayley Elisabeth Kaufman)

With Court and Spark, Etienne de Rocher, Four Year Bender, Alela Diane, Jeffery Luck Lucas, Tom Heyman, Mike Therieau, Bob Frank, and John Murry
9 p.m., $8
12 Galaxies
2565 Mission, SF
(415) 970-9777
www.12galaxies.com

Left Behind: Eternal Forces

January 2, 2007

GAMER It’s no secret. We’re in the end times, and at the clarion’s call when all of God’s children are raptured into heaven, we’ll be left to deal with the Antichrist — who, by the way, has a job at the United Nations and is working like the devil to see that people get college educations to further support the dark lord and his satanic machinations (which, of course, include sexual equality). Hail, Satan!

Unfortunately, in the recently released Left Behind: Eternal Forces — based on the best-selling series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, in which a handful of heroes is left to save humanity after the rapture — you only get to play as the "good guys," the Tribulation Force, whose mission is to foil the nefarious Global Community peacekeeper forces. Actually, you can play for Satan, but first you’ll need to convince a couple of your friends to load this crappy game onto their computers to play with you. Go ahead. Ask them. See what they say once you explain what the game is about. Unless they are 70-year-old evangelists or the parents of babbling blond, banal gospel or country music stars, your friends will laugh at you. I’m no expert, but I think former UN ambassador John Bolton might like this game’s premise.

As for me, I found it childish and ridiculous. And as a video game, it was like playing Pong in a dark swamp. In the time it took me to maneuver my character up the street in order to convert a couple people for "Trib force," I could have easily hijacked a truck or a BMX bike, robbed a police station, and beaten a shopkeeper senseless — all while dressed as Dennis Rodman — while playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. The point the developers of this game are trying to make is that immoral video games like GTA and other shoot-’em-ups, such as SOCOM and Halo, offer no positive messages. That said, I’m not quite sure what moral messages there are in this game. It was so hard to play that I never really got a good feel for the potential it might have. At certain points of the game, secret clues appear, except they’re not actually clues but scriptural passages about the end times or some half-assed tirade calling evolution a satanic plot. Whenever your character is activated, he or she will say "Praise the Lord" or "Laying straight paths" before going off to save humanity. When the players run low on spiritual energy, their comments are more like "What now?" or "I could really use a sandwich."

Inside the package was a short video by its makers and the authors of the book series the game is based on. There’s also commentary from other influential evangelical leaders, including Dr. Jack Hayford, the president of the Foursquare Church, who comments that this game is "every bit as much fun as kids perceive other stuff."

Really? Whose kids?

When I was a kid, my evangelical grandparents gave me music they hoped would counter my newfound love of heavy metal. But Stryper and metal missionaries Bloodgood can’t touch Iron Maiden and Metallica, and if parents think their kids will find this game more fun than others on the market, they really should get out more often. Given the choice of playing as a Navy SEAL (as in SOCOM) or some sweater-vested geek trying to convert New York City, I would much rather be the former.

In the promotional video, a gamer named Grant says the game is so unique he "just can’t stop playing it. My eyes are getting so tired, ’cause I’m having so much fun that I might fall asleep on my computer."

Here’s a suggestion if you want to keep Grant from falling asleep and drooling in his keyboard: you have to make it easier to play. I had to keep rebooting my computer in order to get the game to move at all. When I finally did get to play, my character was killed by an evil, college-educated, rock music gang — which poisoned me. That’s right. Gangs in New York have college educations and spend their time poisoning people. I know the developers are trying to keep the level of violence down, but the soldiers get to shoot each other. Are they trying to teach their children that gangs don’t use guns? Has there been an upsurge in gang-related poisonings lately?

I found trying to convert people (which is the main point of the game) to be a soul-crushingly boring waste of time. There is no way teens will flock to this game (unless they feel an obligation to play the gift grandma got them so nobody’s feelings get hurt).

If you see this title at your local store, do not buy it, even if you think it’s funny. I promise you it is not. It must be left behind. (James Woodard)

Dine Listings

January 2, 2007

Welcome to our dining listings, a detailed guide by neighborhood of some great places to grab a bite, hang out with friends, or impress the ones you love with thorough knowledge of this delectable city. Restaurants are reviewed by Paul Reidinger (PR) or staff. All area codes are 415, and all restaurants are wheelchair accessible, except where noted.

B Breakfast

BR Saturday and/or Sunday brunch

L Lunch

D Dinner

AE American Express

DC Diners Club

DISC Discover

MC MasterCard

V Visa

¢ less than $7 per entrée

$ $7–$12

$$ $13–$20

$$$ more than $20

DOWNTOWN/EMBARCADERO

Acme Chophouse brings Traci des Jardins’s high-end meat-and-potatoes menu right into the confines of Pac Bell Park. Good enough to be a destination, though stranguutf8g traffic is an issue on game days. (Staff) 24 Willie Mays Plaza, SF. 644-0240. American, L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

Café Claude is a hidden treasure of the city center. There is an excellent menu of traditional, discreetly citified French dishes, a youthful energy, and a romantic setting on a narrow, car-free lane reminiscent of the Marais. (PR, 10/06) Seven Claude Lane, SF. 392-3515. French, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Fleur de Lys gives its haute French cuisine a certain California whimsy in a setting that could be the world’s most luxurious tent. There is a vegetarian tasting menu and an extensive, remarkably pricey wine list. (PR, 2/05) 777 Sutter, SF. 673-7779. French, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Mandarin, though a Gen Xer by birth and a longtime resident of touristy Ghirardelli Square, still offers a matchlessly elegant experience in Chinese fine dining: a surprising number of genuinely spicy dishes, superior service, and wine emphasized over beer. (PR, 9/04) 900 North Point (in Ghirardelli Square), SF. Chinese, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

*Mijita shows that Traci des Jardins can go down-market with the best of them. The Mexican street food is convincingly lusty, but in keeping with the Ferry Building setting, it’s also made mostly with organic, high-quality ingredients. (PR, 4/05) One Ferry Bldg, Suite 44, SF. 399-0814. Mexican, B/L/D, ¢, AE/MC/V.

Tlaloc rises like a multistory loft on its Financial District lane, the better to accommodate the hordes of suits crowding in for a noontime burrito-and-salsa fix. They serve a mean pipián burrito and decent fish tacos. (Staff) 525 Commercial, SF. 981-7800. Mexican, L/D, ¢, AE/MC/V.

Tommy Toy’s Haute Cuisine Chinois is a cross between a steak house and The Last Emperor. The food is rich and fatty and only occasionally good. (Staff) 655 Montgomery, SF. 397-4888. Chinese, L/D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

NORTH BEACH/CHINATOWN

Gondola captures the varied flavors of Venice and the Veneto in charmingly low-key style. The main theme is the classic one of simplicity, while service strikes just the right balance between efficiency and warmth. (Staff) 15 Columbus, SF. 956-5528. Italian, L/D, $, MC/V.

House of Nanking never fails to garner raves from restaurant reviewers and Guardian readers alike. Chinatown ambience, great food, good prices. (Best Ofs, 1994) 919 Kearny, SF. 421-1429. Chinese, L/D, ¢.

Maykadeh Persian Cuisine is a great date restaurant, classy but not too pricey, and there are lots of veggie options both for appetizers and entrées. Khoresht bademjan was a delectable, deep red stew of tomato and eggplant with a rich, sweet, almost chocolatey undertone. (Staff) 470 Green, SF. 362-8286. Persian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Moose’s is famous for the Mooseburger, but the rest of the menu is comfortably sophisticated. The crowd is moneyed but not showy and definitely not nouveau. (Staff) 1652 Stockton, SF. 989-7800. American, BR/L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

Rose Pistola cooks it up in the style of Liguria, and that means lots of seafood, olive oil, and lemons — along with a wealth of first-rate flat breads (pizzas, focaccias, farinatas) baked in the wood-burning oven. (PR, 7/05) 532 Columbus, SF. 399-0499. Italian, L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

Washington Square Bar and Grill offers stylish Cal-Ital food at reasonable prices in a storied setting. (Staff) 1707 Powell, SF. 982-8123. Italian, $$, L/D, MC/V.

SOMA

Bacar means "wine goblet," and its wine menu is extensive — and affordable. Chef Arnold Wong’s eclectic American-global food plays along nicely. (Staff) 448 Brannan, SF. 904-4100. American, D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Big Nate’s Barbecue is pretty stark inside — mostly linoleum arranged around a pair of massive brick ovens. But the hot sauce will make you sneeze. (Staff) 1665 Folsom, SF. 861-4242. Barbecue, L/D, $, MC/V.

Fly Trap Restaurant captures a bit of that old-time San Francisco feel, from the intricate plaster ceiling to the straightforward menu: celery Victor, grilled salmon filet with beurre blanc. A good lunchtime spot. (Staff) 606 Folsom, SF. 243-0580. American, L/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

*Fringale still satisfies the urge to eat in true French bistro style, with Basque flourishes. The paella roll is a small masterpiece of food narrative; the frites are superior. (PR, 7/04) 570 Fourth St, SF. 543-0573. French/Basque, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Hawthorne Lane remains at the top of the city’s restaurant heap after more than a decade. Bridget Batson’s modern California cuisine is first-rate, the ambience a perfection of understated elegance, and the service knowledgeable, friendly, and smooth. It is not possible to ask more from any restaurant. (PR, 9/06) 22 Hawthorne, SF. 777-9779. California, L/D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Oola gives Ola Fendert his own platform at last, and the result is a modern, golden SoMa restaurant with a menu that mixes playful opulence with local standards. (PR, 10/04) 860 Folsom, SF. 995-2061. California, D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Town Hall offers the lusty American cooking of the Rosenthal brothers in an elegantly spare New England-ish setting. There is a large communal table for seat-of-the-pants types and those who like their conviviality to have a faintly medieval air. (Staff) 342 Howard, SF. 908-3900. American, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

NOB HILL/RUSSIAN HILL

Ah Lin offers Mandarin-style Chinese cooking in an easy-to-take storefront setting on Cathedral Hill. The dishes are well behaved and tasty, with only an occasional flare-up of chile heat. The roast duck is one of the best deals in town. (PR, 10/06) 1634 Bush, SF. 922-5279. Chinese, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Alborz looks more like a hotel restaurant than a den of Persian cuisine, but there are flavors here — of barberry and dried lime, among others — you won’t easily find elsewhere. (Staff) 1245 Van Ness, SF. 440-4321. Persian, L/D, $, MC/V.

East Coast West Delicatessen doesn’t look like a New York deli (too much space, air, light), but the huge, fattily satisfying Reubens, platters of meat loaf, black-and-white cookies, and all the other standards compare commendably to their East Coast cousins. (Staff) 1725 Polk, SF. 563-3542. Deli, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

La Folie could be a neighborhood spot or a destination or both, but either way or both ways it is sensational: an exercise in haute cuisine leavened with a West Coast sense of informality and playfulness. There is a full vegetarian menu and an ample selection of wines by the half bottle. (PR, 2/06) 2316 Polk, SF. 776-5577. French, D, $$$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

O’Reilly’s Holy Grail, a redo of the old Maye’s Oyster House that strikes harmonious notes of chapel and lounge, serves a sophisticated and contemporary Cal-Irish menu. (PR, 10/05) 1233 Polk, SF. 928-1233. California/Irish, BR/L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

CIVIC CENTER/TENDERLOIN

Ananda Fuara serves a distinctly Indian-influenced vegetarian menu in the sort of calm surroundings that are increasingly the exception to the rule. (Staff) 1298 Market, SF. 621-1994. Vegetarian, L/D, ¢, cash only.

*Bodega Bistro has a certain colonial formality — much of the menu is given in French — and it does attract a tony expat crowd. The food is elegant but not fancy (lobster, rack of lamb, both simply presented); if even those are too much, look to the "Hanoi Street Cuisine" items. (PR, 11/05) 607 Larkin, SF. 921-1218. Vietnamese, L/D, $$, DC/DISC/MC/V.

Mangosteen radiates lime green good cheer from its corner perch in the Tenderloin. Inexpensive Vietnamese standards are rendered with thoughtful little touches and an emphasis on the freshest ingredients. (PR, 11/05) 601 Larkin, SF. 776-3999. Vietnamese, L/D, $, cash only.

*Saha serves "Arabic fusion cuisine" — a blend of the Middle East and California — in a cool, spare setting behind the concierge’s desk at the Hotel Carlton. One senses the imminence of young rock stars, drawn perhaps by the lovely chocolate fondue. (PR, 9/04) 1075 Sutter, SF. 345-9547. Arabic/fusion, B/BR/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

HAYES VALLEY

Arlequin offers light Provençal and Mediterranean food for takeout, but the best place to take your stuff is to the sunny, tranquil garden in the rear. (Staff) 384B Hayes, SF. 863-0926. Mediterranean, B/L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Canto do Brasil The draw here is lusty yeoman cooking, Brazilian style, at beguilingly low prices. The tropically cerulean interior design enhances the illusion of sitting at a beach café. (Staff) 41 Franklin, SF. 626-8727. Brazilian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Destino reweaves traditional Peruvian flavors into a tapestry of extraordinary vividness and style, and the storefront interior has been given a golden glow that would have satisfied the most restless conquistador. (Staff) 1815 Market, SF. 552-4451. Peruvian, D, $$, MC/V.

Hayes Street Grill started more than a quarter century ago as an emulation of the city’s old seafood houses, and now it’s an institution itself. The original formula — immaculate seafood simply prepared, with choice of sauce and French fries — still beats vibrantly at the heart of the menu. Service is impeccable, the setting one of relaxed grace. (PR, 7/06) 816 Folsom, SF. 863-5545. Seafood, L/D, $$$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Sauce enjoys the services of chef Ben Paula, whose uninhibited California cooking is as easy to like as a good pop song. (PR, 5/05) 131 Gough, SF. 252-1369. California, D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

CASTRO/NOE VALLEY/GLEN PARK

Ararat Mediterranean Tapas affords the view-minded a good setting from which to scope the foot traffic at 18th Street and Castro, along with a Turkish-scented Mediterranean menu rich in small plates and some bigger ones too. The menu’s smash hits include coins of lavash-wrapped beef (a kind of Middle Eastern beef Wellington), an enslavingly good shrimp casserole, and a coil of baklava with lavender honey. (PR, 8/06) 4072 18th St, SF. 252-9325. Mediterranean/Turkish, BR/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Blue dishes up home cooking as good as any mom’s, in a downtown New York environment — of mirrors, gray-blue walls, and spotlights — that would blow most moms away. (Staff) 2337 Market, SF. 863-2583. American, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

*Firefly remains an exemplar of the neighborhood restaurant in San Francisco: it is homey and classy, hip and friendly, serving an American menu — deftly inflected with ethnic and vegetarian touches — that’s the match of any in the city. (PR, 9/04) 4288 24th St, SF. 821-7652. American, D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Los Flamingos mingles Cuban and Mexican specialties in a relaxed, leafy, walk-oriented neighborhood setting. Lots of pink on the walls; even more starch on the plates. (PR, 11/04) 151 Noe, SF. 252-7450. Cuban/Mexican, BR/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

2223 could easily be a happening queer bar, what with all that male energy. But the American menu joins familiarity with high style, and the ambience is that of a great party where you’re bound to meet somebody hot. (Staff) 2223 Market, SF. 431-0692. American, BR/D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

HAIGHT/COLE VALLEY/WESTERN ADDITION

*Frankie’s Bohemian Cafe has Pilsner Urquell, a Bohemian beer, on tap for a touch of Czech authenticity, but the crowd is young, exuberant, Pacific Heights, het. Follow the crowd and stick with the burgers. (PR, 2/05) 1682 Divisadero, SF. 921-4725. Czech/American, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Grandeho’s Kamekyo Sushi Bar Always packed, Grandeho serves up excellent sushi along with a full Japanese menu. (Staff) 943 Cole, SF. 759-5693. Japanese, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Hukilau brings a dash of Big Island conviviality — and Big Island (i.e., big) portions — to a wind- and traffic-swept corner of the big city. Spam too, if you want it. (Staff) Five Masonic, SF. 921-6242. Hawaiian/American, BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

Kate’s Kitchen dishes up the best scallion-cheese biscuits out west. The lines on the weekends can be long. (Staff) 471 Haight, SF. 626-3984. American, B/L, ¢.

Metro Cafe brings the earthy chic of Paris’s 11th arrondissement to the Lower Haight, prix fixe and all. (Staff) 311 Divisadero, SF. 552-0903. French, B/BR/L/D, $, MC/V.

New Ganges Restaurant is short on style — it is as if the upmarket revolution in vegetarian restaurants never happened — but there is a homemade freshness to the food you won’t find at many other places. (Staff) 775 Frederick, SF. 681-4355. Vegetarian/Indian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Tsunami Sushi and Sake Bar brings hip Japanese-style seafood to the already hip Café Abir complex. Skull-capped sushi chefs, hefty and innovative rolls. (Staff) 1306 Fulton, SF. 567-7664. Japanese/sushi, D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Zoya takes some finding — it is in the little turret of the Days Inn Motor Lodge at Grove and Gough — but the view over the street’s treetops is bucolic, and the cooking is simple, seasonal, direct, and ingredient driven. (PR, 12/05) 465 Grove, SF. 626-9692. California, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

MISSION/BERNAL HEIGHTS/POTRERO HILL

Aslam’s Rasoi reinvents a gently fading curry house as a high-powered rival to Dosa, in the next block. The food is fiery and elegant, and the menu strikes a fine balance between fleshly and fleshless choices. Desserts are not bad, particularly kulfi, a house-made cardamom ice cream presented like a frozen sliced banana. (PR, 8/06) 1037 Valencia, SF. 695-0599. Indian/Pakistani, D, $$, MC/V.

Baobab Bar and Grill serves great-tasting West African specialties like couscous, fried plantains, and savory rice dishes for a reasonable price. (Staff) 3388 19th St, SF. 643-3558. African, BR/D, ¢.

Baraka takes the French-Spanish tapas concept, gives it a beguiling Moroccan accent — harissa, preserved lemons, merguez sausage — and the result is astonishingly good food. (Staff) 288 Connecticut, SF. 255-0370. Moroccan/Mediterranean, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Blowfish glows red and inviting on an otherwise industrial and residential stretch of Bryant Street. Sushi — in pristine fingers of nigiri or in a half dozen inventive hand rolls — is a marvel. (Staff) 2170 Bryant, SF. 285-3848. Sushi, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Blue Plate has a diner aura — bustle, clatter — but the Mediterranean food is stylishly flavorful. A great value. (Staff) 3218 Mission, SF. 282-6777. Mediterranean, D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Bombay Ice Cream and Chaat Stop in for some Indian chaat — cheap, delicious fast food such as samosas and curries. (Staff) 552 Valencia, SF. 431-1103. Indian takeout, L/D, ¢.

Caffe d’Melanio is the place to go if you want your pound of coffee beans roasted while you enjoy an Argentine-Italian dinner of pasta, milanesa, and chimichurri sauce. During the day the café offers a more typically Cal-American menu of better-than-average quality. First-rate coffee beans. (PR, 10/04) 1314 Ocean, SF. 333-3665. Italian/Argentine, B/L/D, $, MC/V.

Chez Papa Bistrot sits like a beret atop Potrero Hill. The food is good, the staff’s French accents authentic, the crowd a lively cross section, but the place needs a few more scuffs and quirks before it can start feeling real. (Staff) 1401 18th St, SF. 824-8210. French, BR/L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

*Delfina has grown from a neighborhood restaurant to an event, but an expanded dining room has brought the noise under control, and as always, the food — intense variations on a theme of Tuscany — could not be better. (PR, 2/04) 3621 18th St, SF. 552-4055. California, D, $$, MC/V.

Dosa serves dosas, the south Indian crepes, along with a wealth of other, and generally quite spicy, dishes from the south of the subcontinent. The cooking tends toward a natural meatlessness; the crowds are intense, like hordes of passengers inquiring about a delayed international flight. (PR, 1/06) 995 Valencia, SF. 642-3672. South Indian, BR/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Front Porch mixes a cheerfully homey setting (with a front porch of sorts), a hipster crowd, and a Caribbean-inflected comfort menu into a distinctive urban cocktail. The best dishes, such as a white polenta porridge with crab, are Range-worthy, and nothing on the menu is much more than $10. (PR, 10/06) 65A 29th St, SF. 695-7800. American/Caribbean, BR/D, $, MC/V.

*Little Nepal assembles a wealth of sensory cues (sauna-style blond wood, brass table services) and an Indian-influenced Himalayan cuisine into a singular experience that appeals to all of Bernal Heights and beyond, including tots in their strollers. (Staff) 925 Cortland, SF. 643-3881. Nepalese, L/D, $$, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Lombardo’s Fine Foods is the little café that could, in Mission Terrace. The menu is heavy on pastas and casseroles, many made from owner-chef John Lombardo’s family recipes. The orzo salad is particularly good. (PR, 9/06) 1818 San Jose, SF. 337-9741. Italian/American, BR/L/D, $, MC/V

Maharaja offers romantically half-lit pastels and great spicy food, including a fine chicken tikka masala and a dish of lamb chunks in dal. Lunch forswears the usual steam-table buffet in favor of set specials, as in a Chinese place. (Staff) 525 Valencia, SF. 552-7901. Indian, L/D, $, MC/V.

Maverick holds several winning cards, including a menu of first-rate New American food, a clutch of interesting wines by the glass and half glass, and a handsome, spare Mission District setting discreetly cushioned for sound control. (PR, 9/05) 3316 17th St, SF. 863-3061. American, L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Medjool doesn’t offer much by way of its namesake date, food of the ancient pharaohs, but the pan-Mediterranean menu (which emphasizes small plates) is mostly tasty, and the setting is appealingly layered, from a sidewalk terrace to a moody dining room behind a set of big carved-wood doors. (PR, 11/04) 2522 Mission, SF. 550-9055. Mediterranean, B/L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

Mi Lindo Yucatán looks a bit tatty inside, but the regional Mexican cooking is cheap and full of pleasant surprises. (PR, 3/04) 401 Valencia, SF. 861-4935. Mexican, L/D, ¢, cash only.

Moki’s Sushi and Pacific Grill serves imaginative specialty makis along with items from a pan-Asian grill in a small, bustling neighborhood spot. (Staff) 615 Cortland, SF. 970-9336. Japanese, D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

Pakwan has a little secret: a secluded garden out back. It’s the perfect place to enjoy the fiery foods of India and Pakistan. (Staff) 3180 16th St, SF. 255-2440. Indian/Pakistani, L/D, ¢, cash only.

Papalote Mexican Grill relieves our Mexican favorites of much of their fat and calories without sacrificing flavor. Surprisingly excellent soyrizo and aguas frescas; sexily varied crowd. (Staff) 3409 24th St, SF. 970-8815. Mexican, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

MARINA/PACIFIC HEIGHTS/LAUREL HEIGHTS

L’Amour dans le Four gives a nice local boho twist to classic French bistro style. Many dishes from the oven. Tiny, noisy, intimate. (Staff) 1602 Lombard, SF. 775-2134. French, D, $, AE/MC/V.

Betelnut Peiju Wu is a pan-Asian version of a tapas bar, drawing a sleek postcollegiate crowd with its wide assortment of dumplings, noodles, soups, and snacks. (Staff) 2030 Union, SF. 929-8855. Asian, L/D, $$, MC/V.

Dragon Well looks like an annex of the cavernous Pottery Barn down the street, but its traditional Chinese menu is radiant with fresh ingredients and careful preparation. Prices are modest, the service swift and professional. (Staff) 2142 Chestnut, SF. 474-6888. Chinese, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Rigolo combines the best of Pascal Rigo’s boulangeries — including the spectacular breads — with some of the simpler elements (such as roast chicken) of his higher-end places. The result is excellent value in a bustling setting. (PR, 1/05) 3465 California, SF. 876-7777. California/Mediterranean, B/L/D, $, MC/V.

Sushi Groove is easily as cool as its name. Behind wasabi green velvet curtains, salads can be inconsistent, but the sushi is impeccable, especially the silky salmon and special white tuna nigiri. (Staff) 1916 Hyde, SF. 440-1905. Japanese, D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Taste of the Himalayas is primarily Nepalese, but the Indian influences on the food are many, and there are a few Tibetan items. Spicing is vivid, value excellent. (PR, 10/04) 2420 Lombard, SF. 674-9898. Nepalese/Tibetan, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

Tortilla Heights brings the Pac Heights, blond-het-frat vibe into the Western Addition and nourishes it with surprisingly good Mexican food. The menu is familiar, but the dishes are executed with care and panache, and there are some regional specialties. Open late. (PR, 9/06) 1750 Divisadero, SF. 346-4531. Mexican, L/D, $, AE/DC/DISC/MC/V.

SUNSET

Le Charm might be in San Francisco, but it has a bistro authenticity even Parisians could love, from a wealth of golden wood trim to an enduring loyalty au prix fixe. The chicken liver salad is matchless, the succinct wine list distinctly Californian. Ponder it in the idyllic, trellised garden. (PR, 9/06) 315 Fifth St, SF. 546-6128. French, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

*Dragonfly serves the best contemporary Vietnamese food in town, in a calmer environment and at a fraction of the cost of better-known places. (PR, 8/05) 420 Judah, SF. 661-7755. Vietnamese, L/D, $$, AE/MC/V.

KL Restaurant is a Hong Kong-style seafood house that presents its wide array of creatures from the deep in an equally wide array of guises. Particularly good: the sampan-style dishes. If you’re not in an oceanic mood, the land-based stuff is good too. (PR/ 11/06) 4401 Balboa, SF. 666-9928. Chinese/seafood, L/D, $$, MC/V.

Pisces California Cuisine brings a touch of SoMa sophistication to an Outer Sunset neighborhood in need of paint. (You can’t miss the restaurant’s black facade.) The kitchen turns out a variety of seafood preparations — the clam chowder is terrific — and offers an appealing prix fixe option at both lunch and dinner. (PR, 8/06) 3414-3416 Judah, SF. 564-2233. Seafood, L/D, $$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

So Restaurant brings the heat, in the form of huge soup and noodle — and soupy noodle — dishes, many of them liberally laced with hot peppers and chiles. The pot stickers are homemade and exceptional, the crowd young and noisy. Cheap. (PR, 10/06) 2240 Irving, SF. 731-3143. Chinese/noodles, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

RICHMOND

*Aziza shimmers with Moroccan grace, from the pewter ewer and basin that circulate for the washing of hands to the profusion of preserved Meyer lemons in the splendid cooking. (Staff) 5800 Geary, SF. 752-2222. Moroccan, D, $$, AE/MC/V.

Be My Guest Thai Bistro offers tasty vegetarian-friendly food in a campy-hip setting reminiscent of an old Woody Allen movie. Tofu larb is surprisingly successful. (PR, 9/06) 951 Clement, SF. 386-1942. Thai, L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

*Chapeau! serves some of the best food in the city — at shockingly reasonable prices. The French cooking reflects as much style and imagination as any California menu. (Staff) 1408 Clement, SF. 750-9787. French, D, $$, AE/DC/MC/V.

Spices! has an exclamation point for a reason: its Chinese food, mainly Szechuan and Taiwanese, with an oasis of Shanghai-style dishes, is fabulously hot. Big young crowds, pulsing house music, a shocking orange and yellow paint scheme. Go prepared, leave happy. (Staff) 294 Eighth Ave, SF. 752-8884. Szechuan/Chinese, L/D, $, MC/V.

Sutro’s at Cliff House has a Miami-to-Malibu feel and offers a "California coastal" menu that appeals to tourists and locals alike. You can get everything from gumbo to seafood red curry to falafel while resting assured that the kitchen is honoring the local-seasonal-sustainable imperative. The setting — a glass house perched at the foamy edge of the Pacific — is timelessly spectacular. (PR, 7/06) 1090 Point Lobos, SF. 386-3330. Eclectic, L/D, $$$, AE/DISC/MC/V.

BAYVIEW/HUNTERS POINT/SOUTH

Cliff’s Bar-B-Q and Seafood Some things Cliff’s got going for him: excellent mustard greens, just drenched in flavorfulness, and barbecued you name it. Brisket. Rib tips. Hot links. Pork ribs. Beef ribs. Baby backs. And then there are fried chickens and, by way of health food, fried fishes. (Staff) 2177 Bayshore, SF. 330-0736. Barbecue, L/D, ¢, AE/DC/MC/V.

Old Clam House really is old — it’s been in the same location since the Civil War — but the seafood preparations are fresh, in an old-fashioned way. Matchless cioppino. Sports types cluster at the bar, under the shadow of a halved, mounted Jaguar E-type. (Staff) 299 Bayshore, SF. 826-4880. Seafood, L/D, $$, MC/V.

Taqueria el Potrillo serves one of the best chicken burritos in town, if not the best. You can get your bird grilled or barbecued or have steak instead or tacos. Excellent salsas and aguas frescas, and warmer weather than practically anywhere else in town. (Staff) 300A Bayshore Blvd, SF. 642-1612. Mexican, B/L/D, ¢, cash only.

BERKELEY/EMERYVILLE/NORTH

Breads of India and Gourmet Curries The menu changes every day, so nothing is refrigerated overnight, and the curries benefit from obvious loving care. (Staff) 2448 Sacramento, Berk. (510) 848-7684. Indian, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Café de la Paz Specialties include African-Brazilian "xim xim" curries, Venezuelan corn pancakes, and heavenly blackened seacakes served with orange-onion yogurt. (Staff) 1600 Shattuck, Berk. (510) 843-0662. Latin American, BR/L/D, $, AE/MC/V.

Locanda Olmo Fine versions of risotto, gnocchi, and soft polenta pie, terrific thin-crust pizzas, and good traditional desserts have made Locanda Olmo a reliable anchor in the burgeoning Elmwood neighborhood. (Staff) 2985 College, Berk. (510) 848-5544. Italian, D, $, MC/V.

OAKLAND/ALAMEDA

Le Cheval Shrimp rolls and peanut sauce, the fried Dungeness crab, the marinated "orange flavor" beef, the buttery lemongrass prawns — it’s all fabulous. (Staff) 1007 Clay, Oakl. (510) 763-8495. Vietnamese, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Connie’s Cantina fashions unique variations on standard Mexican fare — enchiladas, tamales, fajitas, rellenos. (Staff) 3340 Grand, Oakl. (510) 839-4986. Mexican, L/D, ¢, MC/V.

Rockridge Café offers bountiful breakfasts, a savory meat-loaf special, and hearty cassoulet. But the burgers, wide-cut fries, and straw-clogging milkshakes remain the cornerstones of the menu. (Staff) 5492 College, Oakl. (510) 653-1567. American, B/L/D, $, MC/V. *

Rapists and fishwives

January 2, 2007

› a&eletters@sfbg.com

Popular cinema places a lot of stock in stories about the redemptive power of love — stories in which love turns a skeptic into a true believer, an ill-tempered miser into a philanthropist, or a broken spirit into an undamaged specimen free from the taint of failures past. This year’s Berlin and Beyond Film Festival offers two very different takes on the theme: Matthias Glasner’s The Free Will (Der Freie Wille) and Doris Dörrie’s The Fisherman and His Wife — Why Women Never Get Enough (Der Fischer und Seine Frau — Warum Frauen Nie Genug Bekommen).

No Berlin and Beyond would be complete without at least one film that turns the concept of redemptive love upside down and inside out with relentless aggression. In 2005 that film was Head-On (Gegen die Wand), directed by Fatih Akin. Its gritty exploration of a mutually destructive downward spiral forged within a marriage of convenience was mercilessly high impact and emotionally challenging. This year’s contender for most controversial confrontation with the devil inside is The Free Will, a movie about an unlikely love affair set within the context of a current hot-button topic: the effectiveness of rehabilitation for repeat sex offenders.

Opening with a scene of brutal rape, The Free Will doesn’t immediately elicit much sympathy for its protagonist, Theo (Jürgen Vogel), a marginalized dishwasher in a middle-school cafeteria. Cut to nine years and four months later, as Theo is being released from a mental institution into a halfway house for a crew of equally wayward characters. "They tell you at the hospital it’s a new chance," the home’s caretaker, Sascha (André Hennicke), cautions him. "But the others call the front door the gateway to hell." Nevertheless, Theo seeks to refamiliarize himself with normality. He lands a job in a print shop, buys himself new clothing, eats his dinners at the neighborhood trattoria. He forces himself into a punishing exercise regime, while down the hall his flatmates cry out at night and blast heavy metal through the walls. He and Sascha become fast friends and sparring partners at the local dojo, and for a time it seems as if Theo’s demons have moved on to more susceptible prey.

Enter Nettie (Sabine Timoteo): awkward, unsmiling, and living on her own for the first time at the advanced age of 27 in an attempt to break away from her overbearing father’s influence. After an initially unrewarding encounter with Theo during which she tells him she hates all men (and he lets her know he’s not that fond of Frauen), they begin to reach out to each other and eventually become a couple.

Naturally, the tensions of their unspoken personal histories remain, seething below the surface of a tenuous bond based on mutual loneliness. At the end of this unflinchingly deliberate two-and-half-hour film, director Glasner leaves the audience grappling with almost the same conundrums he presented in the beginning: can forgiveness be granted even when unsought, and can the unforgivable ever truly be redeemed?

On the opposite face of the aggression-versus-love coin is Dörrie’s reconstruction of an old Grimm’s fairy tale. Otto (Christian Ulmen) is a soft-spoken fish parasitologist whose unlikely whirlwind romance in Japan with a backpacking fabric designer results in a marriage of mismatched expectations. His new wife, Ida (Alexandra Maria Lara), quickly asserts herself as a woman of ambition, designing first scarves and then dresses based on the various distinctive markings of the koi fish she encounters through Otto. Soon her material desires outstrip Otto’s modest means, and the two find themselves locked in a passive-aggressive struggle that is both familiar and poignant. Ida has no difficulty defining what she wants, but what does Otto want? Does he even want to be with her? Why can’t he say so? For Otto, Ida’s insatiable aspirations are baffling. Why can’t she be content with what they have at the moment? "Why is the here and now an obstacle that has to be overcome?" he asks, not understanding that her relentless quest for more is an attempt to compensate for the affection Otto has trouble articuutf8g — and that she has trouble detecting in his actions.

Like those of the demanding fishwife in the fairy tale, Ida’s dreams soon outstrip all realistic measure, and her seemingly endless good fortune catapults them from camper van to condo to country home in quick succession. The more preposterous their prosperity, though, the greater the gap becomes between their understanding of each other’s emotional needs, and it’s increasingly apparent that something will have to give if love is to be preserved. Narrated in part by a chorus of tategoi who await their own transformation, The Fisherman and His Wife examines the age-old dilemma of miscommunication between the sexes and the modern-day struggle for a balance of family, career, and koi — a word that means not just fish but love. *

The 12th annual Berlin and Beyond Film Festival runs Jan. 11–20 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Goethe-Institut, 530 Bush, SF; and Point Arena Theatre, Hwy. One, Point Arena. Tickets (most shows $5–$15) are available at www.ticketweb.com; for additional information, visit www.goethe.de/sanfrancisco.

Localize it

January 2, 2007

› news@sfbg.com

In what some experts are hailing as a first for sustainability movements in the United States, a coalition of policy organizations has unveiled a comprehensive campaign to reduce the Bay Area’s reliance on global markets in favor of a more locally based economy.

If the plan is embraced by local government agencies and brought to fruition, it could be the first significant reversal of the decades-long march toward globalization, which encourages powerful multinational corporations to exploit cheap labor and transport goods long distances.

The Bay Area is rife with testaments to globalization, from the rusty shells of once prosperous manufacturing plants to the gleaming big-box chain stores filled with cheap Chinese-made clothing and gadgets, from the customer service call answered in India to the foreign parts in our "American made" cars and computers.

Yet at the same time, there are the countervailing forces of localism. For every grocery store stocked with out-of-season produce grown across the world with petrochemicals by big agricultural corporations, there is a community farmers market selling locally grown organic fruit.

Most of globalism’s many faces have a local equivalent. Consumers can buy a burrito at Taco Bell or El Toro, a hammer at Home Depot or Cole Hardware, a new shirt from the Gap or a recycled garment from Held Over, and a bicycle assembled at a factory in China or Freewheel Cyclery.

Or on a grander scale, utilities can import kilowatts of energy from a coal-fired plant in Utah or buy wind and solar power generated in the Bay Area, city governments can contract with out-of-state corporations or locals, and financial institutions can push the status quo or value a more diversified (if less profitable) economic system.

The idea of the localization movement is to analyze the impacts of those choices and start a discussion of how local governments can facilitate the creation of an economy that is more sustainable and less exploitive, one that is unique to the Bay Area.

BEGINNING THE PROCESS

The coalition, which formed in spring 2006, recently released a 30-page report that details the purpose of its campaign and the group’s initial strategy for achieving its goals. The report, titled "Building a Resilient and Equitable Bay Area," and a two-page summary are available online at www.regionalprogress.org. More than two dozen organizations have already endorsed the report, including Oakland’s and Berkeley’s respective sustainability offices.

The coalition’s members include Redefining Progress, Bay Localize, the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), the International Forum on Globalization, and the Center for Sustainable Economy. With the exception of the last, which is in Santa Fe, NM, all of the groups are located in either San Francisco or Oakland.

A key feature of the campaign — and the reason some experts describe the initiative as unique in the United States — is its scope. Efforts to localize individual sectors of regional economies have been under way for years. Berkeley, for instance, is considered a leader in the growing movement to shift from a food system dominated by a handful of giant agribusinesses propped up by federal crop subsidies to a system that relies more on local production and procurement of food. Similarly, many areas are considering ways of creating and encouraging the use of alternative — and local — energy sources to limit dependence on imported oil.

What sets the new Bay Area campaign apart from other localization initiatives is that it seeks to effect change across several sectors of the region’s economy simultaneously. It hopes to do so, in part, by achieving the cooperation and coordination of businesses, government officials, and community leaders at the federal, state, and local levels.

The report defines economic localization as "the process by which a region … frees itself from an overdependence on the global economy and invests in its own resources to produce a significant portion of the goods, services, food, and energy it consumes."

In an interview with the Guardian, John Talberth, one of the report’s primary authors and a PhD economist at Redefining Progress, stressed that economic "isolationism is not the goal of the campaign."

Instead, he said the goal is "reestablishing an efficient balance between imports and products made locally for local consumption." In other words, even if the Bay Area localizes its economy according to the strategy proposed by the coalition, many products would still be imported. The economy would, therefore, remain dependent on global markets — but much less so than it is now.

And that could have significant ramifications for the region, humans, and the planet.

THE PRICE OF PROGRESS

The report acknowledges the benefits of globalization, which has kept consumer prices low and forced corporations to become more efficient. But, the authors note, "it has come at a steep price."

That price includes "a loss of economic diversity, declining real wages and working conditions, increasing inequality, offshoring of environmental degradation, and a concentration of financial capital and economic decision-making in global corporations." The changes have left people "vulnerable to inevitable supply and price shocks in the post peak oil era."

In other words, perhaps global capitalism is reaching the point of diminishing returns. The coalition posits that the antidote is localization, which has great potential "for creating a wider range of local jobs and institutions, shielding our economy from global shifts, increasing the diversity and quality of goods and services we consume, distributing economic benefits in a more equitable manner, and protecting our environment."

The Bay Area is the focus of the coalition’s campaign because its member organizations are located here and because those members believe there is already a great deal of public support in the region for such a project.

Kirsten Schwind, programs coordinator at Bay Localize, told the Guardian there was an "overwhelmingly positive response" to a recent project targeted at supporting local food producers. Both Schwind and Don Shaffer, executive director of BALLE, cited Oakland’s Kaiser Permanente as an example of the increasing number of businesses that are altering their buying habits to favor local sellers. Shaffer also said the Oakland and San Francisco school boards are buying locally produced food and the Oakland City Council is setting targets for local energy production.

But even if much of the Bay Area is receptive to the idea of economic localization, other groups are not. There remains a powerful current of support in government, business, and academia for a predominantly global economy.

Traditional economists, for instance, are reflexively hostile to localization initiatives because such projects do not conform to the concepts embodied in so-called free-trade and free-market theories.

NAYSAYERS

The Guardian interviewed three UC Berkeley professors who do not agree with the report’s view of globalism. None of the professors had read the report — despite the fact that the Guardian forwarded it to them before the interviews — but all said they were familiar with the basic ideas behind localization.

Each expressed a knee-jerk hostility to the concept, but once they began discussing the details of localization, they agreed with the coalition on many points. And the professors’ initial objections to localization — including the notion that it would return economies to a more primitive state and that it is isolationist in principle — were mostly rhetorical and unrelated to the coalition’s specific recommendations.

Two of the professors — Daniel M. Kammen, who teaches in the Energy Resources Group as well as the Goldman School of Public Policy and the Department of Nuclear Engineering, and David Vogel, who teaches in the Haas School of Business, the Political Science Department, and the Goldman School — were immediately opposed to the idea of a comprehensive localization strategy.

Vogel, in particular, seemed at first to make light of economic localization, calling it a "romantic notion that periodically resurfaces," and more than once asked laughingly whether the coalition "expects Bay Area residents to watch only movies made in the Bay Area."

Another professor, Lee Friedman, a PhD economist who teaches at the Goldman School, said, "Globalization is a lot like the problem of gays in the military: mend it, don’t end it."

But Friedman likes the idea — a central one in the report — of including all costs in the price of goods. That’s particularly true of environmental costs. This might raise the price of electronics to pay for their disposal or of gas-guzzling vehicles to pay for their global-warming impacts — both ideas being explored by the European Union.

All three professors also had some very positive things to say about economic localization. Kammen, like Friedman, strongly believes that communities should pursue local — and low-carbon — energy production because the environmental impact associated with producing in a foreign country and shipping to the United States is far greater than that of local production.

"Localization advocates are making some excellent points that people ought to pay attention to," Friedman said. He agreed the Bay Area imports too much of its food. Vogel expressed a similar sentiment, saying that buying locally is a "great idea." He also said localization could help to address urban sprawl. By the end of the interview, Vogel softened his initially dismissive attitude toward localization, deeming "aspects of it interesting and attractive."

Talberth and other coalition members say challenging the economic concepts supporting globalization — like those taught by Friedman and most other economics scholars — is a central task of their campaign.

Critics of traditional economic theory have for a long time been saying that too many economists base their research and resulting recommendations on economic models that bear little resemblance to the way the real world operates.

Although economists often bristle at that criticism, Friedman has acknowledged to his students the flaws in prevailing economic models but said, "Until someone comes up with better models, people shouldn’t complain about the existing ones."

Yet Hazel Henderson, a coalition member and the author of Beyond Globalization, and Talberth say alternatives to the current models are well established and have been around for years. They criticize the fact that economic growth is measured by the gross domestic product (GDP), a simplistic calculus that doesn’t take into account economic activity that is harmful to people or the planet.

They prefer new indicators, like the genuine progress indicator (GPI), that account for costs and benefits the traditional indicators do not factor in. The report calculates the GPI for each of the Bay Area’s nine counties. The European Union has already adopted this kind of alternative measure of an economy’s well-being.

WHAT’S NEXT?

Engaging the public is the coalition’s next big goal. Despite the overall support that Schwind and others say already exists in the Bay Area for localization, they admit there are challenges to mobilizing citizens.

"It’s well documented that people tend not to act unless there is a crisis," Shaffer said. But he also said that "giving people Armageddon scenarios" will not work because such stories are depressing and, more importantly, "people are too busy to think comprehensively about that sort of thing."

Instead, Shaffer and Schwind said the coalition plans on putting out a "positive, hopeful" message focusing on the benefits that will accrue to individuals and communities if they adopt localization.

Beyond getting the public involved, the coalition is encouraging local, state, and federal government organizations to conduct studies assessing the challenges and true costs of relying so heavily on global markets. Talberth acknowledged that:

"Getting [those] assessments done is a big challenge."

Ultimately, the coalition would like the Bay Area to serve as a model of localization for other areas in the United States. Shaffer said the group is "not looking to put a formulaic stamp on other regions" but hopes instead that such places will be influenced to adopt localization measures in light of the Bay Area’s success.

Shaffer said the food and energy sectors, along with retail, are already understood well by consumers, at least intuitively. So he predicts the coalition could achieve significant results in those sectors within five years. Spreading those advances to other parts of the economy could take another 10 years after that.

Shaffer, Talberth, and Schwind all said that change is coming whether people want it or not, mostly due to global warming. So they argue for the Bay Area to embrace change now and begin to make the needed changes gradually, before they are painfully thrust upon us. We can localize our world or simply accept whatever the global economy dishes out. *

Toward a sustainable San Francisco

January 2, 2007

EDITORIAL When you decide to buy your vegetables at a local grocery store, not at Safeway, or when you buy your books at the neighborhood bookstore instead of Barnes and Noble, or when you buy hardware from a store down the street, not from Home Depot, you’re actually doing something profoundly radical. You’re challenging the predominant paradigm of economic theory — and you’re helping make the San Francisco economy a whole lot healthier for a whole lot of people.

That’s what a detailed new report by a group of small business leaders and advocates for a sustainable economy argues. The coalition, led by the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, makes a powerful argument — and the San Francisco supervisors ought to make it official city policy to follow the report’s proposals.

As Jeff Goodman reports in "Localize It" on page 11, in some ways the report is a critique of globalization: it argues that an economic system that encourages Bay Area consumers to buy cheap goods made by near-slave labor thousands of miles away and shipped here to be sold in giant chain stores whose workers can’t even afford health insurance and where all the buyers arrive in individual automobiles isn’t good for anyone. The economic displacement, the environmental impact, and the human cost are all unacceptable. And yet globalization (and so-called free trade) is the accepted principal of almost all national and even statewide policy.

But cities like San Francisco don’t have to go along with that. Jane Jacobs, the urban economist and planner, noted more than 30 years ago that cities are the true engines of national economies — and that the healthiest and most successful cities are the ones that have diverse, locally controlled economies and that, as much as possible, replace imports with local products. That’s what the new report calls for — and on a policy level it’s not terribly complicated.

For example, a citywide policy calling for a sustainable local economy would strongly discourage any new chain stores in the city (such as a Home Depot on Bayshore Boulevard) on the grounds that they violate all the basic principles of what the coalition calls localization. Economic development decisions would have to pass a strict test: Does this encourage locally owned businesses? Does it help replace imports? Does it keep money in the economy? Land-use decisions would have to be evaluated in part on their economic merits (but under a new sort of standard); a high-end housing development that displaced local industry wouldn’t make the cut. Purchasing decisions would have to take into account localization issues: Does the food come from the region? Is it possible to buy the goods locally?

It’s impossible in the modern economy to completely avoid globalization — and it’s not necessarily a good idea either. The new report hardly calls for economic isolation. But it does offer a very different policy vision. The supervisors should hold hearings, bring in the authors of the report, and move to create a formal policy that sets sustainable local economics as a standard for all city business. *

The coalition’s report is available at www.regionalprogress.org.

Is Nancy Pelosi up to it? Here are some telling details

January 2, 2007

By Bruce B. Brugmann (B3)

“PELOSI TO BE PUT TO THE TEST,” trumpeted Tuesday’s Chronicle front page lead story.
The Guardian has been down on Pelosi ever since she led the campaign to privatize the Presidio
and then refused to debate the issue at the time or in subsequent campaigns. But
she is now in a key leadership spot, at a critical time in U.S. history with the crises of Iraq and Bush,
and we wish her well. We hope she rises to the occasion and at minimum satisifies her hometown dailynewspaper, if not the Guardian on the other end of town.
But there are many telling details, as I like to call them, that raise some doubts.

First, Maureen Dowd’s lead comment in her Dec. 20th New York Times column.
Dowd wrote, “The only sects that may be more savage than Shiites and Sunnis are the Democratic feminiist lawmakers representing Northern and Southern California.

“After Nancy Pelosi and Jane Harman had their final catfight about who would lead the House Intelligence
Committee, aptly enough at the Four Seasons hair salon in Georgetown, the new speaker passed over the knowledgeable and camera-eager Ms. Harman and mystifyingly gave the consequential job to Silvestre Reyes of Texas.” Dowd then polished off Reyes by pointing out that Reyes, when questioned by a reporter for Congresssional Quarterly, didn’t know whether Al Quaeda was Sunni or Shiite (he is “profoundly Shiite,” as Dowd said) and didn’t seem to know who the Hezbollah were. “‘Hezbollah,'” he stammered. “‘Uh, Hezbollah. Why do you ask me these questions at 5 o’clock? Can I answer in Spanish?” He couldn’t answer in either English or Spanish.

Second, Steve Lopez from the Los Angeles Time found a few days later that Pelosi’s office was annoyed when Lopez called her Washington office and asked if Pelosi was going to “correct her blunder and reverse the appointment” of Reyes, as Lopez put it in his Dec. 27th column. He quoted Jennifer Crider, the Pelosi spokeswoman,as asking why Lopez was still interested in the story.

“Well,” Crider wrote, “partly because the committee has the name INTELLIGENCE in it. And partly because I’m still embarrassed as a Californian to have a San Francisco representative pick the one guy fom Texas who seems to know less than Bush. Lopez continued, “Couldn’t Pelosi reconsider, I asked Crider, even if Pelosi and Harman have their political differences?” Crider replied that Reyes “misspoke.” Lopez wrote that, “in the interest of national security and in the Christmas spirit, I’m sending Reyes a book I found at Amazon.com. It’s called ‘The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Middle East conflict.'”

Third, Pelosi and her local and Washington office refuse to respond to the entreaties of the supporters of Josh Wolf, the journalist jailed on orders of the Bush administration for refusing to give up videotapes he took of a demonstration in San Francisco. She and her office refuse to meet with Josh’s mother and supporters and she refuses to respond to questions about the case from the Guardian beyond saying through a spokesperson that she can’t interfere because it is a “legal matter” (which is nonsense, it is a political hit on journalism and San Francisco by the Bush administration). Pelosi does say that she does support a federal shield law for reporters, which is fine as far as it goes but it is not on her first l00 hour agenda or any other visible agenda. Josh, let us emphasize, is a constituent of Pelosi’s, and he is the only journalist in jail in the U.S. for refusing to give up material to the government, and soon will have been in jail longer than any journalist ever’ Question: If Pelosi refuses to even meet with Josh’s mother on such a serious journalistic and public policy issue, how can she be expected to effectively lead the charge against Bush and the war?

Fourth, Pelosi gives every signal, publicly and privately, that she won’t be leading a strong charge against Bush and the war and the sudden surge and acceleration of more troops into Iraq. She has already made it clear she won’t use the only real levers of power the Democrats have (impeachment proceedings and the the power of the budget to defund the war) or even the bully pulpit of her new office. As her constituents in San Francisco and the voters in the last election have made clear, there’s a misbegotten war on and they want it stopped and they don’t want Bush to be following fellow Texan LBJ in Vietnam by sending in more troops, more troops, more troops, to surge and accelerate in Iraq. They want U.S. troops out of this relentless descent into civil war maelstrom.
So: keep the pressure on Pelosi to try to insure she represents the real San Francisco values. That starts with peace and dissent on the war and Bush. B3

Postscript: Meanwhile, the New York Times reports Tuesday in a story headlined, “A Party, with Pelosi Front and Center,” that her party schedule is a splash of “Pelosi-palooza.” Anne E. Kornblut writes that “In a three day stretch of whirlwind events beginning on Wednesday, Mrs. Pelosi will celebrate her heritage (at the Italian Embassy), her faith (in a Roman Catholic Mass), her education (at Trinity College), her childhood (in Baltimore) and her current home (in a tribute by the singer Tony Bennett of ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco fame.'”) Okay, okay, but the tantalizing question remains: Pelosi can throw a party but is she smart enough and tough enough to go up against Bush and the war gang at this critical juncture and represent the real San Francisco values of her constituency? Follow along at the Guardian, at sfbg.com, and on the Bruce blog.
B3

A new “golden age?”

January 2, 2007

By Tim Redmond

The bloggers are having a bit of fun with The Chronicle’s front-page New Year’s Eve assertion that San Francisco’s Golden Age is here again. I have to agree with Beyond Chron — the story was an embarassment that quoted only conservative, wealthy San Franciscans and ignored much of the city.

Yeah, reporter Carl Nolte, who is a good guy (and my neighbor in Bernal Heights) made the point that there have always been problems in San Francisco, including today. But his overall theme — that all this new development and soaring housing costs are somehow good for the city — is a crock.

I’m always the optimist, and I think that 2006 was a great year for local politics. But a “Golden Age?” No: what’s happening in the local economy is that San Francisco is becoming a bedroom community for Silicon Valley. We are building housing for people who don’t live here, and destroying jobs for people who do.

I’ve argued in the past that in a boom-band-bust city, the busts are often better than the booms. That’s because the single greatest quality-of-life issue for most people (the non-rich) in San Francisco is the cost of housing. This boom is only golden for a very few.

McClatchy sells the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to a New York venture capital firm with no newspaper experience. It’s sad for the staff, for the state of Minnesota, and for the newspaper business

December 28, 2006

Bu Bruce B. Brugmann

It’s yet another WLSB, another wimpy little story in the business section of the Hearst/Singleton papers, except this time it was not even in the business section of the San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst.
And it was just a couple of paragraphs boiled out of an Associated Press story in the business digest of the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, and the San Jose Mercury News (all Singleton papers).

Why? This was probably because the latest McClatchy sale was the most embarrassing media monopoly story of them all: it showed yet again how the nation’s big chains were tossing newspapers around like drunks toss cards in a monopoly game in a waterfront saloon. This time, in a most unexpected development, McClatchy announced that it was selling the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, one of the great newspapers of the country, for less than half of the original purchase price of $l.2 billion that McClatchy paid in l998 to buy the Star-Tribune and its local Cowles Media parent company.

And it sold its largest paper to a one year old NewYork venture capital firm named Avista Capital Partners with no newspaper holdings and no newspaper experience.

Word came as a shock to the newsroom in Minneapolis, reported the New York Times Thursday. Employees received an e-mail message aet 3:5l p.m. saying that there would be an important announcement at 4:00.

“You should have seen the look on our faces,” said Nick Coleman, a metropolitan editor for the paper. “It was like, who? Everyone knows the whole industry is in play and that just about anything could happen, but nobody thought we could get sold. There’s a real sense of betrayal.”

Coleman said the paper was sold in a “fire sale.” He continued, “At a fire sale, people get discounted so we’re very concerned, worried and anxious.” On the other hand, he said, “maybe it takes someone from outside the newspaper business to see the way forward.”

Dean Singleton, the new owner of the competing St. Paul Pioneer Press, was astounded and was quoted in his own paper as saying he would never have expected McClatchy to sell the paper at such a large loss. “How often does a newspaper company sell its largest paper,” he said. “It doesn’t happen.”

For those of us who grew up with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and the Des Moines Register (both owned by the Cowles family), this is a terrible shock. It was bad enough when the Gannett Company took over the Register and turned a splendid statewide paper into a mediocre Des Moines metropolitan paper. I remember the precise moment when I knew that Gannett was ruining the Register. I was back visiting my parents in Rock Rapids, Iowa, and I stopped in to the Rexall store, as I always did when I was in town, to buy the Register from Jim Roeman, a high school classmate who ran the store. He didn’t have any and explained why: the Register had hiked the price so that the more papers he sold, the more money he lost and so he (and many other outlets outstate) stopped carrying the Register. And that was the Gannett strategy, to gradually cut back circulation and coverage to outer Des Moines and ruin a proud state paper.

It was worrying when McClatchy, a California paper, bought the Minneapolis Star but at least it was strong editorially and had solid management. But now, McClatchy sold to an unknown venture capital firm with no credentials and no track record and it did so even though McClatchy’s chainwide profit margin through September of this year was 25.2 per cent, according to Gary Pruitt, McClatchy CEO. Then Pruit coyly added without giving specifics, “Without Minneapolis, the profit margin would be higher.” Higher? That’s higher than most U.S. corporations are doing.

Even newspaper analyst John Morton, who rarely sees a newspaper sale or a merger he doesn’t like, told the Sacramento Bee that the sale was “a disappointment.” He said McClatchy is known as an operator of high quality newspapers and is giving up on a paper with a good reputation. “This is a shock,” he said.

Colby Atwood, an analyst at Borrell Associates, a media research firm, gave a chilling financial analysis to the New York Times. “The turbulence of equity holders trying to rebalance their portfolios and newspapers are properties to be bought and sold,” he said. “They’re buying cash flow and tax benefits. It’s not the sort of religious commitment that you hope to get from newspaper owners.”

The Star Tribune laid out this new form of “religious commitment” in its Wednesday story by Matt McKinney and Susan Feyder, who were assigned that uneviable job in journalism of covering the transgressions of their own paper. Here is their snapshot lead of how the nation’s second largest chain unloads its biggest newspaper:

“The Star Tribune’s new chairman is a Wall Street investor who says he’s driven by public service. Chis Harte is also a resident of Texas and Maine and a former newspaper executive who’ll be advising an investment group that has never owned a daily newspaper.

“A day after McClatchy announced the sale of the Star Tribune to a New York private equity group, there are more questions than answers about how the deal will reshape the newspaper and its community, and whether it will serve as a template for an industry in transition.

“Harte says he’s still trying to figure it all out himself.

“‘This whole transaction came together so fast, really in just the last week or so,'” Harte said. “‘At this point we just don’t know about things like my schedule.'”

The heads on the story synopsize the point about reshaping the newspaper and the community: “Twin Cities will lose Star Tribune Foundation” and “Sale could reset the bar for newspaper deals–lower.”

Well, we can get a little idea right here in the Bay Area about this kind of “reshaping” and “religious commitment.”
Only by reading the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, and the many stories on Chain Links, the online network of the Newspaper Guild, (some links below), can you find out much of anything about this sorry deal. Not by reading the WLSBs in the local Hearst/Singleton press. And so once again we urge you to sign up for Chain Links and get the stories the local monopoly papers won’t print.

Full disclosure: we want to get the documents of collaboration of Hearst and Singleton and the other chains in the Bay Area monopoly deai (McClatchy, Gannertt, Stephens), and shed as much light as possible on the march of the Galloping Conglomerati. That’s why the Guardian and the Media Alliance, represented by the First Amendment Project, went into federal court last week to try to unseal the documents in Reilly vs. Hearst et al, the only real impediment remaining to unraveling the Hearst/Singleton deal and the fallout from the Knight-Ridder sale to McClatchy. Wish us luck. B3

P.S. I sent an email over to Ken Howe, editor of the Chronicle business section, asking him why the Chronicle did not run a story on the McClatchy sale. He had not responded by blogtime. I am sending a copy of this story (and the Nick Coleman column) to Hearst corporate in New York via Chronicle publisher Frank Vega and Editor Phil Bronstein. Will they comment? Will Hearst ever allow a Nick Coleman-type column in its paper or website SF Gate or its blogs? Will they allow David Lazarus to get to the bottom of it all in his excellent business column? Or Phil Matier aand Andy Ross…Or?…Or?…

P.S. 2: Note to the newspaper unions: the stories you are running on Chain Links are owner oriented stories, with almost no quotes from people from the community or journalism or law professors or union spokespeople. Do the unions have any comment or stories of its own that it can pass along? Any more Nick Coleman type columns?

ChainLINKS
The Star Tribune
The Minneapolis Star Tribune
The New York Times
Editor & Publisher

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