MUNI

Why Gonzalez didn’t run

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By Tim Redmond

So it looks as if there won’t be much of a mayor’s race this fall after all. I know that Matt Gonzalez took a hard look at it; he met with a good campaign consultant, talked to possible supporters and donors, took a poll … and decided that he wasn’t going to win.

Gonzalez didn’t want to run a symbolic campaign. He didn’t want to do what Tom Ammiano did in 1999 — galvanize the left, build a movement, and fall short of dethroning a powerful incumbent. Gonzalez felt like he did that once, and if he was going to enter the race, he wanted to know there was a real chance of victory.

But Gonzalez has been out of politics for a couple of years, and has dropped a bit off the political radar. His “maybe-I-will-maybe-I-won’t” game over the past six months has demoralized a lot of possible supporters. And he couldn’t come up with a plan to crack Gavin Newsom’s teflon: The early numbers had him losing, 60-20.

It’s too bad. I still think that if Gonzalez had started early, say back in January, we might have had a real race. I understand his frustration: No matter how badly Newsom screws up — Muni’s a mess, the murder rate is soaring, he slept with a staffer who was married to his good friend — the mayor remains almost impossibly popular.

That, I think, could change with a real candidate challenging him — but it won’t be Matt Gonzalez. So it’s time to start thinking about the Board of Supervisors in 2008.

Will Earthlink bail on SF?

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By Tim Redmond

Earthlink, which is negotiating a contract to provide WiFi to San Francisco, may be in the process of bailing out of the deal – and whatever the mayor’s office or anyone else may say, it has little to do with the supervisors demanding more benefits.

Earthlink’s CEO announced yesterday that the company is changing its strategy on municipal wi-fi, and now wants cities to promise to buy a certain amount of service before the company puts up its system.

According to Muni Wireless magazine:

EarthLink President and CEO Rolla P. Huff today identified “a lot of inherent goodness” in the municipal wireless market but acknowledged his company’s current approach to that market is not working. To insure a return on investment, he wants “municipal government to step up and become a meaningful anchor tenant on completion of a build.”

The system Earthlink and its partner, Google, are talking about building for San Francisco will have no “anchor tenant.” The city isn’t planning to buy a certain bulk amount of wi-fi use; basic, slow service would be free to people who can get the wi-fi signal, and faster premium service would be available for a fee.

“They had discussed with us at some point the idea [of the city as an anchor tenant] and we explained that San Francisco is not at this point in a position to be interested in that service,” Sup. Aaron Peskin, who has been involved in the talks with Earthlink, told us.

So if what San Francisco has in mind isn’t what Earthlink wants to sell, is the deal dead?

Ron Vinson, the head of the city’s Dept of Telecommunication and Information Services, told that he has no reason to believe Earthlink is pulling out and “we look forward to closing a deal with them.”

But it’s looking shaky right now – and if the project goes kaput, look for Mayor Newsom to try to blame the supervisors for wanting to get the city a better deal.

Newsom runs terrified from Muni reform

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By Tim Redmond

Sup. Aaron Peskin has a new version of his Muni reform measure, and it includes an excellent provision to limit new parking downtown. This has Don Fisher’s allies all atwitter — and I hear Gutless Gavin is going to abandon his support for the measure, showing again that he’s nothing more than an errand boy for downtown.

Best of the Bay “Diamond” Dave snapped!

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Aha! Steve Rhodes happened upon our Best of the Bay Local Hero “Diamond” Dave Whitaker last night, riding home on the Muni with a BOB in his lap. Precious.

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Thanks for sending it our way, Steve! See more of his snaps here.

Editor’s Notes

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EDITORS NOTES There was a fascinating moment July 11 at the San Francisco Board of Appeals meeting, a rare and revealing look into how city planning really works — and who calls the shots.

At issue was a proposal for two condo towers at Tenth Street and Market, one of which would soar 352 feet into the air — well above current height limits for the site. The developer also wants to put in 578 parking spaces, 399 more than the city Planning Code currently allows. It’s a monster of a project that would require seven planning code exceptions, two conditional use permits, and four zoning variances.

In other words, it’s not exactly what’s envisioned in the Planning Code for that particular lot.

But that didn’t bother Craig Nikitas, the city Planning Department staffer working on the project. In fact, in a long statement to the appeals board, Nikitas announced that city planners encourage developers to defy the current planning code since the planners think it’s outdated.

"The Planning Department encourages many project sponsors for tall buildings to use [a] height exemption," he said. That leads to "a taller building but a slimmer building…. That’s the kind of urban design we’re looking for nowadays."

Well, maybe — but the Downtown Plan, passed in 1984, calls for a very different type of design. It seeks buildings with setbacks (the so-called wedding cake look). That approach, which we all fought over in hearing after hearing before the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors, was designed in part to maximize sunlight at street level. That look may be old-fashioned architecture; it may not be what the current generation of planners wants. But it’s official city policy, city law.

If Nikitas and his boss, Dean Macris, want to change the guidelines for new buildings, there’s a procedure for that. You recommend changes to the Planning Commission, which can hold hearings and send new Planning Code changes to the Board of Supervisors. Then we all can discuss them in our usual, moderately civil, San Francisco fashion.

But that’s not how it works. Behind closed doors, the planners decide what they want the city to look like. Then they encourage developers to fit that model and bend the codes to make it all fit.

This is nothing new, but it’s rare to get such a clear admission, on tape, of why city planning in this town is so utterly screwed up.

In other news: there’s a bill before the State Legislature that’s supported by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and the Guardian. Labor likes it. The mayor likes it. The supervisors like it. And it could bring the city another $71 million a year in badly needed revenue (more than enough, for example, to solve Muni’s structural budget woes).

And yet it’s hung up in a Senate committee because Don Perata, the East Bay senator who is the president pro tem, doesn’t want any tax bills to go to the floor this year.

The bill by Assemblymember Mark Leno would allow — not require, but allow — the supervisors to put before the voters a proposal to increase the license fees on cars in this city to the level they were before Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cut them statewide. If San Francisco voters choose to tax their own cars, they will have the option; that’s all it is. Yet Perata’s press aide, Alicia Trost, told me it won’t even get a vote.

If you think that’s nuts, you can reach the good senator at (916) 651-4009.*

Problems with Peskin’s Muni plan

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OPINION Last week the Board of Supervisors received a proposed charter amendment that takes a misguided stab at the much-needed reform of the Municipal Transit Agency, which oversees Muni. In undertaking reforms we all agree are needed for the MTA to better serve our city, the supervisors should consider the Hippocratic oath required of doctors: “First, do no harm.”

Our union, Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which represents almost a thousand MTA workers, has enormous respect for the bill’s sponsor, board president Aaron Peskin. We know that Peskin strongly supports workers’ rights and has always stood for openness, transparency, and accountability in government. This initiative, however, undermines everything that he and his board colleagues stand for, and we urge progressives to oppose it.

Most important, the initiative is profoundly undemocratic and would transfer oversight from an elected body to an appointed one. An MTA that no longer had to answer to our elected representatives would be a less accountable and less transparent board.

Downgrading elected oversight into appointive power resting in the hands of one person — the mayor — is not reform but a political power grab. Commissioners would be well aware that they might not be reappointed if they voted too independently of the mayor’s preferences.

The initiative would present additional risks for the abuse of power in local government by allowing MTA to approve its own contracts. This is a dangerous conflict of interest that would create more opportunities for problems, not reform.

The amendment furthermore would undermine workplace protections by increasing the number of nonunion workers from the current 1.5 percent to a whopping 10 percent. Working people would serve at the pleasure of an unelected board and lose their right to collective bargaining. Seven years ago many members of the Board of Supervisors and progressives strongly opposed a nonunion special assistant position in Mayor Willie Brown’s office. The board converted this position to a civil service job because of the perception of patronage and corruption. The current charter amendment exhumes that political cadaver while hiding behind the fig leaf of flexibility — which in this case is a code word for the power to fire people without just cause or due process, or for political expediency.

On one point we agree with this charter amendment: it’s true that the MTA needs more money to serve our residents the way it should, and this amendment would take $26 million from the General Fund and transfer it to the MTA budget. But we do not believe we should be raiding the General Fund without carefully considering the possible impact.

This is a charter amendment and cannot be easily undone. If it turns out to be a disaster, as we believe it will, San Francisco will find itself in a very dire situation without a timely remedy.

SEIU Local 1021 strongly opposes this charter amendment unless it undergoes major revisions. Sup. Jake McGoldrick’s competing initiative, by contrast, offers us a path that is much more democratic, promotes accountability and transparency in government, and protects the rights of working families. We agree that reform is needed, but if passed, Peskin’s initiative will create many more problems than it purports to solve. *

Damita Davis-Howard and Robert Haaland

Damita Davis-Howard is president of SEIU Local 1021; Robert Haaland is San Francisco political coordinator for the union.

 

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

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

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

But there’s something bigger going on here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t get why broadband is any different.

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

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

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

Wolf in candidate’s clothing

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By Steven T. Jones
Josh Wolf — the San Francisco blogger and videographer who spent months in prison for refusing to turn over to the cops raw footage of a protest where an officer was injured — has announced his candidacy for mayor, promising tor bring a host of fresh, relevant issues in the race. He’s calling for the city to sever many of its ties to the federal government, implement a community-based policing plan, bring more transparency into government (which he’ll start on the campaign by wearing a mounted streaming video camera, ala Justin.tv), making Muni free and bicycle path ubiquitous, facilitating more parties in the neighborhoods, and creating a public works program to give jobs to the poor. It’s a pretty bold and progressive agenda that will ideally spark good discussions. Maybe Newsom will even rip off a few of Wolf’s idea, as he is wont to do. But the real value of this candidacy seems to be to highlight the need for police reform and accountability, something that doesn’t seem to interest Newsom in the least.

The Queer Issue: Back to the future?

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› culture@sfbg.com

I’m supposed to meet my editor, Marke B., to talk about this piece at noon at some cheap Mission restaurant that won’t bankrupt my lousy checking account. I arrive 15 minutes late; he’s running at least 30 behind. As I sit and wait for him, I can’t help but laugh — queers are always late. As a queer with a drag-queen alter ego, Felicia Fellatio, I know this is especially true — that hoary old chestnut about "running on drag time" has the ring of solid validity. Trannies are like Muni: we’re never on time.

But a growing body of scholarly queer literature suggests that the underlying cause of our tardiness may be more than simply wanting to be fashionably late. In fact, our predictable lack of punctuality might be a symptom of what many psychologists see as the gay community’s prolonged adolescence; there may be a sense of time unique to homos that exists outside heterosexual norms.

WIND IT UP


Put simply, queer temporality theory says that because our lives can’t be completely legally or socially mapped out according to the heterosexual model (getting married, having kids, sharing retirement benefits, expecting inheritance), we feel less pressure to conform to other aspirations (completing a degree, saving for a house, planning retirement) in the stereotypical Game of Hetero Life. Basically, tardiness is a form of subconscious queer rebellion. This can manifest itself as a rejection of all schedules, however quotidian. It can also lead to a profoundly different view of what the future means to queer people, especially in terms of freedom of choice. Well-known queer theorist Judith Halberstam elaborates on this theory, from a transgender point of view, in her book In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York University Press, 2005).

Some studies also posit that, because many of us grappled with the whole coming-out thing at the same time we were going through puberty, our adolescent maturation period was extended, thus stretching out our psychological development — and effectively slowing down our mental clocks. We just need more time to process things and act on them. Other queer temporality theories focus on the psychological effects of AIDS, which instilled in our community a sense of imminent mortality that negated the future and focused our attention on the present. Rather than making decisions based on what may be, we began to concentrate on what is, creating art and culture that offered immediate transcendence through humor and rage, rather than any abstract hope for the future. "AIDS quickens that sense of needing to and actually being able to draw forth from one’s spirit that work which will have resonance for other people," the late, great filmmaker Marlon Riggs said, and the recent work of performance studies scholar José Esteban Muñoz tries to show how queers have incorporated that sense of "quickening" into their lives and actions.

SPRUNG FORWARD


Of course, we may just run late for things because we’re busy, either at work (most of us rely only on ourselves for financial stability) or at play (our culture is still pretty party-centric, so we have a lot of hangovers to deal with). Plus, putting on all that makeup is practically a full-time job for us queens. Cut us a little slack so we can look fabulous. And all of the theories above seem awfully generalized — some may bristle at the suggestion that we be cast as supposed victims of a pathology that prolongs our adolescences and screws with our mental clocks. It’s not as if there aren’t queer people living as much as they can according to the hetero model, especially now that legal restrictions against same-sex marriage and adoption are relaxing in some areas.

In fact, the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way in terms of the queer rebellion against the straight timeline. As noted by broadcast journalist Tovia Smith last month on National Public Radio, in her piece "Marriage Causes Shift in Gay Culture," it seems that queers have gone "from a radical movement bent on challenging societal norms to a community now eagerly embracing those conventions as their own."

Smith drew her conclusion based on an interview with an upper-middle-class white gay couple from Cambridge, Mass. — the type of control group against which queers have traditionally defined themselves. Whatever negative connotations the phrase "prolonged adolescence" may conjure up, a case could be made that this is precisely what allows queer culture to thrive. Adolescence is when a personality is at its most fluid, and queer identity is the essence of fluidity. Halberstam sees queer temporality as a positive, radical reaction to heterosexual society’s mores, pitting it against the "time of inheritance," whose purpose is merely to shore up "the historical past of the nation" and protect "national stability." In the ’90s, a vibrant queer culture of artistic expression, political activism, and social and sexual interaction embraced the notion of prolonged adolescence.

FALLING BACK


Queercore bands like Pansy Division and Tribe 8 co-opted the in-your-face, live-fast-die-young aesthetic of punk, inviting listeners to throw off the shackles of heterosexual society’s expectations and, in the words of Pansy Division, "join the cocksuckers club." Homocore fanzines reveled in childlike graphics and gleefully reinterpreted teen fan magazines like Tiger Beat, giving them a decidedly homosexual spin. The hallmarks of puberty — geeky awkwardness, swoony crushiness, questionable outfits, wanton partying, sexual exploration — became queer fashion statements. Prolonged adolescence was also a means of connection in a time of grief and frustration, a flashpoint where queer history met the present. The AIDS Quilt used a common symbol of childhood comfort to unite and console mourners, and activist organizations like ACT UP and Queer Nation energized their members with the élan of belonging to a rebel schoolyard gang.

But that was the past, and there’s no denying that, with more access to the heterosexual lifestyle opening up for queers, the future is upon us. HIV is no longer a death sentence (for people who can afford the meds), and any evidence of necessary rebellion is awfully hard to find in young gay people these days, at least on the face of it. Prada and Beyoncé have replaced vintage clothing and queercore as coins of the young gay realm, and the psychological and social effects of the current lust for consumerism and mainstream pop culture on queers today will be for future theorists to puzzle out. To me, it represents a sad trend that aspires more toward societal acceptance than political subversion, an adjustment of our internal clocks to tick to the tired straight beat. Call me nostalgic, call me behind the times — just don’t call me late for cocktails.

Editor’s Notes

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› steve@sfbg.com

I’ve been obsessed with high-speed rail for a couple of months now. It started in March when I was in France and had my first experience on the TGV trains that zip between Paris and Lyon in less than two hours, about a third of the time it takes by car. The ease with which I stepped onto the train made my airport experiences seem like torturous tests of my capacity to endure long lines, inexplicable delays, nosy cops, bureaucratic madness, and fellow travelers made cranky by it all.

As the French countryside flew past me at 200 mph, I wondered why California has been unable to build a high-speed train connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco, cities quite similar to Paris and Lyon in terms of distance and cultural importance. So I researched the issue and learned that the single biggest obstacle is Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, as I reported recently in "The Silver Bullet Train" (4/18/07), a story that the San Diego CityBeat then ran as its cover article in its last issue.

So I was intrigued to hear what Schwarzenegger had to say on the subject last week when he came to speak in a Pacific Gas and Electric Co. auditorium for an event sponsored by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce. When asked about it, the governor said, "I’m a big believer in mass transit. I’m a big believer in high-speed rail. I think this high-speed rail is a great possibility, but I want us working on the public participation — private partnerships — then we can commit to the $10 billion to put in from the public sector."

Which, of course, is complete bullshit. The governor’s budget made big cuts in mass-transit spending, including chopping $28 million from BART and $36 million from Muni. And it proposed gutting the California High Speed Rail Authority, which has long planned for the need for private-sector funding support that Schwarzenegger claims will preclude next year’s $10 billion high-speed rail bond measure. Those who know the issue know how ridiculous the governor sounds.

"Based upon your encouragement, we have prepared the financing plan. If your support for an appropriate level of funding in 2007–<\d>08 is contingent upon securing specific commitments of funding from various public and private entities, you are the logical leader who can bring together California Congressional leaders and private financiers," CHSRA chair Quentin Kopp wrote to Schwarzenegger on May 25.

And still Schwarzenegger does nothing to support the project, which the downtown think tank San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR) makes the focus of its June newsletter under the headline "High Speed Rail Essential to Keep California on Track: Trains Offer Best Bet for Fast, Clean Transport as State Grows."

It’s time for Schwarzenegger’s deeds to start matching his words, particularly on this crucial project.*

Downtown’s sneaky parking plan

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OPINION Two years ago this week, the mayors of many of the world’s largest cities gathered in San Francisco for World Environment Day and pledged to make their cities more livable and sustainable places.

San Francisco justly prides itself on being an environment-minded city made of diverse and livable neighborhoods. Thanks in large part to the city’s historic neighborhoods, designed around walking and public transit, San Franciscans generate fewer greenhouse gas emissions per capita than residents of any city in the country except New York.

Unfortunately, one of the most environmentally unfriendly measures to come along in a decade may be headed to the ballot. A shadowy coalition of downtown interests is gathering signatures for a measure, the brainchild of Republican financier Don Fisher, that would impose a one-size-fits-all parking "solution" on San Francisco’s distinct neighborhoods while removing protections for pedestrians, cyclists, and public transit from the city’s Planning Code.

This measure, blandly titled the Parking for Neighborhoods Initiative, threatens to reverse decades of progress toward a sustainable and livable San Francisco.

If this measure becomes law, it will negate the ability of neighborhoods to plan their own future, to provide affordable housing options, and to make their streets safe and livable. It will, in a stroke, overturn many years’ worth of neighborhood-based planning efforts, from downtown and South of Market through Hayes Valley and the Mission to Balboa Park.

Reduced-parking requirements, limitations on creating new parking spaces, have become a useful tool for decreasing traffic congestion, encouraging walking, cycling, and public transit use, and making housing more affordable in the city’s most dense and transit-rich neighborhoods. The city’s Downtown Plan, adopted in the 1980s, encouraged the area to grow as a diverse commercial, industrial, and residential district, oriented to transit rather than the automobile.

Many neighborhoods may not choose reduced-parking requirements, but where they fit, residents have embraced them as a way to preserve their neighborhoods’ livability, character, and affordability. Nearly a third of San Francisco households live without a car. A UC Berkeley study showed that units without parking spaces are affordable to twice as many households as units with them.

The measure would also prohibit programs to make San Francisco’s mean streets safer places for all of us, particularly children, elders, and the disabled. It arrogantly asserts the right of developers to cut new driveways and garage entrances wherever they want, regardless of the number of pedestrians, cyclists, and Muni riders who would be inconvenienced or even endangered.

Proponents of the measure are trying to give it a green gloss, invoking provisions about car sharing and low-emission vehicles. Don’t be fooled — this ill-conceived measure will make our city less sustainable, less livable, less affordable, and less safe. Don’t sign the petition! *


Tom Radulovich is executive director of Livable City (www.livablecity.org).

Ghostbusters

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› sarah@sfbg.com

Entertainment commissioner Audrey Joseph is, by her own assessment, a tough cookie. She successfully beat back a developer’s efforts to close her old SoMa nightclub. She attended her first Halloween in the Castro as a windup doll. And when skinheads targeted the famously gay Halloween event in the late 1980s, Joseph helped form the Gay Guards. But for all that, she is the first to admit that her latest gig — which involves helping Sup. Bevan Dufty and Mayor Gavin Newsom move Halloween festivities out of the Castro — won’t be easy.

"Sometimes I feel like a whipping post," Joseph told the Guardian the day after she gave the city’s first public presentation of the Dufty-Newsom plan to move the event into a parking lot behind AT&T Park — a lot that just happens to lie in the district of Newsom nemesis Sup. Chris Daly.

With Dufty stuck in traffic, though he did show up later, and Newsom nowhere in sight, Joseph was flying solo May 30 as she laid out their plan to an audience that was composed primarily of middle-aged Castro business and property owners. The city won’t close Market and Castro streets, and it won’t provide portable toilets or entertainment in the Castro, but it will police the area, and Castro merchants will be asked to voluntarily close early.

"We’d love to see the Castro dead," Joseph said as she laid out plans to lure Halloween revelers into the stadium parking lot by holding a concert featuring an as-yet-unnamed mainstream entertainer.

Some Castro residents expressed ambivalence about killing off what one attendee said amounts to "a sacred holiday" for the gay community, others pointed out that it would take a major hip-hop artist to lure the bridge-and-tunnel crowd to a concert that will cost $10 to $25 a pop, and bar owner Greg Bronstein questioned the sanity of closing early on what is the busiest business night of the year. Deputy police chief David Shinn pointed out that unlike New York’s 30,000-strong police force, which can encircle the Big Apple’s Halloween parade, the San Francisco Police Department’s 2,400 officers cannot ring the Castro.

"We’ve heard everyone’s cries about wanting Halloween out of the Castro," Joseph told the crowd. But her headache stemmed from the fact that her audience represented a small but highly vocal fraction of the 49,839 registered voters in Dufty’s district — and similarly small but vocal groups exist in Daly’s district too. Rincon Tenants Association president David Osgood decries the proposed plan as "the worst case of NIMBYism."

"This is an obvious effort by one neighborhood to get rid of their own event," Osgood told the Guardian. "But people are going to go to the Castro anyway. Halloween in the Castro has a flamboyance you don’t get anywhere else. Moving Halloween to the Embarcadero is like trying to move Mardi Gras out of New Orleans to Omaha. It’s just not going to work. It needs to be planned where it is."

But Joseph has high hopes for AT&T Park as a Halloween site, even though she has had a hard time finding event promoters. "The site is bigger, there’s less residential impact, it’s right on a Muni line, and we won’t have to stop traffic on the Embarcadero during rush hour when we’re setting up," she said.

Defending the lack of community meetings about Halloween in the past six months (something Newsom and Dufty had promised), Joseph said, "The city had to debrief from last year’s event, make a plan, and get Supervisors Dufty and Chris Daly to sign off on it, since both districts are involved, then meet with the mayor, the port, and a string of musical promoters."

As for concerns that people will just show up in the Castro or drift there once the city pulls the plug on the stadium parking lot concert at 10 p.m., Joseph said, "I’m open to suggestions. I’m trying to create a safe and fun environment where people say, ‘Wow, this is a great party!’ instead of coming to the Castro, looking terrified, and holding on to each other — for the thrill of what? Being stabbed or shot?" *

Beyond the Progressive Convention

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EDITORIAL The Progressive Convention didn’t produce a candidate for mayor, which wasn’t really a surprise: by the time the show opened, it was pretty clear that none of the leading contenders was ready to enter the race that day. And that, of course, will give the mainstream news media plenty of opportunity to say that the San Francisco left is disorganized, discouraged, and unable to mount a challenge to Mayor Gavin Newsom.

But Sup. Chris Daly actually did a very positive thing in pulling this event together. It wasn’t a nominating convention and never should have been, but it did serve as a reminder of the large and growing number of ideas, activists, and elected officials that make up that amorphous bloc known as the San Francisco progressives.

Daly, in a closing speech, noted that he’s heard over and over again how weak the movement is, but reminded the 400 or so attendees that "the state of the progressive movement is strong." Progressives control the Board of Supervisors and the school board. More than half the elected officials in the city generally fit under the progressive banner. And of the successful policy initiatives that have come out of this city in the past two years, almost none were from the Mayor’s Office.

Ten years ago, this event couldn’t and wouldn’t have happened. The city was stuck under the tight rule of a political machine, and only a handful of elected officials dared defy the kingpin, Willie Brown. Although the progressives have come a long, long way, winning a citywide race for mayor when the incumbent has soaring approval ratings and an essentially endless supply of money still isn’t an easy task. So it’s no surprise that there aren’t many takers.

In fact, there are some on the left who argue that it’s best to just give Newsom a pass and focus on the next round of supervisorial elections, in 2008. But that would be a mistake.

For starters, we’re still not convinced of Newsom’s invulnerability. The mayor may have great PR, but he has a lousy record. The city’s facing a long list of serious problems, from the murder rate to the Muni meltdown, and Newsom has done almost nothing to address them. The right candidate could mount a real challenge.

And even if it’s a long shot, San Francisco needs a mayor’s race. Newsom has gone into hiding of late; he won’t face the press, won’t appear before the supervisors to answer questions, and holds only farcical community meetings where all the questions are planted or screened ahead of time. A challenge would force him into the open and give the voters a chance to hold him accountable.

If it’s done right, a campaign could energize the legions of disenfranchised and create the sort of momentum the progressives need to retain control of the Board of Supervisors next year. And it would ensure that the left turn out for the election in November — which will be crucial if some downtown-backed initiatives and an attempt to recall Sup. Jake McGoldrick are on the ballot.

It’s late, and it’s getting very late for a candidate to enter the race, but there’s still a short window of time. Former supervisor Matt Gonzalez is still thinking about a run, and if he’s going to do it, he should be talking now to some of the progressives whose support he’ll need. Frankly, he has some fence-mending to do from his last race and from his decision to leave the board, and he should start that now.

We still think Ross Mirkarimi ought to run, and despite his official reluctance, he still can. A win would shake up city hall like nothing in years; a loss might still position the supervisor well to try again when Newsom is termed out. Daly at this point has taken himself out for family reasons, which is understandable — but he could also mount a strong campaign.

In his convention speech, Mirkarimi kept saying that "somebody" needs to take on the mayor. Ross, Matt, Chris … we’re waiting. *

It’s the environment, stupid

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› paulr@sfbg.com


You must be a pretty good orator if you can bewitch a roomful of people who can’t understand a word you’re saying — except for, perhaps, your incantatory "stupido!"s while discussing America’s many foolish agricultural policies — and by this standard Carlo Petrini, founder of Slow Food, is a pretty good orator. He held a media crowd rapt at a lunch recently at Greens, the point of which gathering was to proclaim the advent of Slow Food Nation a year hence at Fort Mason. Dutifully I cheer and huzzah the news, though I continue to think the word "slow" is all wrong for this country. In America, "slow" means "stupid" — or, as Petrini and his fellow Italians would say, "stupido."

"Stupido" — operatic accent on the first syllable — is great fun to say, much more fun than "biodiesel," which seemed to be Mayor Gavin Newsom’s mantra as he addressed the same crowd in its native English. Why, you ask, would the mayor be discussing biodiesel at a food-related gathering? Was he planning to haul away some of the restaurant’s used cooking oil for use in Muni buses? Or was he reminding us of the deeper political tectonics at work beneath Slow Food? Food is politics, and a rising theme in politics these days is the fate of the earth itself.

Newsom, despite the travails of the past few months, looked like one of the youngest people in the room — the man with the most tomorrows in the bank. The likelihood is that most of his political career is still ahead of him, and what does a politician of his age see when scanning the prospect? Crisis, of course, since that is the nature of politics and indeed of human beings, but crisis of a new sort, one in which the livability of this globe and the survival of its inhabitants can no longer be assumed. The younger you are, the more acutely you sense that the consequences of our poor planetary stewardship will make your stay here less pleasant — and maybe to suppose that biomass fuels and sustainable agriculture are important pieces of the same big puzzle.

I love slow food by any name, and I am older than the mayor by more years than please me, but on the matter of ecopolitics: faster is better.

Quixote’s Mexican Grill

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› paulr@sfbg.com

Literary nerds will note a slight irony in the naming of a Mexican restaurant after Don Quixote — a.k.a. Alfonso Quixano — the touchingly quixotic unhero of Miguel de Cervantes’s novel El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha, first published in Spain in 1605. The novel has nothing to do with Mexico, though Mexico has plenty to do with Spain, beginning with a shared language and faith and including a certain goriness in cultural mythology. The restaurant in question, Quixote’s Mexican Grill (which opened toward the end of winter in a little run of shops behind Muni Metro’s Forest Hill station), serves an excellent sangria. I love sangria and soak it up like a sponge, but sangria (the name is derived from sangre, "blood") isn’t Mexican. Sangria, as probably most of us know, is a wine cocktail, and Mexico produces almost no wine. Spain, on the other hand, produces tons; it is one of the world’s great wine-producing lands, and sangria is a distinctively Spanish drink, something to sip, or swill, late on a sun-splashed afternoon under a parasol somewhere on the Costa Brava.

I come not to pick nits, though, because Quixote’s is a charming neighborhood place that turns out some interesting, unexpected dishes, and sangria is lovely whether on the Spanish coast or at the wild intersection of Dewey and Woodside, with a cold city summer sweeping in on wings of Dickensian fog. Sangría de rojo ($7 for a goblet) slyly raises expectations, and the kitchen at Quixote’s, while capably turning out the Mexican standards that have become American favorites (tacos, burritos, enchiladas, and so forth), also offers a dish, Sancho’s borrecherra ($18.95), that features a sauce concocted from beer and wine. New World meets Old, and they dance; more on this anon.

Let’s begin in the middle of the degree-of-sophistication scale, with an old friend that gets restaurant treatments of varying appeal: the chile relleno ($5.95). My companion, a connoisseur of chiles rellenos, wrinkled his brow skeptically when the plate was set before him, but he was relieved to find the pepper — the proper kind, a poblano, deep green and tapered, with a breath of heat — had been roasted and peeled, not dunked in batter and deep-fried. He also approved of the cheese inside (molten queso blanco, oozing) and of the ranchero sauce. I agreed, while noting with satisfaction the sets of ketchup squirt bottles on each table, one filled with red salsa, the other with green. Caveat: the red kind is quite hot.

Caveat, continued: a number of the dishes can be quite hot, as we discovered at dinner one evening. We opened with a sweet-tempered queso fundido ($5.50), a crock of melted cheese presented with a foil envelope containing a huge flour tortilla cut into quarters. The most sensitive palate could have eaten this dish and enjoyed it as we did. That same palate would also have responded warmly to the ocean tacos ($3.50 each), filled with grilled mahimahi, shredded lettuce, and mango dice for a bit of ripe sweetness. But the firestorm was not far off.

Sancho’s borrecherra — a prawn dish — looked tame enough, its sauce the rich color of ale, the prawns peeled and easy to eat. But the seemingly benign amber liquid turned out to be so spicy that the prawns themselves, lightly splashed with it, were little torches, bearers of flame, though shrimp flesh is famed for a delicate marine sweetness. My companion, who has grown less tolerant of spicy food over the years, accepted my offer of a straight-up trade for my mahimahi tacos, and we agreed to joint custody of the borrecherra’s two side dishes, black beans and cayenne corn.

The black beans were fabulous, deeply tasty with no incendiary properties. But the cayenne corn was another matter. Corn, like shrimp, is naturally sweet and takes well to a judicious enlivenment with cayenne pepper. But … not too much! Too much, and you set people’s mouths on fire. My companion, having abandoned the shrimp to me, soon abandoned the flaming corn niblets as well, and while I have retained a higher tolerance for hot food, even I in the end found the corn and shrimp to be a bridge too far. It was as if the sorcerer’s apprentice were working the stoves that night and had by accident knocked over an entire jar of cayenne pepper into a pot, turning a pinch into a fistful. We sought refuge in dessert — in particular, the escudo ($5.95), which our server told us was a Mexican version of the s’more. He was right: What appeared in due course was a plateful of deep-fried pastry triangles dotted with half-melted minimarshmallows and a generous piping of chocolate sauce. If, in some alternate universe, nachos are dessert, then the escudo plate is from that universe. And the only heat we noticed was the physical heat of oven and deep-fryer, pleasantly waning.

Although Quixote’s occupies your typical midblock storefront, a certain amount of thought and effort has been put into making it attractive. The blond wood banquettes have a Scandinavian angularity to them — they could be in a sauna — while the walls have been coated in textured plaster and painted a sunburned almond color to give the sense of old adobe. I associate old adobe with Mexico, not Spain, but I probably do so a little less after a glass or two of sangria. *

QUIXOTE’S MEXICAN GRILL

Mon.–Thurs. and Sun., 11 a.m.–9 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 11 a.m.–10 p.m.

406 Dewey Blvd., SF

(415) 661-1313

Beer and wine

Moderately loud

MC/V

Wheelchair accessible

Rave on, Anon.

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ART BOOK Any ole body can start a LiveJournal or blog these days with the flick of a mousing finger and a peck on a keyboard. But how many people can undertake a project such as the one documented in The 1000 Journals Project (Chronicle Books, $22.95)? At a time when you can post your thoughts to zillions in an instant, there’s still something romantic and risky in the act of taking 1,000 blank books and dropping them like so many inspiring dandelion seeds in bars, cafés, and Muni buses, as San Francisco art instigator Someguy (né Brian Singer) did seven years ago.

It all started after the graphic designer became fascinated by the scribblings on urinal walls. "When I was in college, the art department shared a building with the ROTC, and there would be some very interesting conversations taking place on the bathroom walls," Someguy recalls from a job at Apple in Cupertino. "That was sort of the genesis of The 1000 Journals Project — try to figure out what people do when no one is watching and try to get these conversations on paper in some form."

Word of the project spread online, and after launching a site, Someguy began to get e-mail requests for books, which he fulfilled until the 1,000 were gone. Then he began organizing waiting lists.

Surrealists did it with exquisite corpses; punkers shot off mail art from afar. But The 1000 Journals Project is more anonymous, intimate, and unschooled — it’s a chain message in a bottle, bidding the finder to express him- or herself and pass it on. The product of nameless contributors in more than 40 countries, the volume is by turns grittily beautiful, quirky, and rough-hewn — filled with drawings, cartoons, collages, and stitched pages located somewhere between classroom doodles meant for one set of eyes and graffiti scrawl writ small for all the world to see.

Why 1,000? "It was sort of like those turtles running across a beach," Someguy says. "Not all of them are going to make it. It’s nearly impossible to get ahold of one nowadays." (Filmmaker Andrea Kreuzhage has managed to trace some participants for a forthcoming documentary.)

Only two completed journals ever made the journey back to Someguy, though while working on the book, he put out a call for partially filled journals, which he scanned and sent back out. "One in the book, Journal 49, was left on a scripture table overlooking a city in Croatia," Someguy remembers. "Someone in London left it in a phone booth, open to a spread saying, ‘This is for you.’" And then there were the big question marks: one contributor was held up at gunpoint and had to forfeit a bag containing a journal, and some Midwestern pirate-costumed jokers created a treasure hunt that led to a journal in the maw of a giant turtle statue. "That one," Someguy marvels, "I never heard from again!"

www.1000journals.com

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Sup. Chris Daly has kind of a cool idea: he wants to hold a progressive convention to pick a candidate and a platform for mayor. The date is June 2, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The place is the Tenderloin Community School. The idea is for hundreds of grassroots activists to gather, nominate someone to take on Gavin Newsom, and kick off a citywide campaign that will, at the very least, force the carefully protected mayor to come out from behind his handlers and answer some tough questions.

Not everyone thinks this is a good concept — and I’m the first to agree it’s a bit of a risk. It assumes, for example, that there’s a serious candidate for mayor whom we can all agree on and who actually wants to run for the job. And it assumes that we all really want to put the effort into a full-scale campaign against an incumbent who looks pretty close to unbeatable right now.

Neither of these is a trivial issue.

In theory, a nomination convention is a chance for constituents to choose among candidates who are competing for the right to seek office. Four years ago, when we had Tom Ammiano, Angela Alioto, and Matt Gonzalez in the race, a convention would have been fun, if not terribly useful; none of those people would have dropped out in favor of another based on one convention vote. But right now there’s not a lot of competition: nobody who has the profile to launch a credible race has stepped forward and volunteered for the mission. And it would look pretty lame to have the People speak and call for a candidate who then took the stage and declined.

If this is going to work, the situation has to change in the next few weeks. The folks who really don’t want to see Newsom get a bye are talking, and one of them is going to accept the responsibility. Me, I’d be happy with Daly, Matt Gonzalez, Aaron Peskin, or Ross Mirkarimi, but Gonzalez isn’t ready to announce anything at this point, Peskin has told me he’s not going to run, Mirkarimi is being awfully coy, and Daly seems pretty reluctant (although he hasn’t ruled it out, he says he’ll do it only if nobody else will).

Not everyone thinks it’s even worth the fight. Paul Hogarth, writing in BeyondChron.org, argued May 14 that it’s better to save our energy and let Newsom be a weak lame duck for another five years. After all, he hasn’t been able to do much harm — and now and then, he does something decent.

The problem is that the city has serious problems, and it’s not OK for a mayor to be missing in action this long. Think about the murder rate. Think about Muni. Think about the future of blue-collar jobs, affordable housing, and the eastern neighborhoods. Think about the fact that in the next four years, the last big piece of land where San Francisco can preserve blue-collar jobs and build affordable housing will be up for grabs. Think about the city’s soul. Because it really is on the line here — and I’m not ready to hand it over to Newsom again without a fight. *

This morning my Muni driver told me to get a car

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By Paula Connelly

When I saw that it was rainy this morning at 8:00AM I decided to take the 48 Quintara line bus rather than walk, as I usually do. After waiting just shy of an hour for the bus, two arrived at the same time and half way through the ride the less crowded one reached a spontaneous end-of-the-line. When my bus driver told me that I should run if I want to catch the first bus, I explained why that was bothersome. She told me, “Get a car.” Et tu, bus driver?? I have been a city girl my whole life, never had a car, and don’t plan on getting one.
After the recent i880 accident, Muni should not only be encouraging people to ride, they should be demonstrating all the viability of the option to take public transportation. That’s just bad marketing. It took me twice as long to get to work as it would had I walked. That’s an hour and a half commute for 2.7 miles. When dealing with any large, diverse group of people, you can expect complications. But just about once a month, the frequency with which I take public transportation to work, my fervor for walking is reaffirmed by a similar experience. I can’t trust Muni when even it’s employees have lost faith in it’s reliability. Wet socks are a bargain for my sanity.

The meltdown opportunity

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EDITORIAL A few hours after the explosion that melted part of the East Bay approach to the Bay Bridge, Mayor Gavin Newsom was meeting with reporters at the state Democratic convention in San Diego. Yes, he told them, there would be an economic impact from the freeway meltdown. Yes, it would be a hardship for thousands of commuters. "Yes, it’s a mess," he told us. "But it’s also an opportunity."

Newsom is right – and if he and other regional and state officials are willing to take advantage of that opportunity, it could be a rare chance to shift commute patterns in the Bay Area away from the automobile.

The evidence on the first post-meltdown travel day was encouraging: Extra BART trains were running. Extra ferries were in service. The Muni lines that connect to the ferry terminal (even the star-crossed T line) were more or less on time. And huge numbers of people who normally would have driven their cars to work took mass transit.

Part of that, of course, was due to the decision by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to offer free rides on trains, buses, and ferries. But part of it was because there simply wasn’t any other choice: the only option for a lot of East Bay residents who wanted to get into San Francisco without facing a real traffic nightmare was to leave their cars at home.

The new commute won’t be a perfect convenience for everyone – but if the state and the counties keep their end of the deal, it won’t have to be that bad. In fact, in 1989, when the Loma Prieta quake brought down the Bay Bridge, San Francisco survived just fine. For those few weeks without transbay driving, downtown was remarkably pleasant – the streets weren’t clogged with cars, the noise level was down, the air was cleaner, and pedestrians and bicyclists didn’t have to fear for their lives.

Meanwhile, the business of the city went on; people adapted; and when the bridge reopened, they got right back in their cars.

That’s what has to change this time around.

For starters, Newsom and Oakland mayor Ron Dellums ought to convene a summit on reducing car traffic and set a firm goal of, say, a permanent 25 percent reduction in auto traffic on the Bay Bridge. That would involve major, lasting improvements in regional transit: The number of ferries, now at double the normal capacity, would have to remain high, and fares would have to be kept low enough to be competitive with driving. BART would also have to increase capacity, and Muni would have to run more busses to take people quickly from BART terminals to other parts of town.

That’s going to cost some money, in part because the East Bay-to-San Francisco ferries are privately owned and won’t carry passengers free or at reduced fares unless the state is going to keep ponying up money – which is a good reason for the legislature to look at creating public ferries for the long term.

But compared to the costs of continued congestion and the impact on global climate change that come from all these cars, it’s too good a deal to pass up.

San Francisco city planners tend to look at ways to accommodate more cars as the city grows. Newsom and Dellums, along with other Bay Area officials, need to derail that assumption and use this opportunity to make permanent reductions in car use. *

Locals only?

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BOOK REVIEW Not for Tourists Guidebooks has just released the fourth edition of its Not for Tourists Guide to San Francisco. Besides having a mad grip of inaccuracies, the title is problematic: this tome is definitely not not for tourists.

The first thing I found wrong with the book was its only foldout map. It’s a highway map, which is weird, since most city dwellers tend to stay clear of the damn things. They’re for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd and, uh, the tourists. And the map isn’t even detailed enough for you to see where on- and off-ramps are or tell which is which. And with San Francisco’s grand total of four highways, it’s hard to imagine why the NFT folks didn’t devote their largest page to a Muni map – just one of many things this book doesn’t have.

In all fairness, Muni routes are included in the 120 minimaps that comprise most of the book. But the layout is incredibly daunting! To follow one bus route, you might have to flip back and forth 20 times to see where the line will take you – shit most locals just don’t have friggin’ time for. I became further discouraged by the decision to devote pages to Ghirardelli Square, Fisherman’s Wharf, and Pier 39. (If not for tourists, for whom?) But despite this and despite noticing an ad for Segway Tours of the Marina Green (insert sound of me retching here), I still gave the rest of the guide a whirl, determined to get some practical use out of it.

I attempted to find a liquor store when I was trapped in SoMa without rolling papers – only to discover the intersection I was at, Fourth Street and Mission, was on the corner of three maps. The bar I was in (my favorite) was nowhere to be found. I was in minimap limbo. Next I tried to wax nostalgic with the maps of neighborhoods where I used to live – only to discover that some bars listed on the neighborhood directories weren’t dotted on the maps.

So I tried using the guide to call my neighborhood grocery store, Eight-Twenty-Eight Irving Market, to see if it carried printer paper. Apparently, it falls somewhere between liquor store and supermarket, because it’s not in the book. (BTW: it carries college rule but not printer paper.) Finally, I called the Hotel Utah – only to lose an eardrum when that killer "bee-doo-eet!" sound alerted me to the fact that the number listed in the guide was disconnected.

Maybe, maybe buy the Not for Tourists Guide for first-year college students or other new SF transplants. But if you’ve been here for longer than six months, just hang on to your Muni map and your BART schedule and save the $14.95 (suggested retail) for 411 charges.

www.notfortourists.com

Small Business Awards 2007: Community Activist Award

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When Mark Klaiman and Virginia Donohue opened Pet Camp, a kennel for cats and dogs, in 1997 in the Bayview, they wanted to do more than just make money housing pets.

"A lot of businesses drive in, do their work, and leave. They don’t actually get involved in the community," says Klaiman, who with his wife, Donohue, worked for the Environmental Protection Agency prior to becoming an entrepreneur. "We have taken a fundamentally different approach to doing business in the Bayview."

Wedged between Third Street and the Southeast Pollution Control Plant, in a large warehouse complete with a synthetic-grass outdoor play space and a doggie swimming pool, Pet Camp is a stridently green business. It uses huge low-power fans to circulate air, sends its animal droppings to an East Bay methane plant for electricity production, and gets 75 percent of its electricity from a solar-panel-lined roof.

"You get a great view of the settling ponds from our second floor," Donohue says wryly, adding that housing activists threw around the idea of redeveloping their block for new homes.

But the gaseous and chemical smell from the tanks permeates the air, and the housing advocates quickly realized the block might not make for the best living conditions.

The Pet Camp owners are glad about that. They want to stay in the Bayview and have put in countless hours working with others on community projects.

He’s the secretary of the Bayview Merchants Association, which works to ensure that the neighborhood creates and maintains a positive environment for small businesses. During the disruption caused by the construction of the new T-Third line, he helped the group push Muni to develop an ad campaign to let people know that businesses in the neighborhood were still active. They also successfully pressured Muni to speed up the project by making construction crews work weekends and holidays.

"While everyone now thinks the light-rail is going to be great, during the five years it was under construction, it really desecrated Third Street," Klaiman recalls.

The merchant association is also working with the national group Volunteers in Medicine to establish a free health care clinic for Bayview residents.

Pet Camp has a staff of about 20 and offers all employees full benefits and profit sharing. Klaiman says these and other industrial jobs are better than those offered by the tourist and service industries.

For this reason, Klaiman has worked with the Planning Department to retain industrial jobs in the Bayview. Housing activists and other neighborhood merchants have criticized him for that relationship.

According to Al Norman, president of the merchant association, he handles the flack well and takes everything in stride. "He’s levelheaded and evenhanded," Norman says.

At the same time, Klaiman is watchful of downtown developers who are working on changing the Bayview. He keeps track of their efforts through the Planning Department and the San Francisco Urban Planning Association, which has a hand in proposed plans for the area.

"They’re downtown think tank people," Klaiman says in reference to SPUR. "They’re the type of people from north of Market who say they know what is right for the Bayview."

In order to make SPUR sensitive to the needs of Bayview businesses, Pet Camp put together a bus tour for the group to familiarize it with the business community there.

"We should get together as businesses to improve our neighborhood, not just have everything go to downtown," Klaiman proclaims. "And that’s something I think we’ll actually achieve success in – getting better organized out here." (Chris Albon)

PET CAMP

525 Phelps, SF

(415) 282-0700

www.petcamp.com

I Dream of Muni

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by Guardian intern Sam Devine

While watching Land use & Economic development committee meeting on SFGTV the other day, I caught a bit of public comment on the whole Healthy Saturday thing and had the thought: “Maybe this is more about providing public transportation to public places than it is about bicycles.”.1.jpg

At the meeting, parents said they couldn’t get to the museum for family programs, and museum staff complained about getting to work without being able to park on the street. The parking garage, at $3/hour, is cost prohibitive.

Nan Tucker McEvoy, granddaughter of museum founder M.H. de Young, spoke in opposition to closing JFK on Saturdays. “When my great grandfather gave the museum to the city, he gave it to all the people of the city, not just the ones who ride bicycles or can walk great distances,” she said

Biodiesel backfire

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› news@sfbg.com

On May 18, 2006, Mayor Gavin Newsom issued Executive Directive 06-02 — also referred to as the Biodiesel Initiative — ordering the city of San Francisco to switch to a fuel blend that includes at least 20 percent biodiesel in all of its diesel vehicles. The move won environmental plaudits: the National Biodiesel Board cited the plan as being the farthest-reaching proclamation of its kind.

It was the kind of ambitious program that played up the mayor’s environmental credentials. Biodiesel is made not from petroleum but from renewable domestic resources such as vegetable oil. It produces far fewer greenhouse gases and toxic byproducts than traditional diesel and can work with any standard diesel engine.

Using just 20 percent biodiesel in the fuel mix can reduce carbon monoxide emissions by 12 percent and smog-forming hydrocarbons by 20 percent.

And Newsom insisted this wasn’t a far-off dream: he projected that a full 25 percent of the city’s diesel fleet would be using the green fuel by March 31, 2007, and every last bus, street cleaner, and fire truck would be switched over by the end of the year.

But March 31 has come and gone, and the city isn’t even close to meeting that goal.

San Francisco uses approximately eight million gallons of diesel fuel per year, in vehicles ranging from heavy-duty fire engines to street sweepers, airport shuttles, and maintenance vehicles. The biggest user by far is Muni, which burns as much as six million gallons annually.

And Muni is way behind on its biodiesel deadline. In fact, the agency has yet to submit its pilot proposal to the Department of the Environment. And while clean vehicles coordinator Vandana Bali told us 33 of Muni’s nonrevenue vehicles are being fueled with B20 — the mandated mix of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent traditional petroleum product — she was unable to offer even a tentative timeline for introduction of the less-noxious fuel into Muni’s diesel bus fleet.

Converting Muni to biodiesel hasn’t been as easy as Newsom projected. Much of the bus fleet uses a high-tech emission control system, and the manufacturer hasn’t approved the device for use with biofuels.

And then there are the transition issues.

Mike Ferry, a firefighter at the San Francisco Fire Department, which runs about 150 diesel vehicles, told us the department had to put a lot of time and money into upgrading its infrastructure for biodiesel.

Regular diesel is a fuel that practically takes care of itself, even under substandard conditions — but biodiesel requires better storage conditions, more regular rotation, and cleaner tanks. And although diesel engines require little to no modification to be compatible with biodiesel blends, it’s often necessary to change out the fuel filter before introducing the biofuel, to prevent clogging.

The fire department also has to clean out all 20 of its diesel storage tanks, at a cost of between $2,000 and $3,000 a tank.

But for a department with an annual budget of $220 million, that’s not a vast amount of cash. And several other city departments have managed to comply with Newsom’s edict. San Francisco International Airport started using B20 in 19 airport shuttles in July 2006, and the entire inventory of approximately 150 diesel vehicles switched to B20 on a permanent basis the following September.

The city’s central shops, where more than 900 diesel vehicles — including street sweepers and Recreation and Park Department equipment — are fueled, switched one of two diesel tanks over to B20 in 2006 and the second on March 15, 2007. Jim Johnson, superintendent of central shops, estimates that the agency uses about 650,000 gallons of diesel fuel annually.

But compared with the six million gallons of diesel fuel used by Muni, 650,000 gallons is a drop in the municipal bucket. In fact, while the Biodiesel Initiative was designed to spare the air the effects of at least 1.6 million gallons of petrodiesel annually, 20 percent of 650,000 gallons is just 130,000 gallons of pure biodiesel. Even adding in the approximately 5,000 gallons of B20 per month used by the airport and the 2,000 gallons (out of 170,000) per month currently being used by the Fire Department, the city still falls short of 25 percent implementation by a large margin.

Nathan Ballard, a spokesperson for Newsom, told us the mayor had discussed the situation with Muni before making his public statement and at the time Muni officials were fully supportive of the plan.

It’s still possible for the city to get closer to Newsom’s emissions-reduction goal: even if Muni is unable (or unwilling) to make the shift, other agencies could increase the amount of biodiesel they put in the mix. Most vehicles can run fine on 100 percent biodiesel. But December is fast approaching — and it’s hard to see how Newsom can make his promise come true. *



For more SFBG biodiesel coverage, click here

Go green!

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PARTIES, EVENTS, AND BENEFITS

"Arcadia: 2007" California Modern Gallery, 1035 Market; 821-9693, www.fuf.net. Mon/23, 6pm, $125-$350. This soiree and art auction — featuring work by more than 100 artists and hosted by Jeffrey Fraenkel, Gretchen Bergruen, and Thomas Reynolds — will benefit Friends of the Urban Forest, a nonprofit organization that provides financial, technical, and practical assistance to individuals and neighborhood groups that want to plant and care for trees.

"Away Ride Celebrating Earth Day" Meet at McLaren Lodge, Golden Gate Park; (510) 849-4663, www.borp.org. Sun/22, 1:30pm, free with preregistration. The SF Bike Coalition and the Bay Area Outdoor Recreation Program join forces to host this moderately paced ride open to all levels of riders. They provide a helmet and a handcycle or tandem bike. You bring a sack lunch and water. Kids also get to decorate their wheels — bike, wheelchair, or skate.

"Biomimicry: The 2007 Digital Be-In" Mezzanine, 444 Jessie; www.be-in.com. Sat/22, 7pm-3am, $15 presale, $20 door, $100 VIP. Turn on, tune in, log out. In the spirit of the 1967 human be-in that epitomized San Francisco’s hippie generation and made Haight Ashbury famous, counterculture artists and activists have been hosting "The Digital Be-In" for 15 years. This year’s combination symposium-exhibition-multimedia-entertainment extravaganza focuses on Biomimicry as it relates to technology, urban development, and sustainability. There’ll be no Timothy Leary here, but the event will feature live music, DJs, projections, and appearances by modern hippie celebs such as Free Will astrologer Rob Brezsny and Burning Man founder Larry Harvey. Or join in the simultaneous virtual be-in in the Second Life online world. The revolution will be digitized.

"Earth Day Fair" Ram Plaza, City College of San Francisco, 50 Phelan; 239-3580, www.ccsf.edu. Thurs/19, 11am-1:30pm, free. View information tables set up by the CCSF and citywide environmental organizations, as well as a display of alternative fuel vehicles.

"EarthFest" Aquarium of the Bay, 39 Pier; 623-5300, www.aquariumofthebay.com. Sun/22, 12-4pm, free. View presentations and engage in activities provided by 20 organizations all dedicated to conservation and environmental protection, with activities including live children’s music, a scavenger hunt, and giveaways.

"McLaren Park Earth Day" John McLaren Park’s Jerry Garcia Amphitheater, 40 John F. Shelley; www.natureinthecity.org. Sun/22, 11am-7pm, free. What would Jerry do? Commemorate the park’s 80th anniversary with an all-day festival featuring birding hikes, habitat restoration projects, wildflower walks, tree planting, an ecostewardship fair, food booths, a live reptile classroom, puppetry, performance, music, storytelling, and chances to make art.

"$1 Makes the World a Greener Place" Buffalo Exchange local stores; 1-866-235-8255, www.buffaloexchange.com. Sat/21, all day, free. Buy something, change the world. During this special sale at all Buffalo Exchange stores, proceeds will benefit the Center for Environmental Health, which promotes greener practices in major industries. Many sale items will be offered for $1.

"People’s Earth Day" India Basin, Shoreline Park, Hunters Point Boulevard at Hawes, SF. Sat/21,10am-3pm. What better place to celebrate Earth Day than with a community of victorious ecowarriors? Help sound the death knell for the PG&E Hunters Point power plant with events and activities including a community restoration project at Heron’s Head Park, the presentation of the East Side Story Literacy for Environmental Justice theater production, and a display about Living Classroom, an educational and all-green facility expected to break ground this year. Want to get there the green way? Take the no. 19 Muni bus or the T-Third Street line.

BAY AREA

"Berkeley Earth Day" Civic Center Park, Berk; www.hesternet.net. Sat/21, 12-5pm, free. Earth Day may not have been born in Berkeley (it was actually the idea of a senator from Wisconsin), but it sure lives here happily. Celebrate at this community-sponsored event, which features a climbing wall, vegetarian food, craft and community booths, valet bike parking, and performances by Friends of Shawl-Anderson Youth Ensemble, Alice DiMicele Band, and Amandla Poets.

"Earth Day Celebration" Bay Area Discovery Museum, 557 McReynolds, Sausalito; 339-3900, www.baykidsmuseum.org. Sat/21, 10am-5pm, free with museum admission. Happy birthday, dear planet. This Earth Day connect your family to the wonders of &ldots; well &ldots; you know, with a variety of special activities, including seed planting and worm composting, birdhouse building, a bay walk and cleanup, and presentations about insects from around the planet. For a small fee, also enjoy a birthday party for Mother Earth with games, face painting, crafts, and cake.

"Earth Day on the Bay" Marine Science Institute, 500 Discovery Parkway, Redwood City; (650) 364-2760, sfbayvirtualvoyage.com/earthday.html. Sat/21, 8am-4pm, $5 suggested donation. This is the one time of year the institute opens its doors to the public, so don’t miss your chance for music, mud, and sea creatures — the Banana Slug String Band, the Sippy Cups, fish and shark feeding, and programs with tide pool animals, to be exact. You can also take a two-hour trip aboard an MSI ship for an additional $10.

"Earth Day Restoration and Cleanup Program" California State Parks; 258-9975 for one near you, www.calparks.org. Sat/21, times vary, free. The best way to celebrate Earth Day is to get involved. Volunteers are needed at California State Parks throughout the area for everything from planting trees and community gardens to restoring trails and wildlife habitats, and from installing recycling bins to removing trash and debris. All ages welcome.

"E-Waste Recycling Event" Alameda County Fairgrounds, 4501 Pleasanton, Pleasanton; 1-866-335-3373, www.noewaste.com. Fri/20-Sun/22, 9am-3pm, free. The city of Pleasanton teams up with Electronic Waste Management to collect TVs, computers, monitors, computer components, power supplies, telephone equipment, scrap metal, wire, and much more. There is no limit to how much you can donate, and everything will be recycled.

"The Oceans Festival" UC Berkeley, Upper Sproul Plaza (near Bancroft and Telegraph), Berk; Fri/20, 5pm-7pm, donations accepted. This event, sponsored by CALPIRG, Bright Antenna Entertainment, and West Coast Performer magazine, is meant to bring awareness to the problem of plastic in our oceans and to raise money, through donations and food sales, for the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. Featuring music and dance performances, as well as presentations by a variety of environmental organizations.

"People’s Park 38th Anniversary Celebration" People’s Park, Berk; www.peoplespark.org. Sun/22, 12-6pm, free. Celebrate the park with poetry, speakers, music, art and revolution theater, political tables, a Food Not Bombs lunch, clowns, puppets, and activities for children.

LECTURES, DISCUSSIONS, AND WORKSHOPS

"Green Capital: Profit and the Planet?" Club Office, 595 Market; 597-6705. Wed/18, 6:30pm, $8-15. Can sustainable business renew our economy and save the planet? Can activists ethically exploit market systems? Environmental pioneers, from corporate reps to conservationists, will bust the myths and reveal realities of profitable environmental solutions at this panel discussion cosponsored by INFORUM; featuring Peter Liu of the National Resource Bank, author Hunter Lovins (Natural Capitalism), Steven Pinetti of Kimpton Hotels, and Will Rogers of the Trust for Public Land; and moderated by Christie Dames.

"An Inconvenient Truth 2.0 — A Call to Action" California State Bldg, 455 Golden Gate. Thurs/19, 6:30-9pm, $5 suggested donation. An updated version of Al Gore’s PowerPoint presentation will be screened by Sierra Club director Rafael Reyes, then followed by a discussion of the impact of global warming and a progress report on national legislation by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer.

"The Physics of Toys: Green Gadgets for a Blue Planet" Exploratorium, 3601 Lyon; 561-0399, www.exploratorium.edu. Sat/21,11am-3pm, free with admission. The monthly event focuses on the earth this time around, giving children and adults an opportunity to build pinwheel turbines and other green gadgets. Materials provided.

BAY AREA

"Agroecology in Latin America: Social Movements and the Struggle for a Sustainable Environment" La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck, Berk; (510) 847-1262, www.mstbrazil.org. Wed/18, 7:30pm, donations accepted. Get an update on Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement, the alliance between environmental and social justice movements in the Americas, struggles for Food Sovereignty, organized peasant response to global agribusiness, opposition to genetically engineered crops, and more. Featuring guest speaker Eric Holt-Gimernez, executive director of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy.

ART, MUSIC, AND PERFORMANCE

"Bio-Mapping" Southern Exposure Gallery, 2901 Mission, SF; (415) 863-2141, www.sf.biomapping.net. Sat/21, 6:30pm, $8-15. Everyone says going green feels good — here’s the chance to prove it. Participate in Christian Nold’s social-art project by strapping into a GPS device and skin censors. Then take a walk or a bike ride while the sensors record your feelings and location. Nold uses the data to make an "Emotion Map" of the city, which you can check out online. (Can’t make Saturday? Nold’s also there Thursdays and Fridays through April 28).

"ReCycle Ryoanji" San Francisco Civic Center Plaza; blog.greenmuseum.org/recycle-ryoanji. Thurs/19, 4-6pm, free. Judith Selby Lang, local students, and visitors to the Asian Art Museum have sewn together thousands of white shopping bags to make their own version of Japan’s most famous and celebrated garden as both an art exhibition and community education project. The 18-foot-by-48-foot scale replica of the raked sand and rock garden can be seen at this reception for the project and on display across from City Hall until Tues/24. (Take that, American Beauty.)

"Green Apple Music and Arts Festival" Venues vary; www.greenapplefestival.com. Fri/20-Sun/22, prices vary. Green Apple combines fun and education with a three-day, ecofriendly music festival in cities across the country. San Francisco’s festival includes shows by Yonder Mountain String Band, New Mastersounds, Electric Six, Trans Am, and others at venues across the city, as well as a free concert at Golden Gate Park. Green Apple provides venues with environmentally friendly cups, straws, napkins, paper towels, and compostable garbage bags, as well as doing its best to make the entire festival carbon neutral.

UPCOMING EVENTS

"San Francisco New Living Expo" Concourse Exhibition Center, Eighth Street at Brannan; 382-8300, www.newlivingexpo.com. April 27-29, admission varies according to day and event. Touting 275 exhibitors and 150 speakers (including Starhawk, Marianne Williamson, Rabbi Michael Lerner, and ganja-guru Ed Rosenthal), the sixth annual version of this event promises to energize, educate, awaken, and expand consciousness. You won’t want to miss the environmental activism panel discussion April 28 at 3pm — or the exhibition hall’s special crystal area.

BAY AREA

"Harmony Festival" Sonoma County Fairgrounds, Santa Rosa; www.harmonyfestival.com. June 8-10, $125 plus $50 per car camping pass. This festival is so green it’s almost blue — in fact, its tagline is "promoting global cooling." There’s a waste diversion effort, a whole Green Team monitoring the EcoStation, compost cans, and tips on how to be an ecofriendly attendee. Plus, it just looks like fun. With Brian Wilson, the Roots, and Common performing and Amy Goodman and Ariana Huffington speaking, how can you miss it?

"Lightning in a Bottle" Live Oak Campground, Santa Barbara; 1-866-55-TICKET, www.lightninginabottle.org. May 11-13. $95-120. It ain’t just a party. It’s a green-minded, art-and-music-focused campout in a forest wonderland. Organized by Los Angeles’s the Do Lab with participation from tons of SF artists, this three-day event is powered by alternative energy, offers ecoworkshops in everything from permaculture to raw foods, and encourages rideshares — including a participant-organized bus trip from San Francisco. Also featuring performances by Freq Nasty, Bassnectar, Vau de Vire Society, El Circo, and other DJs and artists from San Francisco and elsewhere, LIB attempts to change the precedent that festival fun has to be ecologically disastrous.

"Sierra Nevada World Music Festival" Mendocino County Fairgrounds, Boonville; www.snwmf.com. June 22-24, $125 plus $50 per car camping pass. Peace is green, right? I mean, what about Greenpeace? And peace is what this festival, which promotes "conscious" music, is all about. Plus, a range of representatives of environmental and social issues will be tabling at the festival — and registering voters.

BEYOND

"Burning Man" Black Rock City, Nev.; (415) TO-FLAME, www.burningman.com. Aug 27-Sept 3, $250-$280. With its Leave No Trace philosophy and its hippie roots, Burning Man has always been greener than most. But this year it’s getting even more explicitly so with the theme the Green Man, focusing on humanity’s relationship to nature (even though there is no nature on the dry lakebed surface). A pessimist might suggest this year’s theme is just another excuse to waste resources on leaf-themed art cars and that "Leave No Trace" usually translates to "Leave Your Trash in Reno." But an optimist might say this is Burning Man acknowledging and trying to address such issues. Either way, air out your dust-filled tent and pack some chartreuse body paint — it’s going to be an interesting year in Black Rock. *

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