Planning Archives — Page 38 of 57 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

The show must go on!

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July 22, 2009

a&eletters@sfbg.com

Furloughs. Layoffs. Cutbacks. These are the dirty words that have been added to the vocabularies of those working in Bay Area theaters ever since, as one person so eloquently phrased it, "the shit hit the fan." It’s hard to pinpoint when it began, but most theater heads agree that by October of last year, the somber headlines regarding the economy began to feel frighteningly real. Theater companies of all sizes have reported reduced ticket sales, lower individual donations, and less foundation and grant giving. On stage, actors are performing to empty chairs.

As a result, individuals like San Jose’s City Lights executive director Lisa Mallette have had to work overtime to keep their businesses afloat. "The economy has shaken up everyone — no one can be complacent anymore," she said. "It’s making everybody think how they can run leaner and meaner."

Being creative on stage isn’t enough anymore. These days the minds behind Bay Area theaters must apply their ingenuity behind the scenes. According to a study released in April by the theater organizations Theatre Bay Area and Theatre Communications Group, more than half the respondents from local nonprofit theaters say they expect cash flow problems by the end of the year.

With these kinds of expectations, many theatre managers have taken on second jobs as theater pruners, snipping extra costs wherever they can. For companies that have always survived on a shoestring, it’s a matter of plucking one leaf at a time. This means staff members use the back side of used paper, drink water from the tap, and save every screw, costume, and prop that can be recycled for the next production.

"It’s been a tough road, but [the theater community] is going to learn good lessons out of this," Mallette said. "The things we’re learning now we will continue to use no matter what the economy is like."

According to Cheshire Isaacs, managing director of Berkeley’s Impact Theatre, one of the biggest challenges has been making up the season’s ticket losses. At its high point, a 1980s version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream became the theater’s biggest financial success in its 13 seasons. At its low point, a show that debuted in mid-November called Tallgrass Gothic resulted in unprecedented loss at the box office.

"My gut feeling is that the economy is making people more selective with what they see," Isaacs said. "They’re going to the must-see shows, and shows that would previously have done well are not getting the audience."

Audience members have outnumbered cast members, Isaacs said, though sometimes not by much. On the lowest evening, he estimated that only a dozen people came to the show, an experience he found "depressing."

"For actors, it’s difficult to play to sparse houses. It’s demoralizing," he said. "It’s a worse experience in a different way for the audience members themselves. It’s hard to be in an audience where you’re one of 15 people."

For a theater where ticket sales account for 90 percent of its income, the loss was a major hit. To offset the damages, the company tightened its belt in other areas. One solution, Isaacs said, was to stop mailing postcards. The decision to go digital saved the company $500. Impact, like most other theaters, has begun relying on free to low-cost technologies like Facebook and Twitter. For one, they are easy and cheap marketing tools. They also provide ways to reach and build a network of younger theatergoers. Even companies that are experiencing growth at this time, such as San Francisco’s Boxcar Theatre and Berkeley’s Shotgun Players, are making sure they keep their fingers on the pulse of the trends.

"We’re constantly looking at how we can be ahead of the curve," said Patrick Dooley, Shotgun’s artistic director. "Our audience is much younger, so we damn well better be on those sites. If anyone is supposed to be hitting that shit, we are!"

As much as things are changing backstage, there are also changes onstage. At Z Studio Space, a San Francisco company that develops new theater work, executive director Lisa Steindler admits she passes up on scripts with a cast of 12 or more. She simply can’t afford it. These days, she said, even playwrights realize they must write scripts with two or three actors if they want a play produced. "It’s interesting how the economy is shaping the canon of work that being made," she said. "Ten years from, now we’ll look back and see how artists tailored their work [to the financial situation of this time]."

As theater companies streamline their businesses, some cuts run deeper than others. Many have accepted pay freezes, cut back work hours, and foregone bonuses. At the end of 2008, Tiffany Cothran, managing director of San Francisco’s Crowded Fire Theater, did something she had never done: she and the artistic director decided to give up their salaries for three months to avoid ending the year with a deficit.

"We had to do it for the health of the company," Cothran said. "It was hard emotionally, though, because everyone likes to get paid for their work."

Though some say the worst is over, others like Cothran say that they’ve entered a period of uncertainty. Many brace themselves to receive fewer grants in the next year, especially from institutions like Grants for the Arts, which help cover operation costs for many theaters.

On June 3, a letter from the Grants for the Arts told recipients to expect a 20 percent reduction in award money. Although final awards won’t be announced until mid-August, the letter advised companies to be prudent while planning their 2009-10 budget. "Everyone is on pins and needles waiting for the news," Cothran said. "It’s likely that awards will be reduced or that we won’t get anything at all."

At Z Studio Space, Steindler isn’t taking anything for granted. The three white boards that hang by her desk are nearly full with the names of different grants she’ll be applying for in the next few months. "I write grants all year long. The difference this year is that I am just writing a lot more now than I ever did."

She admits this has been a trying time for the industry, though she is not surprised that many of her colleagues are still expecting surpluses at the end of their fiscal year. "We’re artists — we’re a smart group of people," she said. "We’ve just tightened, tightened, tightened. And who knows? Maybe we just caught it in time."

Making great streets

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July 15, 2009

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steve@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY There’s a growing movement to transform San Francisco’s streets into safe, vibrant public spaces, part of an international trend that has drawn together disparate partners around the belief that roadways shouldn’t simply be conduits for moving automobiles.

Recent advances include the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s approval of a package of 45 bicycle projects and the success of the Sunday Streets program, a series of temporary road closures to cars (the next one is this Sunday, July 12, in the Mission District).

And there are new players on the scene, from Streetsblog SF (see "Street fighters," 1/14/09) to the San Francisco Great Streets Project (www.sfgreatstreets.wordpress.com), a newly formed organization sponsored by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), the Livable Streets Initiative, and the Project for Public Spaces.

The Great Streets Project focuses on facilitating temporary conversions of streets into plazas (such as the new 17th Street Plaza at Castro and Market streets), parties, and other carfree spaces and with creating a civic conversation about the role of roads by bringing in renowned urban thinkers such as Enrique Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, who spoke at the main library July 6 and sat down for an interview with the Guardian the next day.

"The heart and soul of a city is its public pedestrian space," said Peñalosa, who banned parking on sidewalks and expanded Bogotá’s protected bikeways, ciclovias (temporary road closures that were the model for Sunday Streets), and bus rapid transit system, creating an urban renaissance that he has since promoted in cities around the world.

"It became clear that the way we build cities could make people so much happier," Peñalosa said, noting how such urban design concepts dovetailed with his advocacy for the poor. "In a poor city, the inequality is felt most during leisure time … My main concerns are equity and happiness and the way cities can contribute to those things."

Peñalosa noted that "the 20th century was a terrible century for human habitat. Cars took over for people. Later we realized that was a big mistake." Such growth patterns, Peñalosa said, are simply unsustainable in the 21st century, particularly as Asia and Africa modernize.

Many European cities have taken aggressive steps to correct that mistake, but in the U.S. — whose dominant economic position during those years created the most car-dependent infrastructure on the planet — change has come slowly.

"Change is difficult, but change is already happening," he said, noting the strong carfree movements in San Francisco, New York City, and other U.S. cities.

Peñalosa transformed Bogotá at a time when the country was besieged by a violent civil war, timing he said was more propitious than unlikely. As with the current global warming imperatives and the traffic congestion that is choking many big cities, times of crisis can be moments of opportunity.

"When the crisis is so big, people are willing to risk different things and make experiments," Peñalosa said.

While most San Franciscans have yet to truly embrace the transition from car culture, Great Streets Project proponents are using temporary projects to push the envelope and gradually introduce new ideas into the public realm.

"It’s important for everyone to come into this with a spirit of experiment," said SFBC program director Andy Thornley. "Presenting these things as trials helps people get comfortable with the ideas."

SPUR director Gabriel Metcalf said temporary projects often bypass the need for cumbersome and expensive environmental studies and outreach efforts, placing innovative urban design concepts on public display as ongoing experiments.

"They allow you to make adjustments. It’s an option that exists with public spaces that you don’t have with buildings," Metcalf said. "It de-escalates the fear people have over change."

Plus, as the project’s director Kit Hodge notes, temporary placements let transportation planners and advocates try out new ideas instead of just endlessly studying them. As she put it, "San Francisco has a tradition of creating great plans that don’t get implemented."

The prime example is Market Street, an inefficient street for automobiles and a dangerous one for bicycles and pedestrians, and one that has been subject to countless studies about how to make it more livable. Yet little changes. "You need to achieve as much consensus as possible," Peñalosa said, "but in the end, you have to take risks."

Or as Metcalf put it, "It’s time to start enjoying some of the fruits of urbanity that we’ve been denying ourselves."

Turning point

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June 30, 2009

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MORE ON SFBG.COM

>>Deconstructing the politics of parking in San Francisco

>>Safer streets for cyclists cause growing pains for motorists

news@sfbg.com

San Francisco has been a "transit-first" city since 1973, when the Board of Supervisors first adopted the policy of officially promoting public transit, pedestrians, and bicycles over the automobile. But the label has really been in name only — until this year.

Through an unusual confluence of policy initiatives that have been moving forward for several years, San Francisco is finally about to have a serious discussion about the automobile and its impacts. And parking policies are being used as the main tool to reduce traffic congestion, better set development impact fees, increase city revenue, and promote alternatives to the automobile.

"Our parking requirements need to be revised to support this [transit-first] policy by limiting parking supply — the single greatest incentive to drive — where transit and other modes are viable alternatives," reads the city’s Better Neighborhoods Plan.

While the very notion of deliberately limiting parking will likely be met with howls of protest by many drivers — indeed, urban planners already acknowledge that it’s probably not politically feasible to make drivers pay for their full impacts — they also say it’s the only way to decrease the over-dependence on the automobile.

"Without limiting parking, people will choose an auto-oriented lifestyle and continue to drive. Traffic will continue to worsen, and we will never shift the balance in favor of ways of getting around that are more effective in moving people," the plan continues.

Yet the push isn’t as dire for drivers as its stark language suggests, thanks to some innovative initiatives that could ironically make it even easier to park in some areas than it is now, in the process easing traffic congestion by eliminating the number of cars circling the block looking for parking spaces, which studies show can often account for up to one-third of the cars on the road.

DEMAND-BASED PARKING PRICES

The SF Park program is scheduled to begin later this summer in eight pilot areas, providing real-time parking data to give drivers better information on where to find spots and controlling demand with a market-based pricing system that raises rates when spots are scarce, encouraging turnover and freeing up spaces.

It is just one of many current initiatives. The city is looking at extending meter hours to nights and Sundays and adding parking meters in Golden Gate Park (those are simply revenue measures aimed at city budget deficits). Another study is examining the nexus between parking and developer impacts that could be used to charge new fees for construction. There’s also a comprehensive study of on-street parking policies that will be going before the Board of Supervisors (sitting as the San Francisco County Transportation Authority) next month after nearly five years in the works.

Yet creating more progressive parking policies requires political will, which will surely be tested in the coming months. Indeed, this year’s battle over the Municipal Transportation Authority budget — whose $128 million deficit was closed by Muni fare increases and services cuts rather than parking increases by a ratio of about 4-1, thanks to pressure from drivers and Mayor Gavin Newsom — was an early indicator of the pitfalls that exist within the politics of parking.

Using a $20 million federal traffic congestion management grant, SFMTA has spent years developing the SF Park program, approving most of the details last fall and planning to roll it out by summer’s end.

"Under-regulated on-street parking results in limited parking availability, inefficient utilization of spaces, and excess vehicular circulation," begins the San Francisco On-Street Parking Management and Pricing Study Final Report, which is headed to the Board of Supervisors next month. "This program will assess the effectiveness of using pricing and complementary strategies as a way to manage demand for parking."

The program will be rolled out in eight areas, coordinating parking information in more than 6,000 street spaces and 20 city-owned parking garages, and using that information to adjust parking rates — charging more when spots are scarce and for additional hours — to try to achieve a parking occupancy rate of about 85 percent.

"An on-street parking occupancy of 85 percent has been demonstrated by parking experts … as the benchmark for the practical capacity of on-street parking. At 85 percent occupancy, approximately one available space is expected per block, thus limiting the cruising phenomenon and generally assuring the availability of a space," the study reads.

SFMTA spokesperson Judson True called SF Park "the future of parking management, adding that "we are taking a big bite of the parking management pie with SF Park, which is the most advanced parking management system of any U.S. city."

THE TRUE COST OF CARS

It’s just the latest work product from transportation planners that have spent years behind-the-scenes developing programs to deal with the city’s over-reliance on the automobiles. "It’s all part of a strategy of using parking as a demand management strategy," said Zabe Bent, a planner with the San Francisco County Transportation Authority.

She is working on the parking policies, as well as a proposal to charge motorists a congestion fee for driving into the downtown, which comes before the Board of Supervisors this fall (although implementation is probably at least three years away).

Bent said city officials are working on a number of fronts to shore up San Francisco’s "transit-first" status and prepare for growth in what is already one of the country’s most congested cities. So some of the decisions coming up are bound to be tough.

"It’s a tradeoff we need to make to achieve our goals," she said, noting that the central question transportation planners are wrestling with is, "How do we achieve a more sustainable growth pattern?"

Such noble intentions can always get hung up on politics, and the ever-present question of how to pay for it during an era of fiscal crisis. So it appears the city may have to get creative with funding its new approach to parking.

Alica John-Baptiste, the assistant planning director overseeing the parking impact fee study, said that while it does appear to be a big year for new parking policies, "this conversation has been underway for a number of years. A lot of the discussions we’ve had are now being studied."

Most recently it was the citizens committee that developed the Market-Octavia Plan — one of the first to cap how much parking developers may build along with the projects — that sought guidance about what the city could legally do to recover the full costs associated with automobiles.

"There were a bunch of questions that came up about parking as an issue," she said of the Market-Octavia process. So the Planning Department and other city agencies began to explore the cost of parking as part of the city’s update of the Transit Impact Fee that is charged to new development, with the idea of expanding that to include impacts to all modes of transportation.

"We are looking at parking as a land use and its impact to the [transportation] system," she continued. "This is a city that really wants to support other modes than just transit."

The contract for that parking nexus study was awarded to Cambridge Systematics earlier this month with initial recommendations expected by the end of the year. That study is expected to show that developers and drivers don’t come anywhere near paying for the full cost of the automobile to San Francisco. "These nexus studies usually suggest a much higher fee rate than is feasible to provide," she said.

In other words, drivers and developers would freak out if asked to pay for their full impacts, arguing that that doing so would stifle development, hurt the economy, punish those who need cars, etc. So the fees will likely be set lower than needed to cover the city’s costs.

Even in the short-term, simply extending meter hours into the evenings — as SFMTA is now studying to help the city deal with its budget deficit — is likely to trigger a pitched battle between progressive supervisors and politicians who side with some merchant groups that consider parking sacrosanct.
David Heller, president of the Greater Geary Merchants Association, will be one of those leading the charge. By way of argument, he criticized San Francisco as "a very business-unfriendly city" compared to competitors like Colma and Burlingame and laid out this scenario: "After 6 p.m., there are no power lunches going on. People want to relax. Imagine you sit down to a nice dinner. You’ve got your wine and are enjoying your appetizer and in the middle of your meal, you have to get up and feed the meter. When you return, the ambiance has been lost. What are the chances you’ll return to that restaurant?"
And so it goes with the politics of parking, where pressing realities clash with visceral reactions, driver prerogatives (such as the "right" to feed the meter, which actually isn’t legal), and other distracting entitlement issues.
Gabriella Poccia and Rachel Buhner contributed to this report.

———–

PARKING BY NUMBERS

Number of on-street parking spaces in SF: 320,000

Number these spaces that have meters: 24,000

Total parking spaces in San Francisco: 603,000

Number of cars and trucks registered in SF: 441,653

Annual revenue from meters and city-owned garages: $64.5 million

Annual revenue from parking citations: $90 million

Number of street spaces in 8 SF Park pilot zones: 6,000

Hourly meter rates in the zones, depending on demand: 25 cents to $6

Hourly garage rates in the zones, depending on demand: $1 to $10

Number of residential parking permits issued: 89,271

Cost of purchasing an on-street residential parking permit: $74 per year

Number of temporary permits: 2,867

Annual revenue from residential parking permits: $5.7 million
Cost of purchasing SF parking on Craiglist: $100 to $500 per month
Annual city revenue if residential permits were market-based: $320 million

The mobility of space

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June 30, 2009

0

sarah@sfbg.com

Jason Henderson is standing on Patricia’s Green in Hayes Valley, shielding his eyes from the midsummer sun, as he explains how this area, which once lay in the shadowy underbelly of the Central Freeway, was reclaimed as a pedestrian-friendly park.

"In 1989 the freeway went all the way to Turk Street," said Henderson, an assistant professor of geography at San Francisco State University, describing how the raised concrete roadbed, built in the 1950s, cut across this neighborhood and blocked the sky — until the Loma Prieta earthquake hit and damaged the final section so badly it had to be torn down.

That natural disaster triggered a public discussion about the use of the surrounding space, and a 15-year fight that culminated in 2005 in the dedication of the Green, which is part of the Octavia Boulevard Project. Neighbors and business owners pushed the city to convert a damaged freeway into a landscaped park.

That sort of change fascinates Henderson. "I am interested in how people move around cities, and how urban space is configured for movement," he said.

The young professor was raised in New Orleans and wrote his dissertation on transportation and land use debates in Atlanta — which, as Henderson notes, is "the poster child for sprawl but became a hotbed in the ’90s of a national discourse about how we should grow, which became this very interesting debate about reurbanizing."

Henderson’s research focuses on the politics of mobility. He decided to move to San Francisco in 2003 because he saw it as an opportunity to live in a city where a car is not necessary and to study the history of the city’s freeway revolt, which began in the 1960s.

And while he is proud of this park, which was dedicated as Hayes Green then renamed for the late Patricia Walkup, a Hayes Valley resident who tirelessly advocated for the park until her death in 2006, Henderson thinks the local politics of parking have reached "a spatial stalemate."

"During the freeway revolt of the 1960s, San Francisco rejected the freeway but not the automobile," Henderson explained. "But even as San Francisco residents decided that they did not want big gashes of freeway through their waterfront, the Marina, and Golden Gate Park, the city continued to have laws that said every housing unit was to have one parking space.

"So the city adopted a transit-first policy on paper, but didn’t take space away from cars. And if you don’t do anything, you’re not solving the problem."

The problem in San Francisco is what he called the "essentializing of cars."

"A core idea within the parking debate is that there is a universal love affair with the automobile," Henderson explained. "But Obama is downsizing GM and Chrysler, and for the first time since 1960, vehicle miles traveled have started to go down. Until last year, the mantra was that Americans are going to drive. But then we found out that at $4 a gallon, this country freaks out and changes."

Earlier this year, Henderson published a paper that analyzes the city’s politics of parking through the lens of two ballot initiatives from the November 2007 San Francisco election.

"San Francisco’s parking debate is not just about parking. It is a contest over how the city should be configured and organized, and for whom," Henderson wrote in his paper, titled "The Spaces of Parking: Mapping the Politics of Mobility in San Francisco."

His research led him to conclude that progressives, who want to make the city more bike- and public-transportion friendly, are pitted against the more conservative elements (he calls them neoconservatives), who want to increase space for parking and cars at all costs, with the moderate (or in his words, "neoliberal") factions tangled in between.

Part of Henderson’s critique involves estimating the hidden costs of parking — and as it turns out, that can be done using Google and Craiglist. According to a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency 2008 fact sheet, there are an estimated 320,000 on-street parking spaces in San Francisco, including metered spaces, each consuming, on average, about 160 square feet.

According to a 2002 presentation by Jeffery Tumlin, a national transportation consultant, if the city rented these spaces for the lowball rate of $1,000 a year, San Francisco would rake in $320 million annually.

There would be no shortage of demand — market prices are way higher. Henderson’s review of Craiglist unearthed folks who looking to rent parking spaces in San Francisco and willing to pay from $100 to $500 a month.

But SFMTA — which issues more than 89,000 residential parking permits annually and recently opted to cut Muni service and routes and increase fares on public transit rather than extend parking meter hours to balance its budget shortfall — decided to increase the cost of these parking permits, starting July 1, by only $2, from $72 to $74 — per year. That’s less than 10 percent of market value.

The resulting revenue will be dedicated to the cost of administrating the program — not to offset the hidden costs of parking, which include carbon dioxide emissions, air pollution, congestion, and occupying valuable space.

Henderson is intrigued by the relationship between parking policy and a complex set of factors that include public health, obesity, and the cost of affordable housing. He notes that if a city’s housing policy requires developers to provide a parking space for each housing unit, too often developers don’t build that housing, or build it smaller, or build it as part of a luxury complex.

"The progressive response to this dilemma is to try to get government to eliminate the one parking-space-per-unit goal and cap the total amount of parking built. Meanwhile, the neocons, who believe government should be active in creating more parking, rail against more bus lanes," Henderson said.

As he notes, common to both groups is the desire for government to help them achieve their vision.

"Much as we see San Francisco as a progressive place, it’s also peopled by neoliberals and very conservative folks — and progressive and neoliberals coalesce on the issue of ‘smart growth.’ And there are lot of progressives who have a car and say, ‘I don’t want to be car dependent; I’d like to do city share, but I’d feel stranded.’ And those who say ‘I always want to have my own car, but I only drive it once a month.’"

Conceding that "tweaking the system" will cost money, Henderson cites congestion pricing as an area where the various factions can find agreement.

"The important question is, what will the revenue be used for?" Henderson said, noting that some will argue that if you charge motorists to use roads, then the money should be used to improve the roads, which is what has happened with toll roads in Texas.

But in San Francisco, activist are pushing the opposite approach. "Whereas the sustainable transportation movement in San Francisco wants to use the revenue from congestion pricing to fix Muni and discourage driving," he continued.

In his paper on parking policy, Henderson details exactly how parking allocations push up the price of housing — and change the face of ongoing developments.

A typical off-road parking space takes up 350 square feet when room to move in and out is factored in — and that’s comparable to many offices and living spaces in San Francisco. The parking alone costs $50,000 to $100,000 to develop — a cost that’s passed on to the homebuyer.

But in most neighborhoods, developers can’t avoid parking, because of planning laws. "This means that neighborhoods like the iconic North Beach simply could not be built today," Henderson wrote, noting how mandatory parking provisions mean that the lower floors of new buildings are likely to contain parking garages, not storefronts and cafes, and garage entrances take away street parking and limit where street trees can be planted.

"But at least contesting car space is on the table in San Francisco" Henderson said. "That makes it an intriguing bellwether for other places."

Insuring against asbestos exposure, SF style

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June 30, 2009

2

Text By Sarah Phelan

Serpentinite rock with veins of naturally occurring asbestos

Henry Alvarez, executive director of the San Francisco Housing Authority, acknowledges that a judge tossed out the unlawful detainer suit that the SFHA brought against the Nation of Islam’s Center for Self Improvement in the Bayview and its leader Minister Christopher Muhammad.

“But the court left room for us to refile with some guidance,” Alvarez added, claiming that his agency tried to amend its complaints outside the court with Muhammad’s lawyer, Richard Drury, “but we could not reach an amicable solution.”

So, is the SFHA planning to file again, and if so, on what grounds?

Bike projects approved in SF

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June 26, 2009

2

By Steven T. Jones

After almost three years of no bicycle improvements in San Francisco — the result of a court injunction imposed because the city’s Bike Plan wasn’t submitted to proper environmental review — city officials have taken a pair of actions that will likely result in the biggest bicycling boom in the city’s history.

Last night, the Bike Plan’s new Environmental Impact Report was approved by the Planning Commission, and this afternoon, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission board unanimously approved the plan and 45 new bicycle projects around the city (delaying only the 2nd Street bike lanes for further study and discussion). Now, once any appeals play out, city officials will be able to return to court later this summer to get the injunction removed and construction on new lanes, racks, and other improvements should begin this fall.

Mayor Gavin Newsom, other officials, and bike advocates are right now holding a press conference on the steps of City Hall. Guardian reporter Rebecca Bowe, who has been covering the hearings, is there and will offer a full report later on this blog and in Wednesday’s Guardian.

Designer drugs: HomoChic unleashes piggy poppers

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June 26, 2009

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By Juliette Tang

Just in time for your big gay Pride weekend, the talented artists at the HomoChic collective have launched their and improved site, now complete with an online store where you can get your very own designer poppers top. Created by SF’s Leo Herrera and NYC artisan Blue Bayer, these simultaneously classy and slutty swine-themed poppers tops are available in 14K gold plate or sterling silver, and come with a little chain so that you can conveniently wear your poppers around your neck (the coke necklace from Cruel Intentions is so ten years ago). Says Leo Herrera, co-founder of HomoChic, “”This piece of gay history is the best thing to happen to messy sex and sweaty dance floors since the pump lube bottle & the hanky code.” Herrera sat down with the SFBG to talk about the history of HomoChic, the innocent fun of poppers, and what it’s like to be a “chubby chasing feeder twink”.

SFBG: Can you describe, in your words, what HomoChic is? (And it’s absolutely gorgeous gorgeous, by the way). From my perspective, HomoChic is a little bit of everything, from photography to video to design to music to writing to fashion. From a creator’s viewpoint, what are you going for with the site?

LH: HomoChic.com is an artist collective, production house, and as of June 09, an online store for prints and gay artifacts. We produce events, films, costumes and images with a focus on gay anthropology and history. We are also planning on representing artists and performers through online promotion and commerce.

SFBG: How did HomoChic take off?

LH: HomoChic has taken off because of our focus on gay history and repackaging it in a way that isn’t too focused on looking toward the past (i.e. AIDS activism, “traditional” Pride) to shape ways of taking the Gay Movement to the future. At the same time, we are finding the resources and opportunities to create more of our own projects, so it’s something gay men of all ages can identify with. HomoChic started with myself, Jacob Sperber (co-founder of HoneySoundSystem) and my gay brother Allan producing art pieces that revolved around events and vice versa. Whether it is an after-party for an art show, or a film piece produced specifically to be a trailer for a nightlife event. The notion of Chic has always been associated with being a homo. As a lot of us, especially the younger generation, assimilate, we become too focused on being part of mainstream culture and forget that for a long time, the industries have looked to us to show them what’s cool and sellable, not the other way around. Think Madonna’s Vogue, or disco for example.

SFBG: How were you inspired to make your lovely pig-topped poppers bottles?

Kucharmania!

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June 17, 2009

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johnny@sfbg.com

PREVIEW I was going to review It Came from Kuchar, Jennifer Kroot’s documentary about George and Mike Kuchar, but a combination of exhaustion, absent-mindedness, and deep innate logic got the best of me. Instead of writing a straightforward appraisal of a movie about two filmmakers who are anything but straight, I’ve decided to pay tribute to a pair of brothers whose filmography and videography is longer and larger and (sorry!) more freely imaginative than all of the pictures in this year’s Frameline festival put together.

For sure, there is an irony at the heart of Kroot’s dedicated endeavor, just as there was one at the core of Mary Jordan’s equally appreciative Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (2006). Underground filmmaking as preached and practiced by Smith and the Kuchars is too wild to be summarized by a stadium of talking heads, let alone condensed into one of 21st century cinema’s most common manias, the feature-length documentary portrait. In 1997, when George and Mike published the midlife autobiography Reflections From a Cinematic Cesspool (Zanja Press, 182 pages, $19.95), they’d already created at least 300 films and videos. Just as Smith’s unfinished projects tease and outright mock any neat categorization or traditional definition of art work, how could a single film or commentator do justice to the myriad lovely warts and hidden undersides of such a gargantuan filmography? Most likely, Kroot has fashioned an introduction, so I will try to as well, using words instead of a camera.

If you’re a movie-lover in San Francisco, you have some Kuchar memories, and maybe even some bonds forged partly through an admiration of George and Mike Kuchar. I remember planning to wear an ape suit to a Roxie Cinema screening of Curt McDowell’s Thundercrack!, which is scripted by George. I remember how one friend’s private screening of George’s Color Me Shameless (1967) helped jostle me out of a deep depression rooted in embarrassment about past shameless behavior. However silly they might seem on the surface, many Kuchar movies tap into truths about life, and for that I’m thankful.

Another vital aspect of cinema Kuchar is its continued influence on contemporary San Francisco creativity. Kroot’s movie spotlights the Kuchars’ influence on cult icons and iconographers such as John Waters, Bill Griffith, and Guy Maddin. But name a local moviemaker you like, and that person is probably a Kuchar devotee, or even — like Kroot — a former student from one of George’s San Francisco Art Institute classes. When I enjoy a movie by Sam Green, David Enos, Martha Colburn, or the late, great (and currently resurgent) McDowell, I sense the spirit and essence of Kuchar. When I take note of Sarah Enid’s behind-the-camera direction and before-the-camera emotion, I see a Kuchar heroine beginning to tell her own story. Meanwhile, George keeps making whirwlind star-wipe video diaries and cooking up scripted genre goulashes that possess a singularly strange flavor. A couple of months ago, someone near and dear enthusiastically showed me a recent paradisical movie by Mike, and I was blown away by the potent high it derived from the beauty of its male lead actor. Secondhand smoke? Yes please.

It Came From Kuchar is an apt title not just because George and Mike Kuchar take their inspiration from B-movies, but because something about the Kuchar brothers as a phenomenon is not of this world — so of the world as to be almost too good for it. It came from outer space, and it came from beneath the sea, but not until it came — goopily — from the creative intestines and pleasure centers of George and Mike Kuchar did cinema truly phone home.

IT CAME FROM KUCHAR

Sun/21, 6:30 p.m., Castro

Eliminating dissent

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June 17, 2009

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sarah@sfbg.com

For years, the Hunters Point Shipyard Restoration Advisory Board has served as the Bayview-Hunters Point community’s main voice in the U.S. Navy’s environmental cleanup plans for the toxic former naval station. But the committee is suddenly being disbanded just as the cleanup enters a crucial phase.

Used for shipbuilding and submarine maintenance and repair, and the decontamination, storage, and disposal of radioactive and atomic weapons testing materials, the shipyard was added to the Superfund national toxic site cleanup list in 1989. But it is also at the heart of where Mayor Gavin Newsom has partnered with Lennar Corp. on the city’s biggest development proposal, involving 10,500 homes and a new stadium for the 49ers.

As the Navy prepares to release a series of important studies and reports concerning the cleanup of the dirtiest parcels on the former shipyard, community members were outraged by the Navy’s announcement in late May that it is preparing to dissolve the RAB in the next 30 days.

In July the Navy will release draft feasibility studies for the cleanup of Parcel E, along with a final remedial investigation/feasibility study for Parcel E2, the dirtiest parcel on the base, and a radiological data-gathering investigation in the sediment surrounding Parcel F, which is the underwater portion of the base.

Some insiders say the announcement was not unexpected, given an escautf8g series of confrontational RAB meetings with the Navy over the last two years. But they fear the community will lose its ability to give the Navy direct, timely, and meaningful feedback, even if many believe the Navy wasn’t listening.

"The Navy fully supports the need for open, meaningful dialogue with the diverse Bayview-Hunters Point community regarding our environmental cleanup actions and decisions. However, the RAB is not fulfilling this objective," the Navy’s Laura Duchnak wrote in a May 22 letter to the RAB.

In her letter, Duchnak said the RAB meetings no longer provide community input on the Navy’s environmental cleanup program, that their atmosphere is not productive to effective public discourse, and that Navy attempts to improve the process have failed. "The revised community involvement program may include community environmental forums, including using Internet-based technologies to more easily reach a diverse audience, expanded monthly progress reports and fact sheets, and hosting technical discussions and tours of cleanup sites for interested community members," Duchnak wrote.

Duchnak’s announcement followed a tense January meeting in which RAB members reacted with horror when the Navy announced it was moving forward with controversial plans to cap radiologically-affected areas on the shipyard’s Parcel B instead of digging and hauling them, which the community preferred (see "Nuclear Fallout," 07/16/08).

Led by RAB co-chair Leon Muhammad, who teaches at the Nation of Islam’s Center for Self Improvement, which has been repeatedly dusted by unmonitored asbestos (see "The corporation that ate San Francisco," 03/17/07), and joined by newly sworn-in members Archbishop King, Marie Harrison, and Daniel Landry, the board voted to seek a civil grand jury investigation into whether local truckers are getting their fair share of the Navy’s shipyard contracts.

Members then voted to remove the city’s public health representative Amy Brownell from the RAB, and to call for the stoppage of all work on the yard until the Department of Defense, the Navy, and the city can prove, as Muhammad said, "where the ongoing dust exceedences are coming from."

The final straw, insiders say, occurred in February when members voted to remove the Navy’s RAB co-chair Keith Forman from the advisory board. Eric Smith, who was sworn onto the RAB in January but did not vote to remove Brownell and Forman, said the Navy’s dissolution response wasn’t surprising.

"The dissolution of RAB is not a good thing in terms of what it is supposed to do. But it was also doing things that were dysfunctional," Smith said. "The bitter irony is that the folks who caused the trouble were trying to get the Navy to sit up and take notice."

Smith said there is frustration with the Navy’s communication style, which the community feels is patronizing. "But the RAB was naïve to think the Navy would allow a forum over which it has unilateral authority to become a platform for attacks," Smith said.

RAB member Kristine Enea, who missed the RAB’s last two meetings, confirmed that the atmosphere got increasingly confrontational but added that the Navy ignored suggestions her calls for wider community involvement.

"It’s ironic that the Navy had decided to respond to criticisms, which include the charge that it is a poor communicator, by cutting off communications with the community," said Enea, who works at the India Basin Neighborhood Association. "Dissolving the RAB is a drastic step. There is so much going on, and so much that we need to know."

But Enea hopes IBNA can help fill that void, noting that the association has applied for a US Environmental Protection Agency technical assistant grant to review shipyard clean-up documents, provide fact sheets, and host community meetings.

The Sierra Club’s Arthur Feinstein said that his group’s main concern around the dissolution is that Parcel E2, which contains an industrial and radiologically-impacted dump that burned for six months in 2000, and Parcel F are both coming up for analysis.

"These are some of the most significantly contaminated areas on the shipyard, so the timing is terrible," Feinstein told the Guardian, observing that some RAB members did not appear to be looking for solutions and were so aggressive they destroyed meetings.

"Unfortunately there weren’t enough forceful people to say ‘shut up and sit down,’" Feinstein said. "But without a RAB, there will be no public forum where folks are able to get and read materials ahead of the meeting, and then ask and submit questions."

Harrison, a member of the environmental justice group Green Action, believes the Navy’s intent is that there be no meaningful interaction with the community. "When you don’t toe the line and play like good little children, the Navy shuts you down," said Harrison, whose group, along with the Nation of Islam and the Caravan for Justice, are planning a June 30 demonstration at the shipyard to protest the move.

In another point of controversy, Sen. Mark Leno has legislation that seeks to trade 25 percent of Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, the only major piece of open space in the Bayview, for small strips on the shipyard so Lennar can build condos on the parkland.

Noting that Sen. Leland Yee and Assembly Members Tom Ammiano and Fiona Ma oppose the parks-for-condos plan (see "Going Nuclear," April 29), Harrison said, "What possessed anyone to believe that we’d say, okay, take the only open space in the Bayview, and in exchange we’ll accept contaminated land scattered around on the shipyard?"

Environmental advocates believe the Sierra Club intends to fight Leno’s legislation with a challenge under the California Environmental Quality Act, but Leno told the Guardian that he is "continuing to work and meet with the lobbyists for the Sierra Club here in Sacramento to see if there are any additional amendments we can take that would get them to a neutral position on the bill.

"I think there is a good possibility we can get there," Leno said.

In February, Arc Ecology released a 133-report titled "Alternatives for study" that recommended the removal of the Parcel E2 landfill and explored changes in land use arrangements in the current redevelopment proposal to avoid environmental impacts (see "Concrete Plans," Feb. 4). Unfortunately, they were largely ignored by the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, which is working with Lennar on the public-private development deal.

Arc Ecology executive director Saul Bloom remains undaunted, recalling how 87 percent of voters citywide supported Proposition P, an advisory measure he wrote and that then-Sups. Ammiano, Leno, Michael Yaki, and the late Sue Bierman placed on the ballot in 1989 to establish community acceptance criteria for the shipyard, under federal toxic cleanup guidelines.

"The Navy had offered their opinion that voters in San Francisco, and especially in the Bayview, would accept a nonresidential industrial level cleanup for the shipyard because they were primarily interested in jobs," Bloom recalled. "We said that this was a mischaracterization and we’d go ahead and prove them wrong."

He believes the current struggle with the Navy over the RAB, and with the city and Lennar over Arc’s alternatives, are "emblematic of the problem facing the Bayview with regard to accessing good information and being told the straight story on health and development issues."

Stop PG&E’s alarming ballot measure

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June 16, 2009

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EDITORIAL One of the greatest threats to public power in a generation is quietly working its way toward the California ballot.

As Rebecca Bowe reports on page 12, a proposed initiative that would require two-thirds of the voters to approve any sort of public electricity measure, including community choice aggregation (CCA), has been submitted to the state attorney general’s office. And Pacific Gas and Electric Co.’s fingerprints are all over it.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that this measure is designed to derail successful CCA efforts in places like Marin County and San Francisco, where the supervisors are moving forward to set up the equivalent of a buyer’s co-op for electricity. A San Francisco CCA would offer lower costs and much greener power — and would give the city far more control over its energy future.

The measure could also hamper the efforts of existing public power agencies to expand their territories or offer service to new customers.

The state Legislature approved a bill back in 2002 allowing California cities to replace private utility service with CCAs — and the bill included language barring PG&E and the other giant electricity companies in the state from spending money to undermine CCA efforts. In other words, it’s illegal for PG&E to use its immense resources and lobbying clout to try to block San Francisco’s efforts.

And PG&E has spent tens of millions of dollars in San Francisco, Davis, and elsewhere trying to block public-power programs.

So now the utility is going to the state ballot, where a campaign with enough money on an issue that’s sufficiently complicated can often pass. The law firm that filed the initiative papers, Neilsen Merksama (a political powerhouse that represents, among others, PG&E) won’t divulge much about the funding sources — except to say that the filing fee came from … PG&E. So there’s little doubt the measure will have the funds it needs to gather more than 600,000 signatures and mount a campaign of lies and disinformation.

That’s why supporters of CCAs and public power need to rally, now, to start planning to defeat this thing.

Mustering a two-thirds majority at the ballot for almost anything is difficult. Even in liberal San Francisco, bond measures requiring a two-thirds vote often pass only narrowly — and that’s if there’s no opposition. Even the most popular sorts of measures — say, for funding schools or libraries — can go down to defeat if anyone mounts serious opposition.

And PG&E, with its unlimited resources, would have the ability to kill the current CCA plans — or anything in the future that threatens the company’s illegal monopoly.

The two-thirds majority requirement is undemocratic and has paralyzed state government. Two-thirds mandates for new tax measures have made it almost impossible for cities and counties in this state to raise new revenue, even in desperate times like these.

The San Francisco supervisors need to immediately pass a resolution opposing the measure. Assembly Member Tom Ammiano and state Sen. Mark Leno have told us they oppose it, and they should see if there’s any way the Legislature can add language to the CCA bill to bar regulated utilities from spending money to undermine public power statewide. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission should be talking to public power agencies all over the state and helping organize the opposition. If the measure makes it onto the ballot, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and every other municipal utility agency in the state will need to raise money — millions — and marshal forces against it.

This is a very serious threat, and the time to start defusing it is now. *

P.S.: Mayor Newsom has nominated Anson Moran, the former general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, for a seat on the commission. This is a terrible idea. Moran had a notoriously anti-public power record when he was running the agency. In fact, in 1994, he tried to stop the city from bidding on the lucrative contract to supply electricity to the Presidio, saying that going up against PG&E would be "too political." And although he later said he would be willing to bid on the contract, he privately urged then-Mayor Frank Jordan to veto then-Sup. Angela Alioto’s measure pushing for public power at the Presidio. With all the battles over CCA and public power, the last thing the city needs is a PG&E call-up vote on the PUC. The Rules Committee hears the nomination June 18, and should vote to reject him.

Let’s get ready to ruuuuuuuuummmmmble!!!

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June 16, 2009

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By Steven T. Jones

The budget battle of the decade will erupt at City Hall over the next few hours, with firefighters, cops, and representatives of Mayor Gavin Newsom rallying out front at 1 p.m. and the providers and users of other city services – those slashed by Newsom, from public health to parks to social services – rallying with progressive supervisors in the same spot at 12:30 p.m.
Newsom spokesperson Nate Ballard denied accusations of improper coordination between Newsom and firefighters, who are represented by Eric Jaye, who is also running Newsom gubernatorial campaign. “There is an ethical wall between the Mayor and Eric Jaye on these issues, ” Ballard said. “[Newsom] agrees with the firefighters, but he is not involved with planning the rally. Maybe he’ll stop by.”
Expect fireworks and angry accusations being traded before both sides file into Board Chambers at 2 p.m. as supervisors consider an interim budget that shifts $82 million in Newsom cuts over to the public safety departments that actually got small budget increases despite the $438 million deficit.
Newsom did finally follow through on his seven-month-old pledge to work with supervisors yesterday, meeting with Board President David Chiu and Budget Committee Chair John Avalos, but they failed to resolve the impasse. As Chiu told us, “We didn’t hear anything from the mayor that would change where we were last week.”
In other words: Game on!

Dance: Adventurous im’ij-re shines, illuminates

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June 11, 2009

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By Rita Felciano

In 2007 choreographer Amy Seiwert set Morton Feldman’s hauntingly beautiful score "Rothko Chapel" on Robert Moses’ Kin dancers. Watching Memory was fresh, mysterious, and mesmerizing. Not the least of its appeal came from Marc Morozumi’s stunning lanterns, which enveloped the dancers in subtly changing luminosity. Earlier the same year, Seiwert’s first full evening of her own work packed Project Artaud Theater to the rafters, confirming that this petite woman, also the resident choreographer of Smuin Ballet, has one of the Bay Area’s most adventurous and intriguing voices. You always want to see her next work because you can sense the questioning spirit that leads her into unexpected terrain. Her own nine-year old company, im’ij-re — with its excellent dancers — is the place where she can experiment in the way the tight schedules of more traditional ballet companies (her latest commission was for Colorado Ballet this spring) don’t always have the means to support. From that first encounter with Morozumi, a relationship was born. For 2010 the two are planning a full-evening work that includes contributions by British sound designer Kaffe Matthews and German media artist Frieder Weiss. For the time being, they are premiering the sextet LIGHT essays as the centerpiece of a program of new works that showcases a trio choreographed by Morozumi (with sculptor Alex Uncapher), a solo by Andrea Basile (danced by Alex Ketley), and a structured improvisation for four dancers.

IM’IJ-RE Sat/13–Sun/14, 8 p.m., $20. ODC Dance Commons, 351 Shotwell, SF.

(415) 863-9834, www.odcdance.org

Cybernet Expo 2009 gets deep down in it

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June 10, 2009

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By Juliette Tang

It goes without saying that we tend to take our Internet porn for granted.

Naturally, we are so inundated with porn in our pop up ads, our spam folders, and our Google searches (an unfiltered image search for something as innocent as “cucumber” will get you porn on the first page), it becomes the accepted standard that porn will be an immutable fact that as long as the Internet exists and that we will be entitled to free, or at least accessible, cyberporn until the end days. Unless we’re in the business of making internet porn ourselves, we don’t often think of the business or entrepreneurial aspects involved behind the scenes, or the planning and development it takes to get even the most basic of adult websites off the ground. But adult entertainment, as with any other profession, is a part of an industry (albeit one that is on the fringe of the mainstream) that relies on a complicated network of people who work together and interact as a part of a larger market. And, like all professions, adult entertainment is privy to a phenomenon known as the “Expo”.

What industry, these days, doesn’t have its own expo? Every day, in hotel conference rooms all over the United States, from coast to coast, from New York to LA, from La Quinta to the Four Seasons, professionals gather to drink coffee and mini sodas to meet one another and discuss things like customer conversion and marketing strategies. Usually these expos are a staid and boring affair, with keynote speeches by tedious suit-types with topics like “Putting Service Above Self”. We see them all the time in San Francisco. After the open bar closes down, some of the more adventurous professionals will make their way up from the Renaissance Hotel in Fremont to the city, just to go to Ruby Skye.

At least in the adult entertainment industry, expos provide some entertainment value.

Slightly exposed at the 2008 Cybernet Expo

If the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo is adult entertainment’s version of Web 2.0, then the upcoming Cybernet Expo is its version of the TechCrunch 50.

The two Newsoms

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June 10, 2009

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steve@sfbg.com

More on SFBG
>>Links to our complete Newsom coverage, from 2006 to the present (Microsoft Word)

There are two Gavin Newsoms: the mayor San Franciscans have gotten to know over the last six years, and the candidate running for governor.

The contrast is dramatic. The central persona being pushed by the Newsom campaign — that of a postpartisan progressive who has united fractious San Francisco around innovative, common sense solutions to the most vexing problems using his considerable courage and political skills — seems like pure fiction to most City Hall watchers.

Here’s Newsom, the candidate, kicking off his campaign and describing a harmonious local political scene: "We stopped fighting over who was going to be in charge and started working together to find solutions."

Here’s the reality: Newsom is a politically isolated mayor who refused to heed the voter directive to meet regularly with the Board of Supervisors or take part in budget negotiations involving key community stakeholders. His spokespeople regularly belittle and deride progressive supervisors and organizations. He has vetoed consensus legislation on tenant protections, police foot patrols, new revenue measures, and new parking policies. He is proudly taking campaign credit for other people’s initiatives he once opposed. He has been absent from some of the most important policy debates in the city. He has demanded the resignations of all appointees and top officials, even those protected by contracts and fixed terms. His dysfunctional, politicized office has been criticized for its secrecy by both the civil grand jury and Sunshine Ordinance Task Force and for its emphasis on loyalty over competence by past and current employees.

He is utterly unwilling to engage with people who disagree with him. In fact, he refused the Guardian‘s month-old request to discuss the issues raised in this article.

"It’s like a Wizard of Oz creation. You pull back the curtain and there’s nothing there," said Aaron Peskin, who was regularly vilified by Team Newsom when he served as president of the Board of Supervisors. "He is kind of an empty, sad guy and his handlers have managed to create a persona that is fake and false."

A close examination of Newsom’s record and statements shows a history of contradictions. He has supported and opposed public power, decriminalizing marijuana, requiring employers to help pay for the city’s universal health care system, temporarily closing some streets to cars, shelter and treatment on demand for the homeless, higher clean energy standards, and a long list of other issues.

He called for Muni to be free, then insisted on doubling Muni fares.

You’d think this would be a formula for political failure, that eventually California voters would figure out the fraud. But that’s not necessarily true. The reality, political professionals told us, is that the general public just doesn’t care about the details of his mayoral tenure. Such nuances don’t translate well into a statewide campaign.

Newsom’s platform and persona are what voters want to hear right now — and they’re just believable enough to be an easy sell for modern media manipulators.

But the public ought to be paying attention — because the record suggests that Newsom is hardly a great candidate for governor.

FOR THE RECORD

The policy initiative Newsom cites most frequently on the campaign trail is Healthy San Francisco, a plan to provide health care to all city residents, mostly by requiring employers to provide health insurance to their workers or pay into a city program that covers visits to city clinics and hospitals.

"In my city, we’re well on our way to universal health care. How can we afford it? Well, we’re proving what you already know: it’s less expensive to keep people well than it is to treat their sickness," Newsom said in his announcement speech.

"Mayor Gavin Newsom isn’t waiting for the politicians in Sacramento to solve this problem — he’s created the only universal health care program in the country," reads the Newsom campaign Web site.

It may be true that preventive care saves money over the long run, but that has nothing to do with how San Francisco affords this program. And Gavin Newsom never created it.

First of all, Healthy San Francisco wouldn’t exist if then Sup. Tom Ammiano (now a member of the California Assembly) hadn’t spent years fighting for a universal health care plan paid for by employers.

And while Ammiano was being savagely attacked over the idea by the business community, a key constituency of the mayor, Newsom sat on the sidelines until Ammiano lined up enough votes to approve the plan. At that point, Newsom introduced his own health plan, worked with Ammiano to merge the two, and has been taking credit for it around the country ever since.

Ammiano credits labor, not Newsom, with doing the hard work of fighting business community opposition to Healthy San Francisco. "The mayor’s role was that we would keep him updated, but I don’t think he thought it was going to happen," Ammiano told us. "There’s no doubt he came along for the ride."

Going through the issues on Newsom’s campaign Web site, there are a startling number of claims that don’t match his record. A few examples:

"California must be ready for a wide range of natural disasters … [and] man-made disasters as well — terrorist attacks, hazardous material and oil spills, and biological and chemical threats," said the mayor, whose latest budget includes a 24 percent cut to the Office of Emergency Services and who appointed unqualified (but politically connected) Republican hack Annemarie Conroy to head OES, and who remained on vacation in Hawaii as San Franciscans responded to the Cosco Busan oil spill, the biggest in San Francisco Bay.

"In the midst of a national economic crisis, San Francisco’s economy has remained strong … Mayor Newsom — building on his experience in the private sector where he built a thriving enterprise of 15 businesses and created 1,000 jobs — has transformed the city’s economy," his campaign wrote. Yet in his latest budget, he argues how weak the city’s economy has become and uses the crisis to slash spending on public health, social services, building inspections, and other essential services in the biggest government downsizing in the city’s history. Biotech businesses have located in the city, as Newsom has often touted, but they aren’t paying any city taxes because of a measure he sponsored exempting them.

"Working largely with existing resources, Mayor Newsom has applied a little common sense and a lot of innovation to help turn San Francisco public schools into a statewide model for educational achievement," writes the campaign. But despite regularly claiming credit for schools in his stump speeches, Newsom has had little to do with the San Francisco Unified School District, which has avoided layoffs mostly because of support from city funds (thanks to a voter-approved measure authored by Ammiano) and a parcel tax spearheaded by downtown financier Warren Hellman and others. Newsom also has done little to help find solutions to the most controversial issues plaguing the school district in recent years, such as eliminating JROTC, school closures, desegregation, and the divisive tenure of former Superintendent Arlene Ackerman. Indeed, his biggest role was defending a superintendent so polarizing the board of education fired her.

That has been the most common complaint about Newsom from both his political allies and opponents: he’s always been unwilling to spend his political capital on anything that might help the city or solve its problems.

The polls may show that Newsom’s popular, but he has never been able to translate that into political success. Despite spending a record-setting $7 million and nearly two years on his first mayoral campaign, Newsom only beat the poorly funded, last-minute campaign of Matt Gonzalez by about five percentage points.

Two months into his first term, on March 3, 2004 Newsom’s signature Workforce Housing Initiative went down hard, as have most of the ballot measures he has supported. The one notable exception was last year’s Proposition G, a measure Newsom created along with U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein to give Lennar Corp. the exclusive right to develop more than 10,000 homes and a new football stadium on Hunters and Candlestick points and through much of southeast San Francisco. That plan remains the centerpiece of Newsom’s housing policy even as the housing market and the value of Lennar’s stock have both collapsed.

When it comes to the Board of Supervisors, Newsom’s candidates lose almost every time there’s a closely contested race. In the last election, Newsom backed Joe Alioto, Ahsha Safai, and Sue Lee, all top fundraisers in their respective districts — and all of them lost. Even in ultra-liberal District 9, where one of three well-qualified progressive candidates was virtually guaranteed to win, Newsom backed a business-friendly also-ran.

Two years before, Newsom gave his strong support to Doug Chan in conservative District 4 and Rob Black in District 6, home to Newsom nemesis Chris Daly. Newsom actively campaigned for both men harder than he has for any other supervisorial candidate — and both lost.

Newsom even lost control of his own party. While he was campaigning for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party presidential primary, Daly, Peskin, and the progressives put together a campaign to take control of the Democratic County Central Committee, besting Newsom-backed alternatives.

That’s not to say Newsom isn’t a shrewd politician. Indeed, the one move that put him on the national political map was the same one that ensured his popularity and reelection in San Francisco: his decision to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples shortly after taking office in 2004.

There’s no evidence to refute Newsom’s claim that this was a principled decision stemming from his outrage at federal efforts to ban same-sex marriage. But as a side benefit, the move made Newsom of beloved figure among LGBT voters (who mostly cast their ballots for Gonzalez in 2003) and transformed Newsom from an ambitious and privileged young politician to an early civil rights leader in the eyes of many.

THE WAY HE WORKS

When Newsom unveiled his 2009-10 budget, it wasn’t in the Board of Supervisors Chambers, where there’s plenty of room for the press and public and where mayors have traditionally held these events. Instead, he made the announcement in his private inner office. And even though he invited local journalists, he filled the small room with department heads and supervisors and made the media peer in from an adjoining room. Then he spoke for nearly an hour and concluded the event without taking questions.

"I look forward to working with the Board of Supervisors," Newsom said, but nobody believed him. He made that same promise in January and then refused to work with supervisors or even to signal his intentions with the direction of this secretive budget.

It was an event that was in many ways emblematic of Newsom’s tenure as mayor, which he has always insisted be conducted on his terms, even when those terms contradict provisions of the City Charter, ignore his supposed partners in governance, or infer an almost kingly power that denies the notion of checks and balances on power.

"It’s totally top secret. They’re trying to control the message as much as possible," Sup. John Avalos, chair of the boards’ Budget Committee, told us before the event. "It’s going to be a gubernatorial campaign event, with a carefully crafted message that has more statewide implication than local implications."

Newsom visited the supervisors fewer times than any mayor, a trend with both real and symbolic meaning. Former Mayor Willie Brown was often criticized for heavy-handed tactics, but at least he was engaged with the political process by being willing to take on his political opponents and fight it out in public.

Newsom ended the tradition of delivering the legally required State of the City speech at the board chambers, instead holding it in locations around the city that emphasized something his political advisors found important.

Then last year, he dispensed with the speech entirely and highlighted what a tech-savvy hipster he is by releasing a set of marathon YouTube videos, 7.5 hours in all, and calling it his State of the City speech, a stunt that was universally panned by local journalists, even by normally sycophantic Examiner columnist Ken Garcia.

Newsom’s administration earned repeated condemnations from the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force for withholding public documents and information, from internal e-mail to his daily schedule.

"Withholding information is the name of the game for this administration. It’s how they work," Avalos said.

Newsom had developed such a reputation for political disengagement that voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition I in 2006, calling for the mayor to show up at Board of Supervisors meetings once a month for policy discussions. But Newsom simply refused to go, deriding the idea as "political theater" and announcing that he would instead hold regular forums in the community, which turned out to be highly scripted political events with department heads required to attend.

It wasn’t the last time he would use department heads as campaign props. The next year, in September 2007, Newsom suddenly decided (without seeking any legal advice first) to ask for resignation letters from all department heads and top officials, as well as appointees to city board and commissions.

Although he cast it as a bold, fresh move to shake things up, Newsom didn’t have the authority to do so. Many commission members serve fixed terms to prevent the mayor from exercising just this kind of political pressure on supposedly independent bodies.

Ultimately Newsom accepted only a few of the more than 200 resignations he requested. But the message was clear that Newsom was in charge and that he demanded the personal loyalty of those who serve in city government. Not long after, he summarily fired two popular and effective department heads — Susan Leal at the Public Utilities Commission and Margaret Brodkin at the Department of Children Youth and Families — because they were taking independent steps and not following the mayor’s script.

CHARACTER AND CONNECTIONS

Newsom is campaigning as a man of integrity. "I’m not the kind of person who says one thing in private and does another in public. You will know where I stand," he told the California Democratic Party Convention on April 25.

Yet at the end of January 2007, we got a telling peek at the actual moral fiber of Team Newsom. That was the week a pair of simmering scandals burst into public view, both of which were handled disingenuously by Newsom (see "Newsom’s scandals," 2/7/07).

The first was an incident in which Newsom’s press secretary, Peter Ragone, was caught by the SFist blog using fake names to post comments to that and other blogs attacking Newsom’s critics. When confronted about it by the Guardian and other journalists, he lied and blamed the posts on an imaginary friend, only admitting the truth once he was finally cornered.

But that admission was overshadowed by even bigger news that day, Jan. 31, when the San Francisco Chronicle printed a long-rumored story about Newsom’s affair with his political appointments secretary, Ruby Rippey-Tourk, who was married to Newsom’s reelection campaign manager and close confidante, Alex Tourk.

Newsom held a brief press conference to admit that "everything you’ve heard and read is true and I’m deeply sorry about that" and say he was getting back to business. He took no questions.

The next day he announced he had a drinking problem and was seeking help from the Delancey Street Foundation. Again, he took no questions and offered no answers about how he was casually dealing with that intensive (and politically connected) program (see "Sorta, maybe an alcoholic," 2/28/07).

A month later, controversial press secretary Ragone was moved from the Mayor’s Office to Newsom’s reelection campaign. Today, Ragone is the spokesperson for the gubernatorial campaign.

His replacement, Nate Ballard, has been every bit the scorched earth political operative, using glib put-downs to respond to serious requests for information and offering up belittling one-liners to attack progressive supervisors. Together with political consultant Eric Jaye, the ambitious trio is widely considered to be running the Mayor’s Office.

For years, Team Newsom has been perceived as looking beyond San Francisco and failing to establish any significant political base here.

"He’s not put together any kind of coalition. He is sort of an island," University of San Francisco political science professor Corey Cook told us.

Neither has Newsom been the reliable representative of business interests the downtown power brokers thought they were getting when they dumped money into his 2003 mayoral campaign. Many privately grumble that their desires have taken a back seat to Newsom’s personal ambitions.

But there are several well-documented examples of Newsom flipping his position on an issue after getting a call from a high-profile supporter. The first significant one came in December 2005 when Gap, Inc. founder Don Fisher convened a meeting to demand that Newsom oppose an ordinance limiting the amount of parking that could be built along with housing in the downtown core, progressive legislation championed by Newsom’s planning director Dean Macris.

Fisher and other downtown power brokers were angry with Newsom for being disengaged and letting progressives take control of the city’s agenda. As Guardian reporting later revealed (see "Joining the battle," 2/8/06), Newsom agreed to oppose the legislation and support an alternative written by a group of developer attorneys, which went nowhere. He eventually vetoed the good legislation, demanded some pro-developer loopholes, and signed the weakened legislation.

Another notable corporate-inspired flip-flop came last year when Pacific Gas and Electric Co. urged Newsom to reverse his support for installing two city-owned combustion turbine power plants, which he complied with within two weeks of the May 5 request (see "Ongoing threat," 5/21/08).

Critics contend that PG&E didn’t want any public power projects, and even though Newsom told the Guardian that he supported public power during both of his mayoral election endorsement interviews, he went along with PG&E’s wishes (claiming it was really about fossil fuel generation, not public power).

But within a few months Newsom decided he was actually against public power, using the new stance as his reason for opposing the Clean Energy Act (which would have set high renewable energy standards and created a study asking whether public power was the best way to meet those goals). After PG&E spent more than $10 million, the most ever on a San Francisco campaign, the Clean Energy Act was soundly defeated last November.

Yet confronting Newsom about any of his contradictions, flip-flops, and unsavory actions can get questioners black-balled. KGO-TV reporter Dan Noyes was shut out of the Mayor’s Office after he asked tough questions. And earlier this year, Newsom blocked me on Twitter after I publicly questioned his penchant for the communications medium (and the spelling errors that riddled his tweets).

"He’s notorious for having a thin skin," Ammiano told us, relaying a recent incident in which Newsom called Ammiano early one morning to yell at him after a blog quoted Ammiano for raising concerns that Newsom’s budget cuts are undermining the Healthy San Francisco program.

Peskin used these adjectives to describe Newsom: narcissistic, defensive, insecure, petulant, thin-skinned, and paranoid.

"Like a lot of people who come from privilege, he’s a do-gooder. And that, a lot of times, doesn’t allow him to see the forest for the trees," Ammiano said.

It is that gulf between how Newsom is and how he presents himself that frustrates many San Franciscans.

"If Gavin Newsom were as effective as he’s selling himself as, we certainly wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in," said Debra Walker, a progressive activist, member of the Building Inspection Commission, and candidate to replace Chris Daly on the Board of Supervisors. "The problem is, he’s charming. He does well at power points and engaging the audience. He’s good. But we all know it’s empty. He doesn’t have much to do with government. He’s just not engaged."

Cook told us that Newsom "has not worked closely with the Board of Supervisors." But as he runs for governor, he’s attempting to portray that political isolation as a kind of strength.

"In this economic environment," said Barbara O’Connor, a political communication professor at Sacramento State University, "it’s the only message he has."

DOES IT MATTER?

Whether or not Newsom fits the image of the postpartisan pragmatist he’s running as, most political experts say that’s what Californians — frustrated that the two major parties have essentially fought to a stalemate — are looking for right now.

"The whole postpartisan argument is more or less where voters are here in California," Cook said.

"They want someone who’s going to come in and take charge," O’Connor said. "You want something good at win-win conflict resolution, but not someone who will do anything for votes."

It’s unclear at this point whether Californians will see Newsom as a smarmy politician pandering for votes, or the real deal example of a next-generation political leader.

"There are disconnects and there are hypocrisies, but they’re not going to matter a helluva lot. He’ll get to play this game on his ground," said David Latterman, a San Francisco political consultant who works with moderates like Newsom.

"We forget what the average person out there thinks or cares about," he continued, referring to San Francisco political insiders. "Local city politics bores more people. The stuff he hasn’t done well is stuff nobody cares about."

Latterman says Newsom has an amazing ability to survive his many scandals and shortcomings and remain popular. "The guy is Teflon, he really is. Newsom is a charming guy. In a crowd, people like him."

This isn’t an assessment everyone agrees with. Certainly Newsom can come off as arrogant, a trait displayed during his "it’s coming, whether you like it or not" speech on same-sex marriage that the Yes on Proposition 8 campaign used so effectively against him in television ads.

O’Connor said she recently moderated a panel Newsom was on and wasn’t impressed. "I was amazed at how facile he is. He has a long way to go to being able to connect to the person."

Cook and Latterman say Newsom has presided over a city that has shown real leadership on health care, environmentalism, technological innovation, and other issues Newsom is running on. "Newsom, as the leader of the city, gets credit for that," Latterman said.

That may infuriate San Franciscans who know more about Newsom, but that anger isn’t likely to cause Newsom too many problems on the campaign trail. The stronger he gets hit by San Francisco progressives, the more he can use those attacks to explain why SF wackos are so hard to work with.

"He’s trying to turn all those things into positives, saying that’s why everyone hates him. It’s Arnold 101," Cook said.

Newsom’s playing hard to the youth vote, boasting of how many fans on Facebook and followers on Twitter that he has — but not all his positions are in step with young voters.

Ammiano noted how Newsom opposes his legislation to legalize and tax marijuana, an issue that polls strongly with young people and that could help the state’s fiscal crisis. Ammiano said he asked many of Newsom’s young volunteers at the recent California Democratic Convention (although few were from San Francisco) about the issue, and they were surprised at Newsom’s position. "A lot of the young people who supported him at the Democratic convention did not know he’s not supporting my marijuana bill [Assembly Bill 390]," Ammiano told us.

There’s also the fact that Newsom opposed this moment’s big change candidate, President Barack Obama. Instead, he joined with most political establishment Democratic stalwarts and backing Hillary Clinton in the primaries.

In fact, some of Obama’s California supporters are looking to bring a candidate who shares their values into the race and have formed a group called Change Candidate for California to recruit a gubernatorial candidate.

"We’re not convinced that Mayor Newsom is the best candidate to lead us out of this crisis," said Steve Fowler, one of the group’s founders. "We are inspired by the Obama campaign and we want a leader who can reengage Californians with their state."

O’Connor also thinks there’s a good possibility others will get into the race: "It’s not a good field on either side and you may see some people come in as a result."

Yet for now, Newsom the candidate looks like a strong contender, despite his myriad flaws.

"But the question is, How does that brand govern?" Cook said.

Being the postpartisan maverick may play well at the polls, but Gov. Schwarzenegger is proving that it translates into being unable to govern the state effectively or find common ground between the two polarized parties.

"It’s a good campaign position," Cook said. "But I don’t think this is a viable governing strategy for California."

im’ij-re

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June 9, 2009

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PREVIEW In 2007 choreographer Amy Seiwert set Morton Feldman’s hauntingly beautiful score "Rothko Chapel" on Robert Moses’ Kin dancers. Watching Memory was fresh, mysterious, and mesmerizing. Not the least of its appeal came from Marc Morozumi’s stunning lanterns, which enveloped the dancers in subtly changing luminosity. Earlier the same year, Seiwert’s first full evening of her own work packed Project Artaud Theater to the rafters, confirming that this petite woman, also the resident choreographer of Smuin Ballet, has one of the Bay Area’s most adventurous and intriguing voices. You always want to see her next work because you can sense the questioning spirit that leads her into unexpected terrain. Her own nine-year old company, im’ij-re — with its excellent dancers — is the place where she can experiment in the way the tight schedules of more traditional ballet companies (her latest commission was for Colorado Ballet this spring) don’t always have the means to support. From that first encounter with Morozumi, a relationship was born. For 2010 the two are planning a full-evening work that includes contributions by British sound designer Kaffe Matthews and German media artist Frieder Weiss. For the time being, they are premiering the sextet LIGHT essays as the centerpiece of a program of new works that showcases a trio choreographed by Morozumi (with sculptor Alex Uncapher), a solo by Andrea Basile (danced by Alex Ketley), and a structured improvisation for four dancers.

IM’IJ-RE Sat/13–Sun/14, 8 p.m., $20. ODC Dance Commons, 351 Shotwell, SF.

(415) 863-9834, www.odcdance.org

Wine-by-the-glass battle: half full, half empty

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June 5, 2009

1

By Cécile Lepage

As expected, the Planning Commission granted the national franchise WineStyles a conditional use permit June 4 to add a wine bar to its premises on West Portal.

But the panel limited the hours and size of the bar beyond what the planning staff had recommended. (To stream the video of the hearing, click on item 8.)

WineStyles lined up impressive community support. Not only did the outfit’s backers submit 458 signatures and 58 letters in their favor, but 15 aficionados actually came in person to City Hall to rave about the wine store owners’ friendliness and their role in the community.

But the commissioners were also sympathetic to argument by supporters of a locally owned wine bar, Que Syrah, who fear that the big chain will drive the locals out of business.

Although the CEO of the Winestyles chain, Robert Spuck, told the New York Times in 2007 that blurring the line between a bar and a retail store was part of the company’s mission, the local WineStyles attorney, Tuija Catalano, argued that the establishment wants to remain primarily a liquor store. So the commissioners decided that sales of wine by the glass will have to cease at 8 p.m. daily instead of 10 p.m. The number of seats will be limited to 8 instead of 15.

Both WineStyles owner James Robinson and Que Syrah owner Stephanie McCardell declined to comment.

Newsom’s winning the budget spin

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June 4, 2009

3

By Tim Redmond

The mayor is winning the spin battle over the city budget. The Chron’s first-day story tells the tale:

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom unveiled a $6.6 billion budget Monday for the 2009-10 fiscal year that he said “does a lot of extraordinary things” including bridging a half-billion-dollar deficit without raising taxes or laying off police officers, firefighters or teachers.

“It’s not perfect, but it’s as close to perfect, under the circumstances, as we could make it,” he said. “We did this without the devastation some had predicted.”

The Chron editorial the next day parrots the Newsom line:

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom acknowledges the obvious about next year’s budget: “It’s not perfect.” But his spending plan bridges a nearly half-billion dollar gap that existed three months ago and leaves basic services and schools in good shape.

Actually, that’s completely untrue — the devastation is going to be pretty serious. And basic services won’t be in good shape, they’ll be shredded.

But the progressives on the Board of Supervisors haven’t made that case yet — and it’s time to get started.

If we wait until the budget hearings, in a couple of weeks, the board will be on the defensive. It’s taken everyone a couple of days to figure out what’s in and out of the budget, but we know enough to understand the impacts — and we know enought to be able to argue that without some serious new revenue, the city’s going to be in horrible shape.

The mayor has, of course, dumped the budget off and fled for a fundraiser in New York . The leaders of the progressive wing on the board ought to be planning a press conference — soon — to tell the other side of the story, and they ought to be presenting an alternative fact sheet showing what Newsom really has in mind for the city.

The supervisors typically change just a tiny fraction of the budget, but this year’s going to be different. It will be — it almost has to be — a major battle over public priorities. And if the mayor sets the agenda and controls the public debate, the outcome won’t be pretty.

Shrinking government

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June 3, 2009

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steve@sfbg.com

Mayor Gavin Newsom released his proposed 2009-10 city budget June 1, proclaiming it far better than doomsayers predicted and emphasizing how he minimized cuts to health and human services that he once said could be as deep as 25 percent in order to bridge a $438 million budget deficit.

"It doesn’t come close to balancing on the backs of our health and human services agencies, as some had feared," Newsom told the department heads, elected supervisors, and journalists who were tightly packed into his office for the announcement event.

But there’s still plenty of pain in a city budget where the General Fund — the portion of the budget local officials can control — would be reduced by more than 11 percent, its only reduction in recent memory. And at a time when every reasonable Democrat in Sacramento has been nearly begging for tax hikes to prevent budget blood, San Francisco’s Democratic mayor proudly proclaimed that there are no new taxes in the budget.

"We didn’t raise taxes, and we didn’t borrow," he said. You can almost hear that line being repeated in the ads he’ll be running as he campaigns for governor.

Newsom proposes slashing the city’s public health budget by $128.4 million, or 8 percent (a total of 400 employees), while the human services budget would take a $15.9 million hit, or 2 percent. "That’s a lot, but by no means is it devastating," Newsom said, noting that he restored some of the deepest cuts that were the subject of alarming public hearings. "I listened to the public comments at the Board of Supervisors… Things got a lot better than the headlines and the hearings."

The proposed budget includes 1,603 full-time-equivalent layoffs, or a 5.8 reduction in the city’s workforce, trimming more than $75.5 million from the general fund budget. In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services is cutting back its workweek to 37.5 hours to further trim costs.

"The smoke hasn’t cleared yet and there’s a lot of devastation in this budget that isn’t being talked about," Sup. John Avalos, who chairs the Board of Supervisors Budget Committee, said at the event. Newsom’s budget will be analyzed and then face its first committee hearing June 17, with approval by the full board required by July 31.

"The mayor told us a lot about what’s in the budget, but not a lot about what’s not in the budget, so we’ll spend a few days figuring that out," board President David Chiu told the Guardian.

The budget was aided greatly by more than $80 million in federal stimulus funds and other one-time revenue sources (such as $10 million from the sale of city-owned energy turbines) that were used to plug this year’s gap and offset cuts by the state and depressed tax revenue.

Although Newsom doesn’t want to raise taxes, licenses and fees would go up 41 percent, increasing revenue by $64 million to $220 million. Some of those proposed fee hikes range from the cost of parking in city-owned garages to admission fees for city-owned facilities such as the Strybing Arboretum. Muni riders will also see fares hiked to $2.

There will also be deep cuts to some key city functions. The Department of Emergency Management would take a 24 percent cut under the mayor’s plan, while the Department of Building Inspection faces a 20 percent cut to expenditures and a 29 percent reduction in staff.

The Planning Department would also take a hit of about 7 percent, with most of that focused on the department’s long-range planning functions, which were slashed by 19 percent to $4.7 million.

But it’s not an entirely austere budget. The police and fire departments have status quo budgets with no layoffs. Travel expenses would increase 13.5 percent to $2.9 million and the cost of food purchased by the city would rise 127 percent to $7 million.

The Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development — which often uses public funds to subsidize private sector projects — would get a 32 percent increase, to $24.7 million.

It’s unclear how much the Mayor’s Office has shared the budget pain. During the presentation, Newsom said his office’s budget has been cut by 28 percent, but he later clarified that was spread over the five years he has been mayor. Yet even that is tough to account for given that some functions have been shuffled to other departments.

The document shows a proposed 60 percent increase in the Mayor’s Office budget, although the lion’s share of that comes from the Mayor’s Office of Housing’s one-time financial support for some long-awaited projects, including rebuilding the Hunters View housing and support services project for low-income people connected to the Central YMCA, and an apartment project on 29th Avenue for people with disabilities.

Avalos has said he will look to find money by cutting some of the highly paid policy czars and communications specialists added to the Mayor’s Office in recent years, as well as Newsom’s cherished 311 call center and the Community Justice Court he created. Supervisors are also expected to resist Newsom’s penchant for privatization. Newsom proposed to privatize seven city functions, from jail health services and security guards and city-owned facilities, and to consolidate another 14 functions between various city departments.

Newsom pledged to work with supervisors who want to change the budget, continuing the rhetoric of cooperation that he opened the budget season with in January, which supervisors say hasn’t been matched by his actions or the secretive nature of this budget. "This budget is by no means done," Newsom said. "It’s an ongoing process."

In fact, Newsom warned that the budget news could be even worse than his budget outlines. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is talking about new cuts that could total $175 million or more for San Francisco only, although Newsom only included $25 million of that in his budget because it went to the printer on May 22 and the total hit is still unclear. "So," Newsom said, "we’re by no means out of the woods."

Newsom’s no-tax budget

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June 2, 2009

1

By Tim Redmond

Steve Jones will be reporting in tomorrow’s paper about the details of Newsom’s budget proposal, and it’s going to take a few days to figure out exactly what’s in and what’s out of the budget, but the mayor has already made one point, and it’s infuriating:

He proudly announced that the budget is balanced with no borrowing and no new taxes.

Sounds like something that George W. Bush would have said.

And here’s the problem: When Newsom was negotiating the latest round of givebacks with the unions, he promised to work toward a revenue measure in November. And if he were serious about that, he could have included that projected revenue in this budget — avoiding some of the most painful cuts.

So what’s up? Is Newsom going back on the deal with SEIU — or is he just assuming that any revenue measure he puts on the ballot will fail?

Here’s what the mayor’s press secretary, Nathan Ballard, has to say:

After SEIU rejected the sensible deal that had been reached with the Mayor,
the revenue-measure talks unraveled, and so the Mayor could not in good
faith include projected revenue from a hypothetical measure in his proposed
budget.

All along we’ve said that a revenue measure would have to include support
from a broad coalition of San Franciscans, and nobody from the business
community — an essential part of any such coalition — is going to support
a revenue measure unless SEIU has already agreed to shoulder its fair share
of the city’s budget burden.

However, once SEIU votes to approve the new deal with the Mayor’s office,
it’s a whole new ball game. At that point we can convene a new series of
talks and attempt to come up with revenue measures that a broad coalition
can support. Once that happens, the budget could be adjusted accordingly.

Okay, sure — blame it on the SEIU members. But that’s not the point. First of all, it’s pretty likely the union membership will approve the latest contract offer, and Newsom knows that. More important, this isn’t about SEIU v. Newsom. It’s about the city, and the health of San Francisco and its residents. And a mayor who was serious about preserving essential services wouldn’t be waiting until the last minute, and planning to “adjust the budget” after front-line workers are laid off, programs are cut, nonprofits shut down etc. before he started talking seriously about new revenue sources.

Wine bar wars in West Portal

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June 2, 2009

5

By Cécile Lepage

If you live in West Portal, you may have recently noticed the sign in the WineStyles window at 9 West Portal: the wine shop is applying for a bar use permit. Its Conditional Use authorization hearing is scheduled for Thursday, June 4, at City Hall, and if approved, the wine retailer will be able to sell wine by the glass to its customers.

Actually, WineStyles had already been doing just that, in violation of the Planning Code, for almost a year, until the store got caught by the enforcement division. Pleading ignorance, the owners now want to come into compliance. But they’re facing opposition for locally based neighbors upset that WineStyles – part of a national chain – didn’t play by the rules.

Buy your Slayer tickets tomorrow, dude!

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June 2, 2009

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I got word of Live Nation‘s “No Service Fee Wednesdays” promotion before last weekend’s stabfest at the Shoreline Amphitheater, but what are the changes of two stabfests in one season, really? You know there’s at least one big, dumb concert you’re planning on driving to Mountain View to see anyway, so why not pick up your tickets tomorrow (Wed, June 3, starting at 12:01am) and save $10 per ticket in service fees? Note: this deal applies only to lawn tickets, so if you had your heart set on being front-row center for Nickleback, you’re SOL. Which is probably the least of your problems anyway, come to think of it. Note #2: what do those “service fees” pay for, anyway? Isn’t $31 for a concert ticket (on a semi-grassy lawn amid thousands of your rowdiest, most unwashed non-friends) enough to begin with?

Anyway, I digress. Straight from Live Nation’s press release, here are the concerts participating in tomorrow’s no-fees-for-lawn-tickets at the Shoreline “sale.” See you July 11!

Shoreline Amphitheatre / Mountain View, CA

6/6 Live 105’s BFD featuring 311, The Offspring, Yeah Yeah Yeahs & More
6/13 Great American Food & Music Festival featuring Bobby Flay
6/26 Wild 94.9 Bomb Concert featuring Sean Paul, Ice Cube, Soulja Boy & more
7/4 4th of July Fireworks Spectacular w/ The San Francisco Symphony
7/11 Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival featuring Marilyn Manson & Slayer
7/13 Coldplay
7/24 Blazed & Confused Tour featuring Slightly Stoopid & Snoop Dogg
7/25 No Doubt with Paramore
7/30 Crue Fest 2 featuring Motley Crue & Godsmack
8/1 The Fray w/ Jack’s Mannequin
8/12 Depeche Mode
8/16 Toby Keith with Trace Adkins
8/20 Vans Warped Tour
9/1 Nickelback with Hinder, Papa Roach and more
9/2 Def Leppard with Poison and Cheap Trick
9/12 The Killers

Sleep Train Pavilion / Concord, CA

7/9 New Kids On The Block with Jesse McCartney and Jabbawockeez

7/11 Love Train – The Sounds of Philadelphia featuring The O’Jays

7/21 No Doubt with Paramore

7/31 Judas Priest with Whitesnake

8/19 Bone Bash X starring Aerosmith and ZZ Top

Sleep Train Amphitheatre / Wheatland, CA

7/10 Depeche Mode at Shoreline Amphitheatre

7/14 Coldplay

7/24 No Doubt with Paramore

8/1 98 Rock Presents ROCKALOTTAPUS feat. Judas Priest, Whitesnake, Tesla and more

8/21 Vans Warped Tour

8/31 Nickelback with Hinder, Papa Roach and more

9/3 Def Leppard w/ Poison and Cheap Trick

Downtown’s missing history

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May 20, 2009

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EDITORIAL To hear the proponents of a new downtown condo complex talk, you’d think they were giving the city a wonderful deal. In exchange for an exemption from height limits that would allow a tower twice the allowable size just a few yards from the Transamerica Building, the developer would give the city a little patch of parkland that’s now privately owned. Even the city planning director, John Rahaim, seems to think the special treatment is acceptable, since none of the other buildings in the area are nearly as tall as the Pyramid, and, he told the Chronicle, "usually you cluster tall buildings together."

Of course, the usual crew of downtown boosters love the architecture (a sort of spiral design), love that it would create housing in an area that’s generally empty at night, and figure that something only about half as tall as the high-rise it’s next to can’t be all that bad.

But there’s a stunning lack of historical perspective in all this discussion.

The Transamerica Building seems like an icon today, but when it was first proposed in 1969, it met with strong opposition — not so much because of its unique design (although some prominent architecture critics thought it was hideous) but because it was way too big, too tall, and jammed into a human-scale neighborhood where all the other buildings were low-rise. It was a flash point for the anti-Manhattanization movement and rallied preservationists, environmentalists, and neighborhood advocates.

One of the central issues: in order to accommodate the new tower, the city would have to give up a block-long section of Merchant Street, an alley filled with small businesses. The controversy over the sale of that public street occupied center stage in the Transamerica battle, and in order to convince the supervisors to hand over the public property, Transamerica agreed to build a little park on the edge of the property. That’s how Redwood Park came into being — as a concession from a developer who had been given public land.

And now another developer, Andrew Segal, is offering to give the park back — again, as mitigation for a project that’s too big for the site. So the city, in exchange for approving a bad project, winds up with land it would have had anyway if it hadn’t accepted a different bad project four decades ago.

And there’s been very little attention paid to the historic reasons why this project would need special exemptions from two city laws to move forward. In the mid-1980s, with Dianne Feinstein in the mayor’s office, the city was getting choked with tall, bulky — and frankly, nasty-looking — high-rises that were turning downtown and South of Market into dark, windy, dismal canyons. After long debate, many public hearings, and extensive discussion, the voters approved two measures aimed at limiting the impact of overdevelopment. One of them, Proposition K, barred new buildings from casting shadows on public parks. The other, Proposition M, limited high-rise office development and mandated the preservation of neighborhood character. At the same time, the height limits in that area — on the edge of Jackson Square and North Beach — were reduced, again after many hearings and much debate. The idea was that downtown’s skyscrapers shouldn’t be intruding northward.

Let’s remember: this won’t be affordable housing. The new condos will be priced at the top of the market (clearly the developer thinks the housing market is coming back in San Francisco). And while environmentalists like the idea of building housing near jobs, very few of the new condos that have gone up downtown have provided housing for San Franciscans. Most are owned either by empty-nesters returning from the suburbs, Silicon Valley commuters, or international jet-setters seeking a SF pied-à-terre.

So there are very good reasons for planners and the supervisors to reject this project — and for the city not to forget that the rules that make this deal unappealing were neither random nor a mistake. There’s history here, and once you understand it, the project makes very little sense. * *

Sachs: Peace Through Development

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May 20, 2009

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Here is an installment from Jeffrey D. Sachs’ monthly commentary: Economics and Justice available exclusively on the Project Syndicate news series. Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also a Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals.

Peace Through Development

By Jeffrey D. Sachs

New York – American foreign policy has failed in recent years mainly because the United States relied on military force to address problems that demand development assistance and diplomacy. Young men become fighters in places like Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, and Afghanistan because they lack gainful employment. Extreme ideologies influence people when they can’t feed their families, and when lack of access to family planning leads to an unwanted population explosion. President Barack Obama has raised hopes for a new strategy, but so far the forces of continuity in US policy are dominating the forces of change.

Editorial: Downtown’s missing history

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May 19, 2009

1

Reject the new condo tower project next to the Transamerica Building. It’s too big, the city would have to give up a block long section of Merchant Street, an alley filled with small businesses, and it passes over a key bit of Manhattanization history.

EDITORIAL To hear the proponents of a new downtown condo complex talk, you’d think they were giving the city a wonderful deal. In exchange for an exemption from height limits that would allow a tower twice the allowable size just a few yards from the Transamerica Building, the developer would give the city a little patch of parkland that’s now privately owned. Even the city planning director, John Rahaim, seems to think the special treatment is acceptable, since none of the other buildings in the area are nearly as tall as the Pyramid, and, he told the Chronicle, “usually you cluster tall buildings together.”

Of course, the usual crew of downtown boosters love the architecture (a sort of spiral design), love that it would create housing in an area that’s generally empty at night, and figure that something only about half as tall as the high-rise it’s next to can’t be all that bad.

But there’s a stunning lack of historical perspective in all this discussion.