Planning

George Bush doesn’t read the Guardian. Often.

0

Alas. Alas. (B3, disheartened by the news)

Posted Tuesday, Nov. l7th, on the website of the Guardian of London

From Guardian Unlimited: News blog 12:15pm

Here at the Guardian we have long suspected it. But today comes official confirmation: George Bush doesn’t read the Guardian often. During a press conference with the Australian PM, John Howard, in Hanoi today, Mr Bush was asked about the report in yesterday’s Guardian that he was planning a final push in Iraq involving an additional 30,000 troops.

“Is that something…,” began a reporter.

“Where was that report?” asked Mr Bush.

“In the Guardian newspaper,” the journalist replied.

“Guardian newspaper? Well, I don’t read that paper often. But I – look, I’m going to listen to our commanders, Steve. Ours is a condition-based strategy […] So I’m not aware of the Guardian article.”

Of course, the president may well have been thinking of the San Francisco Bay Guardian, a publication which also takes a sceptical editorial line on his policies. Who knows? But in the unlikely event you’re reading this, Mr President, Guardian Weekly has a four-week free trial on. Just say the word.

The devil in the metadata

0

The Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors is considering whether or not the city should allow its departments to release electronic documents that include metadata. Although the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force has already hashed over the minutiae of this issue and ruled that metadata can and should be released, the mystery enshrouding what it is, and the lack of any specific policy or known precedent in other cities or states with public records laws has pushed the discussion upstream to where a formal legislation has become a possibility.
Freedom of information purists are saying all the parts and pieces of a document are part of the public domain, while the City Attorney’s Office is claiming another layer of protection may be required.
Metadata entered the realm of public discussion in San Francisco after citizens started making requests of electronic documents with a specific plea for metadata. Activists Allen Grossman and Kimo Crossman wanted copies of, ironically enough, the city’s Sunshine Ordinance, in its original Microsoft Word format. Grossman and Crossman wanted to use the advantages of technology to follow the evolving amendments the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force members were considering for the city’s public records law. These “tracked changes” are a common function in Word, and are, technically, metadata.
When Clerk of the Board Gloria Young received these specific requests for Word documents, not knowing what this “metadata” was or what to do about it, she turned to the office of City Attorney Dennis Herrera for advice.
Deputy City Attorney Paul Zarefsky initially gave oral advice to Young, and when pressed by the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force, issued a five-page memo in response, arguing that release of documents with metadata could pave a path for hackers into the city’s computer system, render documents dangerously vulnerable to cut-and-paste manipulation, and invite another unwelcome burden of reviewing and redacting for city officials. Young followed his advice and proffered the requested documents as PDFs.
A PDF, or “portable document format,” is essentially a photograph of the real thing, and contains none of the metadata that exists a couple clicks of the mouse away in a Word document. Evolving changes can’t be tracked, and PDFs don’t have the same searchability that Word docs have. So PDFs of the Sunshine Ordinance that Young provided didn’t have the functions that Crossman and Grossman were looking for, and were utterly useless for their purposes.
“It’s 92 pages,” Grossman said of the PDF Sunshine Ordinance. “I can’t search it electronically if I want to find something. This document I received is of no use to me.”

Meta-what?
Before delving too deep into the intricacies of current city politics, let’s pause for a moment to note that you don’t need to be a Luddite to have no idea what metadata is. It sounds like some diminutive or ethereal version of the real thing. In a sense, it is.
Simply put, metadata is data about data, and grows with weed-like tenacity in the electronic flora of the twenty-first century. Common examples include the track an email took from an outbox to an inbox, details about the owner of a computer program, or the laptop on which a Word document has been typed.
Metadata becomes cause for concern when there is something to hide. Not readily visible, metadata requires a little sleuthing to reveal, but in the past it’s been used to uncover deeper truths about a situation. For example, attorney Jim Calloway relates on his Law Practice Tips blog a divorce case where custody of the child was called into question because of the content of emails sent from the mother to the father. The mother denied she’d sent the emails, though the father vehemently insisted she had. A court forensics investigation found metadata showing that, in reality, the father had written the emails and sent them to himself.
“Metadata speaks the truth,” Calloway writes. “My position has always been that a tool is a tool. Whether a tool is used for good or evil is the responsibility of the one who uses the tool.”
Lawyers have historically advised that metadata be fiercely protected. Jembaa Cole, in the Shidler Journal for Law, Commerce and Technology wrote, “There have been several instances in which seemingly innocuous metadata has wreaked professional and political havoc.”
Cole goes on to cite a gaffe from Tony Blair’s administration – a document about weapons of mass destruction was available on the government’s web site, which claimed the information was original and current. Metadata showed that, not only had the information been plagiarized from a student thesis, it was more than ten years old.
Cole urges lawyers to take an aggressive tack against revealing metadata, by educating offices about its existence, making a practice of “scrubbing” it from documents, and providing “clean” documents in PDF or paper form.
The city attorney’s office has taken a similar stance. Spokesperson Matt Dorsey told us metadata has been a part of the continuing education of the city attorney’s office. However, all past case law of which they are aware focuses on metadata in the context of discovery and “the conclusion of most state bars is that they have the obligation, under attorney-client privilege, to review metadata prior to discovery,” he said. “The issue of metadata is a relatively new one in legal circuits. It isn’t a brand new issue to us, but it is in the context of Sunshine,” said Dorsey, who maintains that metadata could still fall within the standard redaction policies of the public records act.
Terry Franke, who runs the open-government group Californian Aware, argues that “the city attorney needs to complete this sentence: ‘Allowing the public to see metadata in Word documents would be a detriment because…’ What?”
“From the beginning of this discussion the city attorney has never provided a plausible, practical, understandable explanation of what is the kind and degree of harm in allowing metadata to be examined that justifies stripping it out,” Francke said.

To the task force
When Grossman and Crossman were denied the documents as they’d requested them, they filed complaints with the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force. In their cases, first heard on Sep. 26, they argued there should be no concern that the text of Word documents could be manipulated – anybody with a gluestick and a pair of scissors could do that to any piece of paper. That had been a consideration when the Sunshine Ordinance was drafted, and why the city always retains the undisputable original.
Thomas Newton, of the California Newspapers and Publishers Alliance, who was involved in drafting the state’s public records law, agreed with them. “If you follow his logic, you can’t release a copy of any public record because, oh my God, someone might change it,” Newton told us.
Crossman and Grossman also pointed out that to convert documents from Word to PDF invites even more work to a task that should be as burden-free as possible. It’s a regular practice for the clerk of the board to maintain documents as PDFs because that preserves signatures and seals of ratified legislation, but to make it a policy of all departments could invite a landslide of work, printing out documents and converting them to PDFs – not to mention undermining the notion of conserving paper.
Also, translation software and the “screen reader” feature that a blind person might employ to “read” an electronic document, don’t work with PDFs.
First amendment lawyers also offered written opinions on the issue. “Some of the city’s arguments have no support in the law whatsoever,” wrote Francke. “The fundamental problem for the city is that it has no authority to legislate a new general exception of exemption from the CPRA (California Public Records Act), and that’s what’s being advanced here.”
“The city’s scofflaw position represents the status quo ante, the old law that used to allow an agency to provide a copy of computer data ‘in a form determined by the agency.’ The city’s position has been directly and completely repudiated by the legislature. If the city disagrees with the law, it should come to Sacramento and get a bill,” wrote Thomas Newton, general counsel for the California Newspaper Publishers Association (CNPA).
As for the hacker scare, Zac Multrux, an independent technology consultant was invited to the Sep. 26 hearing by task force member Bruce Wolfe to speak about the dangers of metadata. He suggested a number of technological tools that are available for purchase or are free online, that will “scrub” metadata from documents. He said that while it’s true that someone with ill intent could mess with metadata, “I think someone would need a whole lot more than the name of a computer” to hack into the city’s system. “Personally, I don’t see it as a significant security risk,” he said.
It was also pointed out at the hearing that a variety of city, state, and federal departments already make Word and Excel documents available. Wolfe did a quick online search and found more than 96,000 Word documents on the State of California web site. “They’re not afraid to make Word documents public online,” he said.
Over the course of two hearings the task force found no basis for Zarefsky’s claims in either the city’s law or the California Public Records Act – both of which explicitly state a document should be released in whatever format is requested, as long as the document is regularly stored in that format or does not require any additional work to provide.
The task force found Young in violation of the ordinance and she was told to make the documents available in Word format. No restrictions or rulings were made for future requests, but task force member Sue Cauthen said, “I think this whole case is a test case for how the city provides documents electronically.”

What’s next?
As requested, Young had the Sunshine Ordinance, in Word format, pulled from the city’s files and posted on a separate server outside of the city’s system to be viewed. Crossman, noting the added labor and resources for that provision, wondered if that would happen to all public records requested in Word format, so he cooked up another request to test his theory.
He asked for all the pending and accepted legislation for the month of September from the Board of Supervisors, in Word format.
While the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force had found that withholding documents because of metadata was against the law, redaction of privileged information is still legally necessary, and Young continued to follow the city attorney’s advice that a PDF with no metadata was still the safest, easiest way to comply. She told us, “I don’t take their advice lightly.”
Zarefsky’s opinion said departments “may” provide PDFs instead of Word documents and that “metadata may include a wide variety of information that the City has a right — and, in some cases a legal duty — to redact. Young’s office does have pending legislation in Word format, she says it does not fall within the expertise of her staff to review and redact the metadata in those documents because they didn’t author them. “Since we don’t create the documents, how could we ever know whether the metadata should be released? We don’t know what it is,” she told us. “We couldn’t even hire expertise that would know.”
“I can’t imagine there’s so much toxic stuff in Board of Supervisors records they can’t let out,” Grossman told us. “This is a whole mystery to me.”
“It’s just data,” says Crossman. “City employees created it on our dime. Unless it falls under redaction discretion, entire documents should be provided.”
Young took the issue to the legislators who do draft the legislation, asking the November 2 meeting of the Rules Committee for further policy consideration. Miriam Morley spoke on behalf of the city attorney’s office, and said there was a sound legal basis for providing documents as PDFs, but that this was an evolving area of the law that the city attorney’s office wasn’t aware of until about 9 months ago. They could find no other cities currently grappling with the issue, but she said, “Our conclusion is that a court would likely hold a right to withhold a document in Word.”
The committee decided to research the issue further before making a ruling. Committee chair Ross Mirkarimi said he had been integral to the drafting of the Sunshine ordinance, and to rush a decision could be detrimental.
“It seems to me in the spirit of the Sunshine law this is something we should really look at,” Tom Ammiano said. It’s currently at the call of the Chair of Rules and no date has been set for the Rules Committee to hear it again.
A policy in San Francisco could set a real precedent for public records law, but according to many first amendment lawyers, for the Board to do so would be a violation of state law. “I know of no other city, county, or subdivision of state government or state agency that’s disregarding the clear intention of the law as some elements of San Francisco city and county government are planning to do,” Newton told us.
“It’s a debate that can’t really occur outside of a proposal to change the state law,” he said. “The Board of Supervisors can’t pick and choose which law to comply with,” and he said the state’s constitution and public records act trumps the city, which is reading the law too narrowly. “They’re required to give a broad interpretation of this access law. If they don’t like it they should come to Sacramento and get a bill,” he said.
“I think a lot of city departments, and policy and advisory bodies can save themselves a lot of headaches by declaring as policy that they will provide documents in their original formats,” task force member Richard Knee said. “With metadata.”

Newsom fights veto override

0

By Sarah Phelan

With the Board of Supervisors set to vote Tuesday on the mayor veto of Sup. Ross Mirkarimi’s foot-patrol legislation, the mayor ‘s office has reportedly gone into overdrive to try to ensure his veto will hold .

The math is tough for Mayor Gavin Newsom: Supes Mirkarimi, Chris Daly, Tom Ammiano and Gerardo Sandoval are solidly behind the legislation. That’s four votes. Bevan Dufty, Sophie Maxwell and Fiona Ma all voted for it the first time around, when it passed 7-3, and all have spoken loudly in support of getting the cops out of their cars and into the neighborhoods. Jake McGoldrick was out of town for the vote, but he tells us he’ll side with the majority – which adds up to eight votes, enough to sustain a veto and deal the mayor an embarrassing political setback.

So Newsom is trying hard to get one of the eight to switch sides. Among the plays: Chief Heather Fong held a hastily arranged press conference Monday to announce her own, slightly watered-down foot-patrol plan, in a clear effort to undercut the supes. And we’re told that Senator Dianne Feinstein has been calling board members to lobby against the plan.

McGoldrick and Maxwell both told us that they were planning to vote to override the mayor’s veto, and chided Feinstein for getting involved. “If Feinstein wants to be mayor, she oughta run,” he said.

As for the police’s hastily announced foot patrol plan, Maxwell said, maybe it would be fine, but it was coming too late for her to backpedal.

“The mayor and Heather Fong had ample time. Why did we even get to this point? Because we’ve been asking and asking and finally we came up with legislation. The police have promised things before and didn’t do anything, so this isn’t the time for me to be backpedaling.”

Reached Friday Nov. 10, Dufty told the Guardian that he’s “always supported foot patrols” and has “no confidence” in Fong. But three days later, when Fong was promoting her alternative, all Dufty would say about his vote was, “no comment”

The wildest rumor had Newsom offering to fire Fong if some of the supes would back away from the veto override. The Mayor’s spokesperson, Peter Ragone insisted to us that “There’s no truth to that.” Then his line mysteriously went dead.

So who else could be the swing vote the mayor needs to keep his vanity intact?

Well, on Oct. 24, when the bill was approved, Sean Elsbernd, Michela Alioto-Pier, along with BOS chair Aaron Peskin voted against it.

Elsbernd and Alioto-Pier are known to be solidly in the mayor’s court. But what about Peskin?

Reached Monday night, Peskin wasn’t about to give up his voting plans, but he did say that he found it disingenuous of the mayor to veto the measure on the grounds that the board shouldn’t tell a paramilitary organization what to do, then turn around and say that he, the mayor, was planning to go ahead with foot patrols anyway.

Either way, Tuesday’s 2 pm board meeting will be worth watching.

As Sup. Mirkarimi told the Guardian, “People have told me that the police’s press conference was surreal, strange and desperate. The only reason we’re even in this position is because of an absence of leadership on the part of the chief of police and the mayor. And now they have the audacity to say that their plan is better than ours.
Public safety should never be compromised because of the Mayor’s vanity and the chief’s inaction. It’s an unreal, practically juvenile situation.”

The SFPD will not reform itself

0

EDITORIAL Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has vetoed legislation requiring a few police officers to actually walk beats in high-crime neighborhoods, says he was proud of the San Francisco Police Department’s action in the Castro on Halloween night. Proud? Some 800 cops were on hand, and yet someone managed to bring in a gun, shoot nine people — and get away. As we report on page 11, a lot of cops weren’t really doing much for most of the night except standing around; foot patrols (that is, cops actually mingling with the revelers, keeping an eye on things) might have prevented the shootings.
The SFPD is a mess — and the department isn’t going to reform itself. The mayor ought to be in the forefront on this, but he’s ducking — so the supervisors need to step up.
The foot patrol legislation, sponsored by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, is hardly radical and isn’t a threat to the department’s independence. The bill simply directs the department to put a few cops on the beat, out of their cars, in a few high-crime areas. It passed 7–3, with only Sups. Aaron Peskin, Sean Elsbernd, and Michela Alioto-Pier dissenting, and Sup. Jake McGoldrick absent. If that vote holds and McGoldrick sticks with the majority, the supervisors can override the veto.
But there’s immense pressure coming down on individual supervisors to change their votes, and even one member slipping away would allow Newsom’s position to hold. That’s unacceptable: every supervisor who approved foot patrols needs to vote to override the veto — and just to be sure, Peskin, who is generally good on these issues, needs to come over to the progressive side. This one modest mandate could be not only a lifesaver in areas with high homicide rates but also the beginning of some real change at the SFPD.
The Police Commission is struggling with a disciplinary issue that’s also potentially a turning point: three commissioners — David Campos, Petra de Jesus, and Theresa Sparks — want to refuse to settle any disciplinary cases unless the cops agree to make the settlement public (see Opinion, page 7). Commissioner Joe Veronese initially agreed with that proposal but has shifted his position and is offering a really weak alternative instead. That’s a bad sign for the politically ambitious commissioner; he needs to show some spine, defy the Police Officers Association, and sign on with the Campos plan.
This just in: Bill Lee, who works for Mayor Newsom and (sort of) for the airport, is up for reappointment as a planning commissioner at the Rules Committee on Nov. 9. It’s a clear conflict of interest: a city employee working directly for the mayor shouldn’t be on the Planning Commission. Besides, he’s been a pretty bad vote. The supervisors should send him packing. SFBG

Preparing for scary

0

› sarah@sfbg.com
Nine people were shot during this year’s big Halloween celebration in the Castro, prompting city officials to announce the convening of a task force that will examine the event and its future in San Francisco. Supporters and event planners say such early attention is crucial for a gathering of this magnitude — and that the lack of proper planning contributed to this year’s problems.
Concerns that the event has gotten out of control prompted some Castro residents and Sup. Bevan Dufty to announce in July that they wanted the event cancelled, moved, or drastically scaled back. Instead, the plan was hatched to increase the police presence by 25 percent, adopt a zero tolerance policy for public drinking and other crimes, and end the event at 10:30 p.m., which they announced just days before Halloween.
More than 100,000 people showed up anyway, passing big groups of police clumped at the edges of the event but rarely undergoing even cursory searches for weapons and other contraband as they entered the cordoned area. Just after the music was turned off at the one stage (down from three last year) and police announced, “The party is over,” a conflict between two San Francisco gangs escalated, with someone being hit by a bottle and then someone pulling out a gun and opening fire in retaliation. There were no fatalities, and the shooter escaped.
Other than that one incident, which most attendees weren’t aware of until the next day, the event was pretty tame. More striking and upsetting to most who came was the fact that the event ended just as its numbers were peaking and that the end was reinforced at 11 p.m. by water trucks and street sweepers that cleared the still-large crowd.
Mayor Gavin Newsom seemed to acknowledge the lack of preparation when he told KRON-TV, “We’re not going to wait until the last few months before the event. We’re going to start planning right away.” Nonetheless, both Newsom and Dufty praised the police and the planning efforts, with the mayor telling the Chronicle, “We’d done everything we could imagine doing.”
Yet critics say that if that’s the best city officials can do, we’re in no shape to host other large events, such as the 2016 Summer Olympics, which Newsom is bidding for.
“If San Francisco wants to host the Olympics, it can’t go around telling the world that it can’t keep a party under control one night a year,” Ted Strawser of the SF Party Party told the Guardian. “Halloween is like gay Christmas. It’s a travesty to talk about canceling it.”
Other cities seem to be up to the task. Take New York’s Village Halloween Parade. Twenty-five years ago, when its crowds first topped the 100,000 mark, New York celebration artist Jeanne Fleming began working closely with local residents, schools, community centers, and the police to maintain “a grassroots feel and prepare for future growth.”
Today, the New York Village Halloween Parade is the biggest in the world, a fact organizers actively advertise on their Web site to attract sponsors and fill the city’s coffers with $80 million worth of tourists’ money annually, thanks to two million spectators and 60,000 parade participants.
And while Newsom, Dufty, Police Chief Heather Fong, Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White, and Sheriff Michael Hennessey deliberate whether the party should continue and how to make it securer if it does, the NYPD hails the Village parade as a valuable public service that makes Halloween safe for New Yorkers.
“Maybe the SFPD needs to talk to the NYPD,” Fleming told the Guardian, noting that the Village parade has changed routes four times over the years in response to merchants’ fears and neighborhood concerns without losing its original identity. “Instead of putting up walls, San Francisco needs to open up its mind.”
That’s what Alix Rosenthal (the domestic partner of Guardian city editor Steven T. Jones) had been urging during her campaign against Dufty for his seat on the Board of Supervisors.
“Bevan Dufty has accused me of playing politics with Halloween, but he should have started working on this plan at least six months ago,” Rosenthal said at a day-after press conference. She believes that more entry points, entrance fees (with higher fees for uncostumed attendees), and a parade leading away from the Castro would be helpful. “Getting out the word that there are going to be changes has to be a huge PR effort.”
Paul Wertheimer of LA-based Crowd Management Strategies told the Guardian that talk of canceling the event is “an understandable reaction if you know you can’t do it right.”
“Organizers often fail to recognize the changing demographics and popularity of events,” Wertheimer said, pointing to the success of New Orleans in managing its Mardi Gras parades despite narrow streets and huge crowds. “You can’t have a hippie, anything-goes mentality. Once an event gets bigger than 3,000 to 5,000 people, it has to be organized and planned with the proper resources, but it can be done, because the techniques and plans are already laid out.”
Wertheimer hopes the SF Halloween task force will assess what worked and what didn’t, take a break, then begin planning no later than six months out. “And merchants’ issues have to be addressed. Merchants are always concerned, but if they can be shown ways they can benefit and be protected from vandalism, they’ll be for it.”
Or as Strawser put it, “We need to put the dollars into better management, not police overtime. Former mayor Willie Brown learned that lesson in 1997 when he tried to cancel Critical Mass. We’re a city that handles the Love Parade, Gay Pride, and Bay to Breakers. To cancel what began as a gay event because of fear of gay bashers and violence would be to give in to the terrorists.” SFBG

Black Ops

1

By Steven T. Jones
Re-reading the article I linked to in my last post reminded me to remind y’all about an event from earlier this year that goes to the heart of Rob Black’s close ties to downtown developers and why he can’t be trusted. In the incident described in this article, Black was the Alioto-Pier board aide who worked with those five developer attorneys to craft legislation designed to kill the downtown parking limitations sought by livable city advocates and Planning Director Dean Macris, all at the demand of Don Fisher, the Republican who founded the Gap and uses his money to bankroll SFSOS and the attacks on Chris Daly. My article doesn’t mention Black by name, but I have the e-mails in which he discusses the legislation and its wording with these developer attorneys. And if you want to hear Rob Black fumble to address the issue, listen to his endorsement interview here.

Cancelling Halloween is like killing Gay Christmas

0

By Sarah Phelan

Is San Francisco going to let a handful of gang bangers shut down Halloween?
Er, wouldn’t that be like “letting the terrorists win,” to quote our not so favorite president.
And how can San Francisco seriously expect to win the Olympic bid if the city spends the next week blabbing on about how we don’t know how to control a large crowd or successfully manage a parade?
Because a parade could have turned Halloween 2006 into a peaceful success, instead of a violent disaster.
Instead, Sup. Bevan Dufty’s last-minute effort to reap political mileage out of the ‘law and order” theme seriously backfired when things turned nasty the MINUTE THE POLICE ANNOUNCED THE PARTY WAS ENDING EARLY.
Wiith meaningful planning, beginning NOW, the community can figure out cool ways to keep Halloween alive.
As District 8 supervisorial challenger Alix Rosenthal told the press, the city’s security and safety preparation “was badly conceived, badly executed–and preventable. We should spend at least 6 months planning this. Instead Dufty waited until the end of July to start doing anything and the city says, ‘We did our best.’ It’s time for new leadership.”

The risk of honest planning

0

OPINION At the Nov. 1 meeting of the land use committee of the Board of Supervisors, a seemingly straightforward statement of policy will be heard. It simply requires that the city apply its own General Plan guidelines to future development in the eastern neighborhoods.
But the legislation, proposed by Supervisors Sophie Maxwell, Jake McGoldrick, Aaron Peskin, and Tom Ammiano, is creating quite a furor. A senior planning official has testified that if it’s adopted, the entire development boom in the eastern neighborhoods may be halted. The mayor has threatened a veto.
The policy in question calls for city planners to show how they intend to ensure that 64 percent of all new housing development is affordable to moderate-, low-, and very low-income San Franciscans. That’s what the housing element of the master plan says is needed.
Land use development policy lies at the very heart of San Francisco politics. It’s dangerous work for supervisors to attempt to determine that policy, especially if it calls for protection of existing neighborhoods and their residents.
Just ask Supervisor Chris Daly.
Don’t for a minute believe that he is in the fight of his political life because he’s rude, because he doesn’t care about law and order, or because he prefers dirty streets upon which to raise his son. These petty and silly charges mask a far more serious objection: the way his opponents see it, Daly has been too slow in adopting the massive wave of market-rate housing slated for his district and is far too protective of lower-income residents in District 6.
Never mind that since Daly took office some 3,000 units of housing have been built in the South of Market portion of his district alone or that an equal amount wait in the pipeline at the Planning Department. Mayor Gavin Newsom and his market-rate developer allies are simply not satisfied with Daly’s pro–housing development approach — because Daly has sought some balance in that development.
Likewise, the Maxwell resolution calls for plans that will be balanced, contain sustainable development policies, and guarantee a voice for residents against the headlong drive of the current administration to convert the eastern neighborhoods (South of Market, Potrero Hill, the Mission District) into vertical gated communities for Silicon Valley commuters. It states that it shall be the policy of the city that future plans explain not only how they will meet the affordability goals of the housing element but also how they will meet policies of preserving the arts and other productive activities; providing for public transit, pedestrian, and bike rider needs; protecting employment opportunities for current and future residents; and keeping families with children in the city.
There’s a working majority of the Board of Supervisors willing to fight for current neighborhoods and residents and a future that includes them. The battle in District 6 shows that the fight is not without risk. Do the rest of us realize it? SFBG
Calvin Welch
Calvin Welch is a community organizer in San Francisco.

The Destroy California Initiative

0

› sarah@sfbg.com
If you knew there was an initiative on the ballot that would make it impossible for government to protect the environment, build affordable housing, raise minimum wages, and mandate health care, you’d vote no on it, right?
Especially if you knew this measure would force taxpayers to spend billions to prevent developers and private property owners from doing things that harm neighborhoods, communities, and the environment.
So why is Proposition 90, which does all this and more, still leading in the polls?
It’s all about fear — and the ability of one wealthy real estate investor from New York City to fund a misleading campaign that exploits legitimate concerns about eminent domain.
Eminent domain is the legal procedure that allows the government to take over private property. It’s been used traditionally to build roads, rail lines, schools, hospitals, and the like. But it’s also been used — abused, many would say — to condemn private homes and turn the land over to developers for more lucrative projects. And after the US Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that doing so was OK, it was easy for property-rights types to whip those fears into a frenzy.
New York Libertarian and real estate investor Howie Rich, who hates government regulation, used the court decision to saddle up a herd of Trojan horses with eminent domain, stuffing the poison pills of “highest best use” and “regulatory takings” deep in their saddlebags, slapping their rumps with wads of cash, and sending them into California, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oklahoma, and Washington.
Here in California, Rich’s millions went in large part toward paying petitioners a buck per signature to qualify Prop. 90 for the ballot. The pitch was stopping eminent domain — but there was little mention of the extreme provisions contained within the measure’s fine print that if passed, will mean more lawyers and fewer herons and hard hats.
For starters Prop. 90 changes the rules for calcuutf8g how much the government has to pay property owners when it takes their land. The new rules would dramatically increase the price of infrastructure and public works projects like building roads and levees, as well as purchasing open space and preserving habitats and endangered species.
Worse, Prop. 90’s language changes the valuation of regulatory takings. That’s legal mumbo jumbo, but what it amounts to is this: whenever the government takes actions that aren’t explicitly for the protection of people’s health and safety — like establishing rent control, minimum wages, and agricultural easements — property owners can claim that the value of their holdings was decreased. (Protecting an endangered species, for example, might prevent some parcels from being developed.) Under Prop. 90 those landowners can file claims of “substantial economic loss” — and put the taxpayers on the hook for billions (see “Proposition 90 Isn’t about Eminent Domain,” page 22).
THE ICE AGE COMETH
Prop. 90 opponents predict that if the measure passes, its effects will be disastrous, wide-ranging, and immediate.
Bill Allayaud, state legislative director for the Sierra Club, told us it was Prop. 90’s “regulatory takings” clause that led to unprecedented opposition after individuals and groups analyzed the measure’s fine print.
“One little paragraph activated a coalition like we’ve never seen in California history,” Allayaud says.
Prop. 90 flushes away a century of land use and community planning, including regulations and ordinances that protect coastal access, preserve historic buildings, limit the use of private airspace, establish inclusionary housing, and save parks. In short, Prop. 90 destroys everything that makes California a decent place to live.
Over at the California Coastal Commission, executive director Peter Douglas frets that his agency will no longer be able to carry out its mandate to protect the coast.
“Every decision the Coastal Commission makes where we approve projects but impose conditions to protect neighborhoods and communities will be subject to claims,” Douglas says.
“Sensitive environments like the San Francisco Bay and Lake Tahoe will be exposed, along with residential neighborhoods, ag lands, and public parklands. And it will erode the state’s ability to protect against new offshore oil drilling, new liquid natural gas terminals, harmful ocean energy projects like offshore wind turbines and wave energy machines and make it impossible to set aside essential marine reserves to restore marine life and fisheries.”
Members of the California Chamber of Commerce oppose Prop. 90 because it will make it more complicated and costly to build new infrastructure like freeway lanes, sewer lines, levees, and utility sites.
President Allan Zaremberg observes, “At a time when California is trying to finally address the huge backlog of needed roads, schools, and flood protection–water delivery systems, the massive new costs of Prop. 90 would destroy our efforts to improve infrastructure.”
Among government agencies the outlook is equally bleak. Unlike Oregon’s Measure 37, which passed in 2004 and has already led to over $5 billion in claims, Prop. 90 isn’t limited to private land but extends to private economic interests. This wide-ranging scope means that it’ll be almost impossible for government to regulate business without facing claims of “substantial economic loss,” making it prohibitive to protect consumers, establish mandatory health care coverage, or raise minimum wages.
San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera told the Guardian, “If Prop. 90 passes, we might as well get out of the business of local government.”
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Asked what California would look like if Prop. 90 had been law for a decade, Gary Patton, executive director of the Planning and Conservation League, paints a sprawl-filled picture.
“All the project proposals that weren’t built would have been, open space and parks wouldn’t have been preserved, almost every public works project would have been affected, and things wouldn’t have been constructed, because there would have been no money because the cost of everything would have gone up.”
Currently, the cost of a piece of land is valued by the market. Under Prop. 90 land would be valued by what it might be used for.
“For instance, a piece of land alongside a highway could one day be developed into a subdivision,” Patton explains. “So that’s the price it would have to be bought at. So unless taxes are raised, Prop. 90’s passage would mean that California would be able to do less. Traffic would be worse. The affordable housing crisis would intensify. Fewer swimming pools and civic centers would be built. Everything that’s done through spending dollars collectively would cost more.”
Within the Bay Area individual communities have chosen to adopt urban growth boundaries, but if Prop. 90 was already in place, Patton says, many environmental and community protection projects wouldn’t have happened.
“Where now we have more focused growth, which is economically and socially as well as environmentally beneficial, there’d be lots more sprawl,” Patton explains. “We’d be a lot more like Fresno and Bakersfield and San Bernardino and Los Angeles. The Bay Area is a place where more people have got together and made sure their communities did things that have been beneficial.”
As for restoring Golden Gate’s Crissy Field or the South Bay Salt Ponds or preserving bird and wildlife sanctuaries, forget about it.
“We’d be more like Houston. Prop. 90 says unless you can pay me for not developing this land, then one day I’m gonna be able to develop it,” Patton says.
A LAWYER’S WET DREAM
Mary Ann O’Malley, a fiscal and policy analyst at the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office, helped write the legislative analysis for Prop. 90 and as such is familiar with the measure’s far-reaching but more obscure provisions.
“Governments will be required to sell land back to its original owner if they stop using the land for the purpose stated when it took the property in the first place,” O’Malley explains. “And government won’t be able to condemn property to build on another property for the purpose of increasing local government’s tax revenues, but it could do so to build roads and schools.”
As for how the “regulatory takings” section of Prop. 90 affects government’s ability to protect the environment, O’Malley says local governments frequently impose case by case mitigation requirements to uphold the Endangered Species Act, telling a developer where it can build.
“If this is simply an enforcement procedure required by the Endangered Species Act, then it probably would not be viewed as a compensatory act, but if it’s an independent local project decision, it might fall within Prop. 90’s purview.”
Although Prop. 90 supporters say it won’t affect existing laws, Douglas says it’s simplistic to believe that current zoning won’t be superceded.
“Zoning plans aren’t exclusive. They may allow ancillary uses with government’s approval. For instance, you can build additional housing and wineries on ag land, but sometimes these uses are totally incompatible with the area. At which point local government steps in and says, ‘Oh no you don’t.’ But under Prop. 90 government is vulnerable to claims.
“Taxpayers are gonna be stuck with a multibillion-dollar bill. It should be called the ‘Destroy California Initiative.’” SFBG
Read about the Proposition 90 money trail and the truth behind the campaign’s stories at www.sfbg.com.

Proposition 90 isn’t about eminent domain

0

Here are some of the things that could be impacted if Proposition 90 passes: NEIGHBORHOOD PLANNING Developers could argue against providing additional community benefits, which are often mandated when increased building height or density is allowed. New zoning restrictions would be hit hard. LOCAL LAWS If Prop. 90 passes, it amends the state’s constitution — and virtually nullifies a number of local antisprawl and smart-growth measures also on the November ballot. In San Francisco the formula retail ordinance (Proposition G) and the tenant relocation ordinance (Proposition H) could create costly litigation. ELLIS ACT Prop. 90 does not affect statutes, ordinances, and measures that already exist, but new tenant protection would be rendered moot. “Any amendment to our law that would cost the city money would be affected by Prop. 90,” said Delene Wolf of the Rent Board. PUBLIC POWER Prop. 90 doesn’t lend any help to municipalities looking to control their own utilities. If San Francisco were to kick out Pacific Gas and Electric and take over the utility’s distribution infrastructure, the corporation could tack millions of additional dollars onto the city’s bill by arguing a loss of future revenue from the seizure. MANDATORY HEALTH COVERAGE San Francisco passed its landmark universal health care plan earlier this year. But with the plan set to be introduced in stages, there’s uncertainty as to whether it will leave the city open to claims of “substantial economic loss” from small businesses opposed to its passage. HISTORIC PRESERVATION St. Brigid Catholic Church in San Francisco is owned by the Academy of Art Institute, which recently petitioned the Board of Supervisors to have national landmark status removed from the 100-year-old building — allowing for a drastic altering of its Romanesque facade. The board denied the request this past October. Under Prop. 90 the Academy of Art could sue the city for the cost of adhering to these guidelines or for the profit lost for what it would have used the building for if allowed to change it. (Amanda Witherell and Sarah Phelan)

Still dizzy

0

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
About what you said about infatuation — isn’t it possible to be head over heels in love with someone and also have caring and mutual support? What would preclude it? I am not talking about commitment — there are lots of “committed” couples out there who don’t care at all and take each other for granted, as well as couples in the starry-eyed stage (I hope) who care for each other deeply. Caring should happen soon, otherwise it’s a crappy relationship, in my humble opinion.
Love,
Starry but Supportive
Dear Support:
There’s such a thing as spaghetti sauce, right? It’s made of tomatoes, onions, garlic, olive oil, and probably some oregano or something, but regardless — the existence of spaghetti sauce does not negate the existence of tomatoes, onions, garlic, and so on. Each still has its individual reality; all can be combined in any permutation and will still probably be OK on pasta, even if these mixes can’t reasonably be referred to as “spaghetti sauce” specifically.
Right? Oh, what am I talking about? Love, intimacy, sex, romance, caring, trust, and commitment are components — any given relationship may contain any or all of them. Your relationship with your best friend? It has love, intimacy, caring, trust, and commitment. Your relationship with your husband? You probably hope to have all of them, with some in ascendance at certain times while others slack off, eventually to return. Not that a satisfying relationship must feature all seven above plus the ones I forgot. A pickup in the park doesn’t promise any more than sex alone, but if that’s what the participants were looking for, it’s hunky-dory. Even the classic “men are from Mars”–type hetero marriage is often big on trust and commitment (and some have plenty of sex and romance, even many years in) without being nearly as intimate as many people’s close friendships or even work partnerships. We tend in this culture to hold up an idea of perfect partnership. At San Francisco Sex Information we use a Venn diagram with love, sex, and intimacy as intersecting circles, with the middle representing the holy grail. But satisfactory relationships can be forged using whichever components suit the participants’ needs. There is no duty to conform to the current local ideal if you don’t feel like it. Nor is it a sin to settle, if you ask me. One does what works.
I make a distinction between loving a whole lot and limerence (which differs from infatuation both in duration and intensity). Limerence — or longing for reciprocity — is not so much a feeling as it is a form of madness, and like other forms of madness is turning out to have a biochemical basis. “When I think of you my serotonin plummets, my darling! O, how my dopamine soars!” Not that faithful, mutually concerned, monogamous pair-bonding is entirely without its biochemical aspects — look up “prairie vole” on the Web sometime. Drugs and varmints aside, though, of course you can love and care for and be supportive of the same person you’re deeply in love with but perhaps not madly in love with. You do have to know the person to have that sort of relationship, while to crush out wildly on someone, you needn’t even have met. Since true limerence is a form of madness, it doesn’t tend to concern itself with planning for the future either, beyond the obvious (and unprovable) “I will always love you.”
Now, while we’re on the subject of love and limerence, a reader tipped me off that I was mistaken: Dorothy Tennov did not pull the word “limerence” out of her scholarly butt back in the ’70s and the word does share a root with other English words, which I’d list here if I hadn’t promptly lost her e-mail. I was horrified, since who wants to be wrong? Happily, not only does the Wikipedia entry on limerence back me up on Tennov’s pure invention of the term (“The word was pronounceable and seemed to her and two of her students to have a “fitting” sound…. The coinages are arbitrary; there is no specific etymology”), but here’s Tennov herself, back in 1977: “I first used the term ‘amorance,’ then changed it back to ‘limerence’…. It has no roots whatsoever. It looks nice. It works well in French. Take it from me, it has no etymology whatsoever.”
So there we have it. As long as it works well in French! Unless Dorothy Tennov writes in telling me that she didn’t, after all, pull “limerence” out of her scholarly ass, I’m standing by my story.
Love,
Andrea
Andrea Nemerson has spent the last 14 years as a sex educator and an instructor of sex educators. In her previous life she was a prop designer. And she just gave birth to twins, so she’s one bad mother of a sex adviser. Visit www.altsexcolumn.com to view her previous columns.

Editor’s Notes

0

› tredmond@sfbg.com
The San Francisco Examiner reported last week that enrollment in the local public schools is down by another 1,000 students this year, which means, some school board members say, that more sites will have to be closed.
I understand the economic issues — the state pays for education based on average daily attendance, and if fewer kids show up, the school district gets fewer dollars. And I’ll admit I have a dog in this fight: my son goes to McKinley Elementary, a wonderful school that represents everything that’s right about public education in San Francisco — and McKinley was on the hit list last year. It’s a small school; that makes it vulnerable.
I also understand that there are some things the school board can’t control. Families are leaving San Francisco in droves. That’s largely because of the high cost of housing, which is an issue for the mayor and the supervisors (and one that’s going to take a lot more work and resolve to address). So we’re going to lose some students that way.
But we’re also losing a lot of kids to private schools; I know that because I have good friends who’ve chosen that route, mostly because they don’t think the public schools can offer what they want for their kids. This is a perception problem, and it’s something the school board doesn’t have to sit back and accept.
That, I guess, is what really frustrates me — so many people simply saying that as a matter of strategic planning, we need to assume 1,000 fewer students a year will go to the public schools. The district spent around a quarter of a million dollars last year on a public relations office, and almost all the office seemed to do was hide information from the press and promote the career of then-superintendent Arlene Ackerman. Now Ackerman’s gone, and so is her officious flak, Lorna Ho. It’s time to take district PR seriously.
How hard would it be to have one PR staffer dedicated to creating a major citywide ad campaign promoting the public schools? I suspect it would be relatively easy to find a top-flight local ad firm that would work pro bono and not at all impossible to raise money for media (billboards, bus sides, direct mail, print ads, TV, whatever). Lots of prominent people would do testimonials. Set a goal: no enrollment drop-off next year. Before we close any more schools, it’s worth a try.
Now this: Clear Channel, which owns 10 radio stations in San Francisco and does almost no local public affairs programming at all, recently dropped its only decent San Francisco show, Keepin’ It Real with Will and Willie on KQKE, and replaced it with a syndicated feed out of Los Angeles. To listen to most of Clear Channel radio, you’d never actually know that you’re in San Francisco; the giant Texas chain doesn’t care anything about this community.
If you’re sick of this kind of behavior by an increasingly consolidated monopoly broadcast industry (using, by the way, the public airwaves), you’re not alone: Media Alliance, the Youth Media Council, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People will host a hearing on media consolidation in Oakland on Oct. 27, and two Federal Communications Commission members, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, will be there to take public comments.
The hearing’s at the Oakland Marriott Civic Center, 1001 Broadway. For more information, go to www.media-alliance.org. SFBG

SPECIAL: Candy apples and razor blades

0

› gwschulz@sfbg.com
Colorado Springs, Colo., is likely the most Christian city in America, a Vatican for the Evangelicals, if you will. It’s home base for some of the most potent forces in Christian conservative politics, and perhaps no place in the country celebrates Christmas with as much conviction. The central Colorado city of 350,000 even sports a 25-acre Christmas-themed amusement park known as Santa’s Workshop that stays open from spring until the end of the year, complete with rides and a shop selling miniature nativity sets and Precious Moments figurines. Christmas, more than any other event, defines the reputation of this sort of conservative religious town.
San Francisco, on the other hand, could be the most secular city in America — and as far as national holidays go, Halloween best represents our taste for light sin and playful fascination with the demonic.
And for better or worse, much of it happens in the Castro, in a giant frenzy of partying that attracts not only local revelers but spectators from around the Bay Area. Therein lies what over the years has become something of a problem.
With literally days remaining before more than 100,000 people are expected in the neighborhood, the city still hasn’t made clear exactly how it’s going to respond, what the rules will be — or whether partyers will really be greeted at 11 p.m. with water hoses.
In fact, some fear that the confusion and disorganization, combined with rumors that the city wants to make the event as unpleasant as possible to discourage huge crowds, could lead to a nasty backlash.
The last couple of years haven’t actually been all that bad, according to post-Halloween Chronicle headlines. “A Not-Too-Scary Halloween,” began last year’s headline. “Police call Castro event one of the most peaceful lately.” A 2004 story declared the event that year for the most part a success too, the Chron’s perpetually nerdy headlines notwithstanding. “Spooky but Safe Fright Night: Tens of thousands converge on the Castro for a far-out, but peaceful, celebration.” Even 2003 wasn’t necessarily that terrible, despite one guy getting shot in the leg. The cops aggressively worked to keep out booze, and a lane through the crowds was widened for emergency vehicles.
But Castro residents haven’t forgotten when things did get out of control. A record 300,000 people turned out in 2002, and police said at the time that well before midnight, the crowd’s mood had turned dark. Four people were stabbed or slashed, bottles were lobbed at the cops, and 30 people were arrested. In 2001, 50 people were arrested, and one woman told police that she was drugged, abducted, and taken to a dirt road in South San Francisco, where she was raped by three men.
And community concerns about violence are on the rise these days in the Castro, where three assaults have taken place since July.
Frustration over what Halloween in the Castro had become — it began three decades ago as a block party and turned into a regional event for wall-to-wall crowds, which police in 2002 estimated were 60 percent visitors to the city — led to this year’s event becoming a campaign issue for District 8 incumbent Bevan Dufty and challenger Alix Rosenthal.
In a larger sense, the debate raises a question that has the late-night crowd up in arms: is San Francisco becoming too staid and cautious to hold a big, wild party?
Complaints about Halloween have been growing for some time. Castro residents and merchants who have grown tired of having to mop up foreign substances from the sidewalks and repair broken windows each year on Nov. 1 have approached Dufty, who earlier this year proposed ending all city support for the event in the hope of keeping the big, rowdy crowds away.
Problem is, you can’t really scrap Halloween in the Castro. Critics of Dufty’s proposal feared (and likely hoped) revelers would show up anyway.
Since then, Dufty and other city officials have been looking for a compromise — but few specifics have emerged. Dufty, who has been involved in negotiations with neighborhood residents and city officials, promised weeks ago that an outline for security measures and an entertainment itinerary would be available at www.halloweeninthecastro.com. But at press time the Web site was still empty.
“It’s totally appalling that the first planning meeting was in July,” Rosenthal said in an interview. “It should have been organized a year in advance…. I haven’t seen any public service announcements. If you’re going to fundamentally change an event like Halloween, you need to tell people what you’re going to do.”
Suggestions from Dufty, confirmed for us by the Mission District police station, include having just one music stage (there were three last year), keeping the Castro Muni open as opposed to previous years, and beefing up the public-safety presence at Market and Noe streets. Then, at 11 o’clock, water trucks would appear to clean the streets.
Over the last few months Rosenthal has suggested that the event be turned into a parade to keep the anxious crowds occupied, similar to what takes place in New York’s Greenwich Village each year. Access would be limited to one entry gate where sliding scale donations would be taken to help cover costs, and costumed attendees, whom Rosenthal said would perhaps be less likely to cause major disturbances, would receive a discount. Other access points would be for exits only.
She said police commanders from the Mission station have taken the position that Halloween should be as unpleasant as possible to discourage large crowds in the future, but the result could be angry resistance from partygoers. Sgt. Mark Solomon from the Mission station said he wouldn’t describe it as “unpleasant” but said there are certain types of visitors who can cause a variety of problems for the neighborhood.
“The outsiders who are coming in and urinating and defecating on the sidewalks and having sex and leaving the condoms behind, we’re going to address those kinds of problems and make them not want to come back,” Solomon said.
Rosenthal remains skeptical that Halloween in the Castro is sufficiently organized this year and properly balances honoring a long-running tradition and meeting the needs of fed-up Castro residents.
“There are a lot of people who just want to get rid of Halloween in the Castro entirely,” she said. “We can make this a fun party. Making this unpleasant will only make it more violent. I fear retribution.”
The Mayor’s Office now appears to have taken over responsibility for the event, but Martha Cohen, whom Dufty told us is in charge of the event, wasn’t available for comment.
Ted Strosser of the fun-advocacy group SF Party Party, which is celebrating its one-year anniversary on Halloween, said the outfit is concerned that allowing too many restrictions for the event would stifle the city’s traditional reverence for street parties. SF Party Party plans this year to canvass the city again with 100 costumed and party-crawling Abe Lincolns. He said trying to end Halloween in the Castro altogether would cause the same problems for Gavin Newsom that Willie Brown experienced when he attempted to rub out Critical Mass in the ’90s — record-breaking participants turned out as a show of force.
“San Francisco says it can safely host the Olympics, but it can’t host Halloween and deal with some San Jose teens,” Strosser said. “If SF can’t keep us safe and clean up trash, then that’s a problem.”
Dufty, for his part, told the Guardian again that maps should be up at www.halloweeninthecastro.com outlining the finalized plan shortly after we go to press. He said one of the biggest changes this year was keeping open the Castro Muni stop and admitted that the goal was to tone down Halloween. Some Castro residents still want entirely to get rid of Halloween, he said.
“I have spent so much time on Halloween,” he added. “I think it’s not fair I’m getting the smackdown for not wanting to have fun…. I feel responsible to make sure that everyone feels safe.” SFBG
Editor’s note: Alix Rosenthal is the domestic partner of Guardian city editor Steven T. Jones. Jones did not participate in the assigning, writing, or editing of this story.

NOISE: By gum, it’s Boris and the Village Green and…

0

Oh, Hump Day – what would we do without you, positioned perfectly between weekend bliss and workday toil? And who would expect so many intriguing shows to crop up in this humdrum time slot (to think we all wrote it off as Project Runway‘s)?

In short, check magnifico, metal-some Japanese guitar overlords Boris at Slim’s tonight, Oct. 18. Why? A humongoid gong, smoke machine, Tokyo-based loudness par excellence, and the most kick-ass lady distortion peddler around: Wata.

boris_memph_x.jpg

Elsewhere, if you’re not getting down with SF’s premier glitch mavens and noise-makers Matmos at Great American Music Hall, trot over to Bottom of the Hill tonight for London’s Archie Bronson Outfit – out and about with a new disc, Derdang Derdang on Domino. Some compare ’em to Pere Ubu, Son House, Monks, and Faust — all at the same time! Whoa, Nellie, watch them outta-hand allusions. Still, isn’t your curiosity stirred – and shaken?

arcfit_pre_2.jpg

And if there’s anything left of you by Friday, Oct. 20, and you’re not already planning to check out Yo La Tengo at Fillmore or have tickets to Beirut at Great American Music Hall in your hot lil’ ham fists, you might want to mosey down to the Rickshaw Stop for an early show with the Village Green from Portland, Ore. As you’d expect, these doods display much respect to Anglo rock forebears – and they add a dash of contempo jitteriness. Different drugs, you say? Get outta here.

villagegrsml.jpg

Clean freak

0

› andrea@altsexcolumn.com
Dear Andrea:
I’m 40 and experiencing a sexual renaissance. I’ve turned into a squirter, which I’m coming to terms with. Guys seem to like it: I haven’t met one yet who complained about being wet all the way down to his toes.
The problem is that occasionally when I’m really having a good time I also lose a little bit of stool. Sometimes it’s just a smearing on the sheets, sometimes it’s a little more significant. This happens with regular vaginal intercourse, even without any anal. I find it incredibly embarrassing, though the guys I’ve been with have been cool about it. One of them was very gallant: we were moving around to a rear entry position when he told me I needed to go clean up because “he had pushed some poop out of me.” Nice of him to take the blame.
So, why is this happening and what can I do about it? I’ve had hemorrhoids, though I don’t have them currently. I have some skin tags around my rectum as a result. I had a vaginal hysterectomy (I don’t have my cervix but do have my ovaries), and I wonder if there might be some rectal prolapse going on? I don’t have health insurance right now and haven’t wanted to see a doctor about what doesn’t seem terribly urgent, just embarrassing. Are there Kegels for the rectum? Do I need to start anal douching before intercourse now?
Love,
Losing It
Dear It:
I’m impressed. Of course you’re embarrassed, but a lot of people would be too mortified to go on. You, dare I say it, suffer incontinence with extraordinary aplomb. You poop with poise. How many people can claim likewise?
This didn’t sound particularly familiar to me so I read around a bit, thinking there must be some study or other connecting vaginal hysterectomy with fecal incontinence, but I really couldn’t find anything. One study specifically queried abdominal and vaginal hysterectomy patients about their bowel health and habits and concluded this: “Patients undergoing abdominal hysterectomy may run an increased risk for developing mild to moderate anal incontinence postoperatively and this risk is increased by simultaneous bilateral salpingo-oopherectomy. An increased risk of anal incontinence symptoms could not be identified in patients undergoing vaginal hysterectomy.”
Salpingo-oopherectomy, for those following along at home, is removal of ovaries and fallopian tubes, and just think, if I’d gone to med school, I could use words like that all day. Oh well. Just because those doctors didn’t find any connection doesn’t mean you haven’t experienced one. Major surgery, with the scalpels and the nerves and everything, sounds a more likely culprit than do hemorrhoids or skin tags. Seeing a proctologist or surgeon seems like a good idea — something’s wrong here — but there’s no rush on that; you’re coping rather brilliantly.
In the meantime, yes, there are Kegel-y things you can do. They’re pretty much self-explanatory: squeeze, release, repeat. Do not douche right before partnered sex, or you may regret it in yuckier ways than I can bear to get into here. The night before is safer, and do what your mother would tell you to do, provided you talked to your mother about this sort of thing: eat more of what she used to call roughage. Lots more. The idea is to get so regular and so thorough in your elimination that there’s nothing left around to put in a surprise appearance later. And then, let’s get real: get some insurance. I don’t care how, just do it. Once we’re 40, running around with no coverage ceases to be devil-may-care and starts being stupid.
Love,
Andrea
Dear Andrea:
You once wrote, “The human ass can clean itself. If it couldn’t, we’d all be dead. Internal ass hygiene requires only fiber (ingested, not shoved up there) and water (likewise).” But when I do anal, “something” is left on my penis. Isn’t there a way that my girlfriend could clean her ass so much that this would not happen? In the porno movies everything seems so clean. Not that if they had such an accident they would record it.
Love,
Tidy Guy
Dear Guy:
Yeah, I should clarify that. By “clean itself” I don’t mean “wow, it’s so clean in here — I’d eat off the floor” clean. I mean clean for the inside of a butt. I was talking about heroic measures, high colonics and suchlike, and the way hosing out your innards on a regular basis cannot possibly be a good idea.
There is, sadly, no way to guarantee that you will never see “something” again (but you might mind it less if you were using a condom, hint hint). Word has it that the pros do douche the night before. That requires a certain amount of planning, which is easy to accomplish if you know you’re going to be having anal sex from, say, 2 to 3:30 p.m., and never on Wednesdays. If you can pull that off, more power to you.
Love,
Andrea

The first 40

0

› bruce@sfbg.com
On Oct. 27, l966, my wife, Jean Dibble, and I and some journalist and literary friends published the first issue of the first alternative paper in the country that was designed expressly to compete with the local monopoly daily combine and offer an alternative voice for an urban community.
We called it the San Francisco Bay Guardian, named after the liberal Manchester Guardian of England, and declared in our statement of intent that the Guardian would be a new model for a big-city paper: we would be independent and locally owned and edited, and we would be alternative to and competitive with the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle, which were published under a joint operating agreement that allowed them to fix prices, pool profits, share markets, and avoid competition.
We stated that “the Guardian is proposed, not as a substitute for the daily press, but as a supplement that can do much that the San Francisco and suburban dailies, with their single ownership, visceral appeal and parochial stance, cannot and will not do.” And we played off the name Guardian by stating that we would be “liberal in assessing the present and past (supporting regional government, nuclear weapons control, welfare legislation, rapid transit, tax reform, consumer protection, planning, judicial review, de-escalation and a promptly negotiated settlement in Vietnam.)” But the Guardian would also be “conservative in preserving tradition (civil liberties and minority rights, natural resources, watersheds, our bay, our hills, our air and water).”
It was rather naive to challenge the Ex-Chron JOA with little more than a good idea and not much money and a wing and a prayer. We had almost no idea of what we were getting into in San Francisco, a venue that Warren Hinckle of Ramparts and many other defunct publications would later describe as the Bermuda Triangle of publishing. But we had, I suppose, the key ingredient of the entrepreneur — the power of ignorance and not knowing any better — and somehow thought that if we could just get a good paper going, the time being l966 and the place being San Francisco and the world being full of possibilities, we would make it, come hell or high water.
Well, after going through hell and high water and endless soap operas for four decades, Jean and I and the hundreds of people who have worked for the Guardian through the years have helped realize the paper’s original vision and created something quite extraordinary: an influential new form of independent alternative journalism that works in the marketplace and provides what little real competition there is to the monopoly dailies. And let me emphasize, the alternatives do not require government-sanctioned JOA monopolies and endless chains and clusters of dailies and the other monopolizing devices that dailies claim they need to survive.
Today I am delighted to report that there are alternative papers competing effectively with their local chains throughout the Bay Area (seven, more than any other region), throughout the state from Chico to San Diego (22, more than any other state), and throughout the nation (126 in 42 states, with a total circulation of 7.5 million, and more coming all the time). There are even cities with two and three competing alternatives, and there are cities where the monopoly daily is forced by the real alternatives to create faux alternatives to try to compete (it doesn’t work). And alas, there is now a Village Voice–New Times chain of 17 papers in major markets, including San Francisco and the East Bay, that is abandoning its alternative roots and moving to ape its daily brethren.
Jean and I met at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1957. Two friends and I were driving around Lincoln one fine spring day, drinking gin and tonics, which were drawn from a tub of gin and tonic that we had mixed up and stashed in the trunk of our car. We happened upon Jean and her younger sister, Catherine, who had come from a Theta sorority function and were standing on a street corner waiting for their mother to pick them up and take them to the Dibble family home in nearby Bennet (population: 412). We stopped, convinced them to ride with us, and got them safely home. They declined our offer of gin and tonics, as did their astonished parents and grandmother when we arrived at the Dibble house.
Jean and I made a good team. We both had small-town Midwestern values and roots in family-owned small-business. Her father owned lumberyards in small towns in southeast Nebraska. Her maternal grandfather founded banks in Kansas and Nebraska and was the state-appointed receiver for failed banks in Kansas during the Depression. Her paternal grandfather owned a grocery store in Topeka, Kan. Jean had the business background and the ability to create a solid start-up plan — she was a graduate of the Harvard-Radcliffe Program in Business Administration and had worked in San Francisco for Matson Navigation as well as Hansell Associates, a personnel firm.
I was the son and grandson of pioneering pharmacists in Rock Rapids, Iowa. (Population: 2,800. Slogan: “Brugmann’s Drugs. Where drugs and gold are fairly sold. Since l902.”) I had the newspaper background, starting at age l2 writing for my hometown Lyon County Reporter (under the third-generation Paul Smith family); going on to the campus paper (which we called the Rag) and then the Lincoln Star (under liberal city editor “Sterl” Earl Dyer and liberal editor Jimmy Lawrence); getting a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York City; and then working at Stars and Stripes in Korea (dateline: Yongdongpo), the Milwaukee Journal (where I got splendid professional training at one of the top 10 daily papers in the country), and the Redwood City Tribune (where I plowed into some of the juicy Peninsula scandals of the mid-l960s in bay fill, dirt hauling, and the classic Pacific Gas and Electric Co.–Stanford University Linear Accelerator battle). To those who ask how Jean and I have worked together for 40 years, I just say we have complementary abilities: she handles the bank, and I handle PG&E.
Not only did I find my partner at the University of Nebraska, but I also got the inspiration for the Guardian. In fact, I can remember the precise moment of truth that illuminated for me the value of an alternative paper in a city with a monopoly daily press (then, in Lincoln, a JOA between the afternoon Lincoln Journal and the morning Lincoln Star) that was tied into the local power structure, then known as the O Street gang (the local business owners along the downtown thoroughfare O Street). The O Street gang was so quietly powerful that it once decided to fire the Nebraska football coach before anyone bothered to notify the chancellor.
As a liberal Rag editor in the spring of 1955, I had just put out an important front-page story on how one of the most controversial professors on campus, C. Clyde Mitchell, who had been under fire for years from the conservative Farm Bureau and others because of his liberal views on farm policy, was being quietly axed as chair of the agricultural economics department.
We had gotten the tip from one of Mitchell’s students and had confirmed it by talking to professors in his department who had attended the meeting where the quiet firing was announced by Mitchell’s dean. Our lead story was headlined “Ag Ex Chairman Mitchell said relieved of post, outside pressures termed cause.” And I wrote a “demand all the facts” editorial arguing in high tones that “any attempt to make professors fair game for irresponsible charges, any attempt by pressure groups unduly to influence the academic position of university personnel … is an abridgment of the spirit of academic freedom and those principles of free communication protected by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.” It was a bombshell.
The Lincoln Journal fired back immediately with a classic daily front-page story seeking to “scotch” the nasty rumors started by that pesky Rag on the campus. The story had all the usual recognizable elements: it did not independently investigate, did not quote our story properly, did not call us for comment, took the handout denial from the university public relations office, and put it out without blushing. Bang, that was to be the end of it, on to the next press release from the university.
It made me mad. I knew our story was right, the daily story was wrong, and the story was important and needed to be pursued. And so I stoked up a campaign for the rest of the semester that ultimately emboldened Mitchell to make formal charges that the university had violated his academic freedom. He gave us the scoop for two rousing final editions of the Rag. The proper academic committee investigated and upheld Mitchell but dragged the case out and waited until I graduated to release the report.
Against the power structure and against all odds, Mitchell, the Rag, and I had won the day and an important victory on behalf of academic freedom in a conservative university in a conservative state during the McCarthy era. During this battle I learned how the power structure fights back against aggressive editors. At the height of my campaign defending Mitchell, I was kept out of the Innocents Society, the senior men’s honorary society, although my four subeditors and managers all made it in. The blackball, the campus rumor went, came directly from the regents president, J. Leroy Welch, then president of the Omaha Grain Exchange (known to our readers as the “Old Grain Head”), via the chancellor via the dean of men.
I am forever indebted to them. They taught me at an impressionable age about the power of the alternative press and why it is best exercised by an independent paper on major power structure issues. They also taught me a lot about press freedom, which they were trying to grab from the Rag and me, and how we had to fight back publicly and with gusto.
When Jean and I founded the Guardian, we did so in the spirit of my old Rag campaigns. In fact, we borrowed the line from the old Chicago Times and put it on our masthead: “It is a newspaper’s duty to print the news and raise hell.” We wanted a paper that would be willing and able to do serious watchdog reporting and take on and pursue the big stories and issues that the monopoly dailies ignored — and then were ignored by the radio, television, and mainstream media that take their news and policy cues from the Ex and Chron. In JOA San Francisco that was a lot of stories, from the PG&E Raker Act scandal to the Manhattanization of the city to the theft of the Presidio to the steady conservative downtown drumbeat on such key issues as taxes, social justice, the homeless, privatization, war and peace, and endorsements.
Significantly, because of our independent position and credibility, we were able to lead tough campaigns on public power, kicking PG&E out of a corrupted City Hall and putting a blast of sunlight on local government with the nation’s first and best Sunshine Ordinance and Sunshine Task Force.
Our first big target in our prototype issue was the Ex-Chron JOA agreement, which we portrayed in an editorial cartoon as two gigantic ostrich heads coming out of a single ostrich body, marked in the belly with a huge dollar sign. Our editorial laid out the argument that we have used ever since in covering the local monopoly and in positioning the Guardian as the independent alternative. “What the public now has in San Francisco, as it does in all 55 or so of 1,461 cities with dailies, is a privately owned utility that is constitutionally exempt from public regulation, which would violate freedom of the press. This is bad for the newspaper business and bad for San Francisco.”
The Guardian prospectus, used to raise money for the paper, bravely put forth our position: “A good metropolitan weekly, starting small but speaking with integrity, can soon have influence in inverse proportion to its size. There is nothing stronger in journalism than the force of a good example.”
It concluded, “The Guardian can succeed, despite the galloping contraction of the press in San Francisco, because there are many of us who feel that the newspaper business is a trade worth fighting for. That is what this newspaper is all about.” And we quoted the famous phrase used by Ralph Ingersoll in the prospectus for his famous PM newspaper in New York: “We are against people who push other people around.”
Our journalistic points were embarrassingly timely. A year before the Guardian was launched, Hearst and the Chronicle had formed the JOA with the Examiner and killed daily newspaper competition in San Francisco. The two papers combined all their business operations — one sales force sold ads for both, one print crew handled both editions, one distribution crew handled subscriptions and got both papers out on the streets. The newsrooms were supposedly separate — but as we pointed out over and over at the time and ever after, the papers lacked any economic incentive to compete.
The San Francisco JOA became the largest and most powerful agreement of its kind in the country, and San Francisco was the only top-10 market in the country without daily competition.
This was all grist for the Guardian editorial mills because the JOAs, most notably the recent SF JOA, were in serious legal trouble. The US attorney general was successfully prosecuting a JOA in Tucson, Ariz., claiming the arrangement was a violation of antitrust laws. Naturally, the local papers were blacking out the story. But if the Tucson deal was found to be illegal, the Chron and Ex merger would be illegal too — and the hundreds of millions of dollars the papers were making off the arrangement would be gone.
The JOA publishers, led by Hearst and the Chronicle, quietly started a major lobbying campaign in Washington for emergency passage of a federal law that would retroactively legalize their illegal JOAs. They called it the Newspaper Preservation Act. Meanwhile, the late Al Kihn, a former camera operator for KRON-TV (which was at the time owned by the Chronicle), had prompted the Federal Communications Commission to hold hearings on whether the station’s license should be renewed. His complaint: his former employer was slanting the news on behalf of its corporate interests. We pounced on these stories with relish.
For example, in our May 22, 1969, story “The Dicks from Superchron,” we disclosed how private detectives under hire by the Chronicle were probing Kihn’s private life and seeking to gather adverse information about him to discredit his complaint and to “harass and intimidate him,” as we put it. Later, I found that the Chronicle-KRON had also hired private detectives to get adverse information on me.
I was a suspicious character, I guess, because I had gone to the KRON building to check the station’s public FCC file on the Kihn complaints, the first journalist ever to do so. The way the story came out at a later hearing was that the station’s deputy director left the room as I was going through the records and called Cooper White and Cooper, then the Chronicle’s law firm. An attorney called their investigators, and four cars of detectives were pulled off other jobs and ordered to circle the building until I came out and then follow me when I left the station to return to my South of Market office. They also surveilled me for several months and even sent a detective into the office posing as a freelance writer. (The head of the detective agency and I later became friends, and he volunteered that I was “clean.” He gave me a pillow with a large eye on it that said “You are being watched.” I displayed it proudly in my office.)
Kihn and I were asked to testify before a Senate committee about the Chronicle-KRON’s use of private detectives at hearings on the Newspaper Preservation Act in Washington in June 1969. I took the occasion to call the legislation “the bill for millionaire crybaby publishers.”
I detailed the subsidies in their special interest legislation: “amnesty, immunity from prosecution, monopoly in perpetuity, the legal right to gun down what few competitors remain, and as the maraschino cherry atop this double-decker sundae, anointment as the preservers and saviors of the newspaper business.” And I summed up, “If you plant a flower on University of California property or loose an expletive on Vietnam, the cops are out of the chutes like broncos. But if you are a big publisher and you violate antitrust laws for years and you emasculate your competition with predatory practices and you drive hundreds of newspapers out of business, then you are treated as one of nature’s noble men. And senators will rise like doves on the floor of the US Senate to proffer billion-dollar subsidies.”
After I finished, Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-Illinois) rose as the first dove and characterized my testimony as “quite a dramatic recital” but said that I had not provided a “workable, feasible solution.” Sen. Philip Hart (D-Michigan) recommended that the publishers ought to “read their own editorials and relate them to their business practices.” Morton Mintz, who covered the hearing for the Washington Post, came up and congratulated me. His story, with my picture and much of my testimony, was on the front page of the Post the next day.
Back in San Francisco the Chronicle published a misleading short story in which publisher Charles de Young Thieriot avoided admitting or denying the detective charge and added he had no further comment. Less than a week later, Thieriot wrote the Senate subcommittee and admitted to the charge, saying the use of the detectives was “entirely reasonable and proper.” This statement, which contradicted his statement in his own paper, was not reported in the Chronicle. The “competing” Examiner also reported nothing — neither the original private detective story nor the Washington testimony nor the Thieriot admission.
Nor did either paper report anything about the intensive JOA lobbying campaign headed by Hearst president Richard Berlin, who twice wrote letters to President Richard Nixon threatening the withdrawal of JOA endorsements in the l972 presidential election if he refused to sign the final bill. This episode illustrated in 96-point Tempo Bold the pattern of Ex and Chron suppression and obfuscation they used to advance their corporate agenda at the expense of the public interest and good journalism, all through the years and up to Hearst’s current monopoly maneuvers with Dean Singleton and the Clint Reilly antitrust suit to stop them.
Perhaps the most telling incident came when Nicholas von Hoffman, in his Washington Post column that was regularly run in the Chronicle, called the publishers “as scurvy as the special interests they love to denounce.” He singled out the Examiner and Chronicle publishers, writing that they were “so bad that the best and most reliable periodical in the city is the Bay Guardian, a monthly put out by one man and a bunch of volunteer helpers.” Neither paper would run the column, and neither paper would publish it as an ad, even when we offered cash up front. “The publisher has the right to refuse to run anything he wants, and he doesn’t have to give a reason,” the JOA ad rep told us. The Guardian of course gleefully ran the censored column and the censored ad in our own full-page ad.
On July 25, l970, the day after Nixon signed the Newspaper Preservation Act, the Guardian filed a major antitrust action in San Francisco attacking the constitutionality of the legislation and charging that the Ex-Chron JOA had taken the lion’s share of local print advertising, leaving only crumbs for other print publications in town. We battled on for five years but finally settled because the suit became too expensive. The Examiner and Chronicle continued to black out or marginalize the story, but they and the other JOA papers gave Nixon resounding endorsements in the l972 election even though he was heading toward Watergate and unprecedented disgrace.
Well, in October 2006 the mainstream press is a different creature. Hearst and publisher Dean Singleton are working to destroy daily competition and impose a regional monopoly. The Knight-Ridder chain is no more, and the McClatchy chain has turned the KR remains into what I call Galloping Conglomerati. Even some alternatives, alas, are now getting chained. Craigslist has become a toxic chain. Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft (known as GYM in the online world) are poised to swoop in on San Francisco and other cities throughout the land to scoop up the local advertising dollars and ship them as fast as possible back to corporate headquarters on a conveyor belt.
I am happy to report on our 40th anniversary that the Guardian is aware of the challenge and is gearing up in the paper and online to compete and endure till the end of time, printing the news and raising hell and forcing the daily papers to scotch the rumors coming from our power structure exposés and our watchdog reporting. The future is still with us and with our special community and critical mission, in print and online. See you next year and for 40 more. SFBG
STOP THE PRESSES: As G.W. Schulz discloses in “A Tough Pill to Swallow,” (a) Hearst Corp. was fined $4 million in 200l by the Justice Department for failing to turn over key documents during its monopoly move to purchase a medical publishing subsidiary, the highest premerger antitrust fine in US history, according to a Justice Department press release; (b) Hearst was also forced by the the Federal Trade Commission to unload the subsidiary to break up its monopoly and disgorge $l9 million in profits generated during its ownership; (c) Hearst-owned First DataBank in San Bruno was alleged in the summer of 2005 to have inflated drug costs by upward of $7 billion by wrongly presenting drug prices, according to a lawsuit reported in a damning lead story in the Oct. 6 Wall Street Journal. Hearst blacked out the stories. And the Dean Singleton chain circling the Bay Area hasn’t pounced on the stories as real daily competitors used to do with fervor.
STOP THE PRESSES 2: SOS alert to the city and business desks of the “competing” Hearst and Singleton papers: here are the links to the key documents cited in our stories, including federal court records of the Oct. 6 Boston settlement with the Hearst-owned First DataBank (www.hagens-berman.com/first_data_bank_settlement.htm), the Justice Department’s antitrust fine of Hearst in 200l (www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/indx330.htm), and the Federal Trade Commission decision requiring Hearst to give up its monopolistic subsidiary, Medi-Span (www.ftc.gov/bc/healthcare/antitrust/commissionactions.htm).

Or you can read the Guardian each week in print or online.

Politics, beauty, and hope in the Guardian’s arts pages


Forty years of fighting urbicide — and promoting a very different vision of a city

Buried treasure

0

› gwschulz@sfbg.com
Despite the fast-moving urban centers that surround it on each side of the San Francisco Bay, not much about Treasure Island has changed since it was shut down as a United States naval station 10 years ago.
After the feds ceased operations on the island and at several other military installations in the mid-’90s, the idea was to give the land to local governments for redevelopment to fill the economic void of losing active bases. Since then, several plans for Treasure Island have been floated with great fanfare in the press, but all have become mired in the infamously contentious development politics of San Francisco.
Late last month, after three years of deadline extensions, the Treasure Island Development Authority (TIDA) finally received a full-blown plan from the developer — a partnership between Lennar Corp., Wilson Meany Sullivan, and Treasure Island Community Development — that was given exclusive negotiating rights over the land three years ago.
The $1.2 billion redevelopment plan must now run a gauntlet of state and local approval, including consideration from the Board of Supervisors, which is expected to hold hearings and debate the plan by the end of the year. It isn’t likely that construction will begin on the island for at least a couple more years.
The latest proposal anticipates about 6,000 new homes, 1,800 of which will be targeted to low-income residents, including 750 units for households earning no more than 60 percent of San Francisco’s median income and 440 built as part of a program for the homeless. Plans include town houses, single-family homes, and high-rise residential towers, although at least half the properties will be limited to 65 feet in height.
Right now the island contains about 800 occupied units, over half of which are market-rate leases with the John Stewart Co., while about 200 are operated under the Treasure Island Homeless Development Initiative. By the time the project is done, according to the newest plan, the island’s population is expected to balloon to around 10,000 residents, plus around 3,000 new workers necessary to maintain the minicity.
Some of the existing housing stock will be demolished, or as the plan calls it, “reconstructed.” Current residents will have an option to move into the new units or be placed in a lottery if demand for certain types of units outstrips the supply. The plan calls for about 27 percent of the overall planned housing units to be rentals.
Private automobile use would be regulated by metering ramp access to the island during peak commute hours; assessing possible congestion fees for driving on the island; limiting residential parking; and emphasizing thruways that promote walking, bicycling, and public transit.
Much of the development is slated for the west side of the island — with its breathtaking and profitable views of the city — near an existing ferry terminal that would provide access to the city all day long.
Treading lightly, Sup. Chris Daly, whose District 6 includes the island, said he supports the environmental and housing components so far, but if existing island residents mount significant opposition for any reason, he’d consider opposing the plan.
“You don’t know how clean something is until you take it out of the wash, and they’re just now starting to throw it in,” Daly told the Guardian.
Rob Black, Daly’s main challenger in the upcoming election, lives on Treasure Island. He was similarly cautious. “I think people have finally begun to think in a more progressive way about making this a more sustainable neighborhood,” Black told us. “Past plans have been so poorly put together.”
On the local level, the plan must be approved in the coming months by both the TIDA board and the Board of Supervisors. After that, it will undergo an extensive environmental impact review by the city’s planning department before returning to the board for final local approval.
The developer and the TIDA board — which is composed entirely of mayoral appointees, three of whom work directly for Mayor Gavin Newsom — must still overcome other major hurdles as well, including the fact that the Navy hasn’t turned over any of the land yet and likely won’t without major concessions.
The Bush administration has stalled the transfer, pushing for some payment before giving up valuable federal land. One tentative option is to relieve the Navy of about $45 million in environmental cleanup costs for which it is currently responsible. Those costs would then be borne by the redevelopment plan and the developer, which has already pledged $26 million for remediation. The land became contaminated in part after decades of military activity that included emergency drills with radioactive materials.
David Rist, a project manager for the state Department of Toxic Substances Control, which is overseeing the cleanup, said that while there is some contamination where residents are living today, it doesn’t pose an immediate threat to human health. Identified contaminants include dioxin, lead, and PCBs. Rist told us the cleanup, regardless of who ends up paying for it, will be “significantly done in the next two and a half years.”
After mulling over ideas, TIDA finally brokered an exclusive deal in 2003 with a company incorporated as Treasure Island Community Development, a group of Democratic Party heavyweights with deep links to the current and former mayoral administrations and other top elected Democrats.
Jay Wallace, a project planner for Treasure Island Community Development, said the plan’s mammoth size and uniqueness have required considerable and time-consuming attention to specifics. Investors anticipate spending $500 million of their own money, but they’re looking to earn upward of $125 million in profits, according to the plan.
The remaining cost of about $760 million for infrastructure, open space, and transportation system improvements could be covered largely by tax increment financing from the redevelopment area and Mello Roos bonds, both of which would essentially be funded by future property taxes, according to the latest term sheet.
Wallace told the Guardian that his group “has worked in good faith and transparency throughout this project, with over 150 public meetings before reaching this milestone and presenting this plan to the city.”
Daly said that while “there are going to be a hundred issues that need to be worked out,” the green-meets-affordable-housing theme “is the right proposal for San Francisco.”
“Political connections to the Newsom juggernaut notwithstanding, these guys are politically savvy enough to know what’s wise and what isn’t,” he said. “On the actual merits of the proposal, it’s palatable if you’re OK with the concept of high-rises in the middle of the bay.” SFBG

The people’s program

0

OPINION San Francisco progressives have spent years getting on the political power map. We have achieved amazing victories, such as the 2000 sweep that defeated the Brown machine and ushered in an independent Board of Supervisors. At times we’ve gotten mired in sectarian clashes that have prevented unity around a common vision. However, such obstacles and stumbles have taught us valuable lessons that can be the building blocks for a vibrant people’s movement. To be successful, we progressives need to have a clear vision and to keep asking ourselves questions. What does it mean to be progressive and for progressives to have power? Assuming we all agree that progressive unity is a necessary foundation for social change, what should unity look like today? And if we’re successful at maintaining power, what do we want to look like five and 10 years from now? In the first year following its founding convention and with these questions in mind, the San Francisco Peoples’ Organization (SFPO) has chosen to focus on three issues central to the lives of all San Franciscans — health care, affordable housing, and violence prevention. Over the past year, this fledgling organization has logged a long list of achievements and participated in many exciting causes. The SFPO has: •worked with the Alliance for a Better California to defeat Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s special election measures in November 2005; •assisted in the development and passage of Supervisor Tom Ammiano’s Worker Health Care Security Ordinance, creating universal health care for local residents; •advocated for Supervisor Chris Daly’s recently passed legislation to increase mandatory levels of affordable housing in new housing developments; •took a leadership role in uniting communities of color and progressives to fight for Proposition A’s homicide and violence prevention efforts, including a host of new budget initiatives addressing some of the root causes of violence; •launched an e-mail dispatch that reaches over 5,000 constituents and highlights local progressive issues, campaigns, and events; •played an active role in the UNITE-HERE Local 2 contract campaign, attending pickets, planning meetings, and participating in civil disobedience. Part of our effort involves critically analyzing the policy agendas of our elected lawmakers and making recommendations. Mayor Gavin Newsom, through his highly visible work to legalize same-sex marriage, rightfully gained the respect and admiration of progressive San Franciscans. However, same-sex marriage is only one issue; Mayor Newsom should not be given carte blanche among progressives for this single act. The SFPO’s second annual convention will take place Sept. 30 at St. Mary’s Cathedral. Please join us. We cannot wait to work together. The future of our city — who we want to live here, who we want to work here, who we want educated here — is being determined now. SFBG Jane Kim and John Avalos The writers are president and vice president, respectively, of the San Francisco Peoples’ Organization. For more information about the SFPO and the Sept. 30 convention, go to www.sfpeople.org.

Casting off

0

› amanda@sfbg.com
Hornblower Yachts assumed control of the ferry service to Alcatraz Island on Sept. 25. As the new crew cast off the dock lines, spurned union workers — some 30-year veterans with the former contractor, Blue and Gold — rallied with supporters at the entrance, asking passengers not to board the boats.
Two union-friendly visitors from Sydney, Australia, ripped up their tickets and demanded refunds. “We don’t agree with what they’re doing to the workers,” one said, while in the background Supervisors Aaron Peskin and Tom Ammiano took turns with the bullhorn, also offering their support to the workers.
“All of our colleagues on the board are not going to stand for it,” Peskin said to the couple hundred laborers gathered on the sidewalk. “We’re going to stand with you and march with you.”
Terry MacRae, CEO of Hornblower, expressed little concern about the boycotting tourists and the rally at his gate. “I suspect there’s plenty more people who want the tickets if they’re not going to use them,” he told the Guardian. Visits to Alcatraz peak this time of year, with a couple thousand people turned away every day when tickets sell out, according to National Park Service spokesperson Rich Wiedeman.
The NPS decision to grant the lucrative, 10-year contract to Hornblower over Blue and Gold has resulted in more than just what some are calling the largest union layoff in San Francisco waterfront history. The story also has an environmental angle as slick as an oil spill and a nasty landlord-tenant tussle.
“The port and I are extremely concerned with how Hornblower has conducted itself,” City Attorney Dennis Herrera told the Guardian, referring to the company’s artful dodge of city and state permitting processes. “They’ve focused more energy on sidestepping public oversight than complying with it.”
Despite infuriating two leading San Francisco institutions — unions and city planners — MacRae has managed thus far to avoid too much of a stir by keeping another critical local constituency off his back with a well-played “green” card.
THE GREEN MACHINE
When NPS put out a request for proposals in 2004, three companies submitted bids for Alcatraz: Red and White, a local charter and bay cruise company that ran the service when it first started in the ’70s; Blue and Gold, which took over Red and White’s boats and unionized crew in 1994; and Hornblower Cruises and Events, which runs charter and dinner boat cruises from five California ports and is a subsidiary of a larger, $30 million company.
When Brian O’Neill, superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, announced last year that Hornblower won the bid, union activists immediately challenged the choice. Mayor Gavin Newsom, Peskin, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and both of California’s US senators expressed concerns about the decision. Neighborhood group Citizens to Save the Waterfront filed suit. Environmentalists, however, were elated.
For the first time since being passed by Congress in 1998, the Concessions Management Act applied to the bid for Alcatraz. In addition to forbidding the Department of the Interior from favoring incumbent contractors, the act also outlined new criteria for awarding contracts that included a mandate to improve environmental quality in national parklands.
“Bluewater Network has been advocating for more than five years for a solar- and wind-powered ferry for San Francisco Bay,” said Teri Schore, a spokesperson for the local environmental group. She added that diesel vessels in the Bay Area account for more pollution than cars and buses combined. “We’ve been talking to every ferry operator on the bay, and we also knew that the Alcatraz contract was up. We thought it was the perfect application.”
Hornblower’s MacRae wrote a provision into his bid that within two years of taking over the Alcatraz service, the company would build and launch a ferry to run on a combination of solar, wind, and diesel power. After one year of testing the vessel, a second would be built within five years.
That — in combination with a plan to make two initial vessels 90 percent more fuel efficient, as well as implement a clean energy shuttle service on the Embarcadero, power the landing facilities with solar panels, purchase green products, and vend healthy snacks — put Hornblower’s bid over the top.
Wiedeman said all bidders are informed that financial feasibility of the company and potential revenue for the government, as well as environmental and sustainability initiatives, were considered. But some criteria were more weighted than others, and Hornblower ranked strongly on all points.
“We’re ecstatic,” Wiedeman said. “We’re looking at higher-quality visitor services from the get-go.”
But some doubt whether the proposed vessels are anywhere close to a reality. MacRae said a final design and marine contractor have not been selected yet, although Solar Sailor’s model BayTri has been touted. A giant solar-arrayed fin provides auxiliary wind and sun power to the trimaran’s diesel engines. No such vessel has ever been built, but the model is based on a smaller solar ferry that services Sydney Harbor in Australia — with a top speed of just seven knots.
The proposed boat is emissions free and could go 12 knots with the aid of the wind, although it would need a push from auxiliary diesel engines to keep up with Alcatraz’s schedule. Boats now run between 15 and 19 knots.
The other concern is that MacRae’s commitment of $5 million for constructing the 600-passenger vessel might not be enough. The San Francisco Water Transit Authority has been looking into a similar vessel carrying no more than 150 passengers that would cost between $6 and $8 million.
“Their requirements for design are different than what mine would be,” MacRae said. “I think it’s possible to do it for $5 million.”
Bluewater Network founder Russell Long worries that the low-budget cap could hurt the vessel’s environmental potential. “We believe that Hornblower may intend to maintain this budget ceiling even if it compromises other aspects of the design, such as best management practices in regard to environmental components,” he wrote in a letter to NPS, urging reconsideration of the contract.
NPS awarded the contract anyway and Bluewater is hoping for the best.
“We will be watchdogging the progress and keeping track of what’s going on. If it doesn’t happen, it will be a huge black eye for the National Park Service, Hornblower, and the city of San Francisco,” Schore said. “At this point we have faith that it’s going to get built, because it’s in the contract.”
However, Hornblower’s snub toward union contracts and dodgy relations with the city suggest that playing by the rules may not be a top priority for the company.
THE PERFECT TYPO
Since 1974, boats to Alcatraz have run from the Pier 39 area of Fisherman’s Wharf, where waiting ticket holders can indulge in the myriad distractions the tourist hub offers.
MacRae launched his new ferry service from Pier 31, half a mile farther south on the Embarcadero, where he currently leases space and operates a charter and dining cruise business.
Pier 31 is little more than a parking lot with a ramp and floating dock, which only sees about 100,000 people a year, far fewer than the 1.3 million annual passengers Alcatraz draws.
MacRae has attractive plans for a complete overhaul of the area, which would include landscaping and sheltered seating, a bookstore, and an informational center. Such alterations would require a thorough run through the city’s planning process, which MacRae told the NPS he won’t be doing until 12 to 18 months from now.
Instead, interim improvements to the lot were planned, which sparked concern from the city that the sudden increase in foot traffic wouldn’t be properly mitigated. That area of the Embarcadero also hosts 250,000 passengers a year from cruise ships docking at adjacent Pier 35. The Port spent close to $200,000 last year controlling that traffic with signage and police officers. The addition of thousands more visitors streaming down the sidewalks seeking passage to Alcatraz could cause gridlock every time a cruise ship docks.
Monique Moyer, executive director of the port, sent repeated letters over the last year to MacRae asking for clarifications about his plans and expressing concern that the change in use of Pier 31 required a review of existing permits.
She wasn’t alone. On July 31, Citizens to Save the Waterfront filed suit against Hornblower, claiming that the amount of activity at Pier 31 would increase twentyfold. “That represents a substantial change in the intensity of use,” Jon Golinger, a representative from the group, told us.
A change in the intensity of use of a waterfront property triggers the need for a complete environmental impact review (EIR) from the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), a state agency with jurisdiction over anything within 100 feet of the shoreline. As many city developers know, EIRs can take many months to consider all potential changes to the existing landscape that the applicant would cause. Delays of that sort could have hindered MacRae’s ability to assume ferry service on the contracted date of Sept. 25.
MacRae said the litigation kept him from divulging to the city his proposed plans for upgrades to the pier.
Just days before the lawsuit was to be argued in San Francisco Superior Court on Sept. 6, BCDC executive director Will Travis sent a letter to Moyer stating that Hornblower’s new service and alterations to Pier 31 did not require any new permits.
He cited a typo from Hornblower’s current BCDC-issued permit as an allowance for the increase in passengers. The permit states that the pier may provide “access to the entire bay via vessel for 200,000 to 5000,000 [sic] people/year.”
He footnoted the quote: “There is clearly a typographical error in the 5000,000 number, which is intended to state the maximum anticipated usage of the dock … the correct number is probably either 500,000 or 5,000,000. While it seems reasonable to believe that the correct number is 500,000, the record contains nothing to substantiate this conclusion.”
Travis also relayed that Hornblower plans to use temporary measures that include trailers with port-a-potties, a portable ticket booth, and hollow traffic barriers for guiding traffic and pedestrians on and off the boat.
Herrera told us that this was the first Moyer had heard of what was planned for the lot and there was concern about how other services in the area and traffic on the Embarcadero would be affected, as well as if any structures, signage, and other enhancements would require additional permits. “It certainly would have been nice if they had shared all these plans so the port could conduct the proper environmental review that we all agree is in order,” he said.
In a strongly worded letter to Travis, Herrera wrote that to allow Hornblower to proceed without any environmental review could violate the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and urged the BCDC to “issue an immediate cease and desist order” to prevent the start of service. Herrera also made the salient point that “the later the environmental review process begins, the more bureaucratic and financial momentum there is behind a proposed project, thus providing a strong incentive to ignore environmental concerns that could be dealt with more easily at an early stage of the project.”
On Sept. 7, BCDC commissioners met in closed session at the end of a four-hour meeting and voted to stand by Travis’s argument.
David Owen, a former Peskin aide who’s also a BCDC commissioner, was one of two abstentions to the otherwise unanimous vote. “It was really frustrating, because it seemed like Hornblower did everything in their power to avoid a permit review,” Owen told us. “Now what? We have a CEQA lawsuit and then the Board of Supervisors shuts down the Alcatraz ferry service? They’ve managed to start up service without acquiring a single permit. Kudos to them for strategy.”
Citizens to Save the Waterfront then dropped its lawsuit, feeling it was weakened by the BCDC decision.
“Essentially, now there’s a turf war between Bush’s park service and the Port of San Francisco,” Golinger said. “BCDC tried to avoid getting involved, but the precedent it sets is horrible. A corporation can come in and skirt any planning process.”
UNION TOWN POLITICS
After scoring the Alcatraz bid, Hornblower sought an exemption to the Service Contract Act of 1965 that would have required MacRae to pay equal to or more than what current crew make. But the Department of Labor ruled Sept. 21 against Hornblower. So veteran Blue and Gold crew have added safety to their concerns.
“I’ve made tens of thousands of landings on Alcatraz Island, and now they have captains who have never been there,” Capt. Andy Miller said. For 17 years, Miller has navigated the busy shipping lanes and the constant summer fog against the tugging tide and the sudden slams of inclement weather to bring tourists, park service staff, and supplies to the island.
“No one’s ever gotten hurt. It’s a very tricky place to land a boat. It takes skill and experience that you can’t just hire off the street,” he said.
Miller said he applied for a job with Hornblower but was not interviewed. So far, no captains and only three ticket agents and a deckhand have been hired from Blue and Gold’s former fleet.
“We have a ready workforce,” Master, Mate, and Pilot union spokesperson Veronica Sanchez said. “They’re going to have to be paid the same wages as union workers at Blue and Gold. They don’t want to be a union shop. Why don’t you want to be a union shop on a union waterfront like San Francisco?”
One reason could be concern that it might bump up costs for Hornblower’s other tour operations. “They want us to agree that if we sign up our workers for Alcatraz, that we won’t organize the dining yachts,” Sanchez said. In 1998, the union attempted to organize Hornblower’s dinner cruise operations in San Francisco but didn’t prevail in a supervised election.
MacRae said he’s not opposed to the unions and he’s encouraged the Blue and Gold staff to apply for jobs. “The unionization is the choice of the workers,” he said. “We try to let the employees make the choices. Last time I checked, that’s who the unions represent.”
“We want to make sure we have the best crew,” he said. “Many of the products and guest services we provide aren’t what Blue and Gold do now.” He added that some current employees from the dining cruises have also been shifted to the Alcatraz route.
“I’ve been here 21 years, and we’ve been replaced by busboys and waiters,” said deckhand Robert Estrada, standing with fellow workers outside the gate of the new Alcatraz ferry service.
Estrada said Hornblower’s reliance on part-time, low-wage workers has earned the company the nickname “the Wal-Mart of the Water.” The company’s rapid expansion, from a two-boat Berkeley-based charter to a multinational fleet with government contracts is a similar characteristic.
Blue and Gold spokesperson Alicia Vargas assured us that the remaining ferry services to Alameda, Angel Island, Oakland, Sausalito, Tiburon, and Vallejo will be solvent, but some of the veteran crew who haven’t been laid off yet are worried this is the beginning of the end.
“The public needs to be warned. If funds don’t come from Alcatraz, Blue and Gold could fold,” said David Heran, an International Boatmen’s Union member and deckhand since 1974 who applied to Hornblower but wasn’t hired. “I’m not ready to retire yet, and this wasn’t the way I was expecting it to happen.” SFBG

Discovering the formula

0

› amanda@sfbg.com
San Francisco has a thing for local businesses. From Chinatown to Hayes Valley, the dozens of distinctive neighborhoods that constitute this city have for the most part maintained their individuality with one-of-a-kind, locally owned places to shop, snack, and seek services.
While many cities and small towns across the country have succumbed to the sprawl and homogeneity of chain stores, some have resisted, even in the face of lawsuits and wily campaigning from megaretailers. Big corporations including Wal-Mart, Home Depot, and Target are combating restrictive municipal legislation with their money, pouring millions into local political races and flying in paid signature gatherers for ballot referenda.
“They’re spending $100 per vote in some cases,” Stacy Mitchell told the Guardian. Mitchell is the author of Big-Box Swindle and a senior researcher for the New Rules Project, a subsidiary of the Institute of Local Self-Reliance, which tracks legislation against formula retail.
“They’re getting mixed results,” she said, which means sometimes the big boys lose, like in the multiyear battle with Inglewood that sent Wal-Mart walking. But more often than not, the formula retailers win.
Take Chicago as a recent example: Mayor Richard Daley overrode city councilors and issued his first veto in 17 years, against legislation that would have required large retailers to pay a living wage to employees. Councilors hoped to trump the mayor with another vote, but at the last minute three councilors switched positions to side with Daley.
“I still don’t understand how it happened,” said SF supervisor Tom Ammiano, who flew into Chicago to speak in favor of the legislation. He told us the city was behind it, though opponents were arguing that low-income people needed the option to work and shop at Wal-Mart and it was discriminatory to not allow the store to move into the city. “They played the race card. It was obvious they were people on [Wal-Mart’s] payroll.”
In the week since the veto, Wal-Mart has already swooped in with several site proposals for the first 20-acre megamart in Chicago. It’s stated an eventual goal of building 20 stores in the Windy City. Could Wal-Mart spite San Francisco just like it did Chicago?
Since 2004, San Francisco has operated with the Formula Retail Ordinance, designed to preserve “the city’s goal of a diverse retail base.” This isn’t an outright ban, but it makes the application and review process more arduous for formula retail. The ordinance defines formula retail as any chain with 11 or more outlets that offer standardized services or mimic one another in decor, architecture, and practices (like Starbucks, the Gap, and Wal-Mart, to name an infamous few).
The relevant legislation, Section 703.3 of the Planning Code, reads like it was penned by a Norman Rockwell acolyte and cites such businesses as generally undesirable, granting neighborhoods the right to be notified of potential chain store proposals. While the legislation allows neighborhoods to create their own stricter legislation, it also grants them the right to accept a chain into the fold, which is a pretty big loophole.
So far, most neighborhoods haven’t been welcoming. A battle in North Beach over Home Depot resulted in an outright ban of all formula retail in the neighborhood. Hayes Valley followed suit. Conditional use permits in western SoMa, Cole Valley, and Divisadero from Haight to Turk add an extra layer of scrutiny to the planning process when a Starbucks or Target want to set up shop. Potrero Hill–Showplace Square is the next in the trend, with a 12-month interim conditional-use period and a more permanent restriction on the way. That restriction was introduced by Sup. Sophie Maxwell, approved by the Land Use and Economic Development Committee, and headed to the full Board of Supervisors for initial approval Sept. 19 after Guardian press time.
Maxwell’s legislation could become moot this November if voters approve Proposition G, the Small Business Protection Act, which would extend conditional-use permitting to the entire city, making any proposal from a chain store subject to public hearings and an arduous Environmental Impact Review at the expense of the applicant, not the city.
Dozens of counties and municipalities have enacted similar ordinances around the country in response to the track records of megaretailers. Public criticism is mounting against corporations such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot for drawing the shopping masses by reducing prices to quash smaller competitors and for pulling profits out of communities instead of keeping them local, as small businesses tend to do.
But the chain stores aren’t just rolling over.
“It’s happening in enough places that it’s reached a point where they’re feeling nervous about how it’s affecting their growth,” Mitchell said about the retail giants. Her organization has been assisting communities for several years in drafting legislation against formula retail and is seeing some of that legislation undercut by voracious chain stores. Wal-Mart, the most notorious foe, dumps thousands of dollars into local election races. The tactic is especially evident in California.
“Wal-Mart spends more in California than anywhere,” said Nu Wexler, spokesperson for Wal-Mart Watch, a Washington-based organization with hawk eyes on the company. “They have active lobbying in all 50 states, but California is a particularly important market for them.”
He attributes that to the state’s status as the sixth-largest economy in the world. In 2002, Wal-Mart promised to open 40 supercenters in the state within four to six years. As of October 2005, only six had been opened. “They’re fighting expansion battles all over the country, but they’re having an especially difficult time in California,” Wexler said. Inglewood, Turlock, and Hercules have all recently dodged Wal-Mart.
But several other cities have not, despite protective measures, and in the last year 12 more supercenters have opened in California, bringing the grand total to 19.
Contra Costa County, apropos of no immediate threat, passed a 2003 ordinance prohibiting “big box” stores over 90,000 square feet. In response, Wal-Mart dumped more than $1.5 million campaigning for a measure overriding the ordinance on the next available ballot. In 2004, the ordinance was overturned by 54 percent of voters.
Four years of fighting in Rosemead resulted in two city council shake-ups, with a recall election of two council members set to be decided this week; a possible Brown Act violation when city officials approved a permit for Wal-Mart during a meeting when it wasn’t on the agenda; and multiple lawsuits from both sides. Wal-Mart spent $200,000 campaigning and dropped another $100,000 in local charities to spread some good cheer. It worked: doors opened at a new supercenter Sept. 18.
Last August, a Wal-Mart opened just across the bay in Oakland even though the city already had a ban on big-box retail larger than 2.5 acres. Spurning the city’s provincial laws, Wal-Mart found real estate regulated by the Port of Oakland — which, similar to San Francisco’s port, is outside the city’s jurisdiction and not subject to local ordinances.
“It was passed in a backroom deal with the port before the city could have any public hearings,” said Adam Gold, a spokesperson from Just Cause Oakland, a local group that opposed the store. “It made it difficult to resist it. It had already been approved.”
At the state level, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently vetoed Senate Bill 1414, introduced by San Francisco’s state senator Carol Migden, which would have required employers with more than 10,000 workers to put 8 percent of total wages toward health care. Not a surprise: Wal-Mart’s Walton family dropped more than half a million dollars into electing the governor, with a most timely donation of $250,000 last year on the very day he vetoed legislation aimed at Wal-Mart that would have required businesses to disclose when employees use public health care services.
Two other bills, SB1523, requiring environmental impact reports and public hearings for the construction of stores larger than 100,000 square feet, and SB1818, allowing cities to recover legal fees when sued by big-box retailers, sailed through the legislature but are currently festering on the governor’s desk.
Is it all enough to protect San Francisco? Can the city keep mom and pop on the corners and resist the commercialism that has made a city like Emeryville the mall that it is today?
Maxwell, who pushed the recent legislation for Showplace Square and Potrero Hill, hopes so. “I’d rather have the position of them on the offense than the defense,” she said of potential retail applicants. When asked if the city codes are strict enough, she said, “If not, I’d be willing to put forth the legislation that is.”
As for the idea of Wal-Mart coming to town, the District 10 supervisor was nothing if not firm: “No, no way. Not in San Francisco.” SFBG

EDITOR’S NOTES

0

› tredmond@sfbg.com
I was out of town when Sue Bierman died Aug. 6, her car crashing into a Dumpster near her Haight Ashbury home, in the neighborhood she loved. I was out of cell phone range and had no real Internet access, and the papers in Upstate New York didn’t carry the story. So I didn’t learn until I got home that San Francisco had lost one of its most vibrant, funny, warm, and passionate political voices.
Bierman, a native of Fremont, Neb., arrived in San Francisco in 1950. She was part of the first generation of urban environmentalists and was there at the birth of a movement that would change American cities forever.
The city that Sue Bierman adopted as her home was still largely a human-scale metropolis, a town coming out of World War II with a mix of blue-collar industry, a thriving waterfront, and a diverse population.
Her tenure as an activist tracked almost perfectly with the postwar assault on San Francisco by greedy real estate developers, speculators, and politicians who carried their water. She was part of the infamous freeway revolt, the successful effort by Haight residents to block a new elevated freeway that would have soared over part of Golden Gate Park. She was an early member of the anti–high rise crew that realized how intensive downtown development was going to turn San Francisco into another Manhattan. And when the late mayor George Moscone appointed her to the Planning Commission, she was a lonely voice for sanity through 16 years of development madness.
I first met her in 1983 when I was a young reporter covering planning and she was the only member of the commission who would ever come out against any major high-rise project. Over and over, she lost 6–1 votes.
When she was elected supervisor in 1990, she was not only a staunch environmentalist and neighborhood advocate but one of the few on the board at the time who really understood public power: as she would constantly remind her colleagues, she came from a state where electricity could never be sold by private entities for private profit.
And through year after year of brutal defeats, she kept not only her spirit but her sense of humor — and her personal warmth. She had none of the bitter anger that a lot of us took from that era. In fact, even when I criticized her both in private and in print for her loyalty to Willie Brown, she remained a friend. She never once had a harsh word to say to me.
A part of San Francisco passed when she died.
In other news: Supervisor Bevan Dufty insists he hates negative politics and won’t attack other candidates. And yet, the following appeared in Matier and Ross on Aug. 20:
“The campaign is barely under way, and already the mud balls are being lobbed. In this case, it’s a 1995 news clip from the Chicago Tribune describing how [Dufty opponent Alix] Rosenthal, then a 22-year-old senior at Northwestern University, abruptly resigned as student body president rather than face an impeachment hearing over a campaign finance scandal.
“Her sin: Exceeding the campaign spending limit by $26.06.”
Well, somebody dredged that up and leaked it to the press. Anyone you know, Bevan? SFBG
A memorial service for Bierman is set for Sept. 3 from 2 to 4 p.m. at Delancey Street Foundation, 600 Embarcadero, San Francisco.

Rock’s black back pages

0

› a&eletters@sfbg.com
Tim Cohen sits at a table cutting up playing cards.
The Black Fiction vocalist-guitarist-songwriter has convinced himself that the meaty torsos of every jack, queen, and king are spelling out something big. He flings the disembodied heads into a pile and arranges the stately bodies to spell out Black Fiction Ghost Ride. Across the table keyboardist Joe Roberts is gathering the heads. Arranging the sovereign noggins into a gruesome and fantastical pile, Roberts sketches out the story: it is Raphael the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle who has cut off these heads, and he stands over his trophies, his sais dripping red. Ghost Ride (Howells Transmitter), the debut from San Francisco’s Black Fiction, wins points for whimsically macabre album art.
They’ve been called everything from “the Arcade Fire on a peyote-laced vision quest” (FlavorPill SF) to “pop music for little kids on acid” (an audience member). It seems that Black Fiction are simply too wriggly to rest under any thumb or umbrella. Online reviewers are drowning in genre jargon — psych-soul, freak folk — and struggling to wrap reason around the light that Ghost Ride emits.
I caught up with Cohen on his lunch break from Amoeba Music in San Francisco to get his take on the response. “I’d hate for someone to have an idea of what they are going to hear and not be open to us sounding like something else,” he said. In one sweeping sentence Cohen nailed it. Black Fiction is “something else.” Or to make it snarky, if you please, “else-fi.” The plain truth is that it is difficult to speak for this album because it speaks so loudly for itself — though it may be speaking in tongues.
The apocalyptic “Great Mystery” plucks, bounces, and drags at once, ripening with lyrical delicacies like “Farmers in the fields will grow the world’s weight in corn/ We will cream it for the babies that have yet to be born/ We will leave it in the sewers for the rats and the worms/ We will store it in the cupboards for the coming storm.”
“Carry Him Away” feels as urgent and hopeless as rushing into a tidal wave before it slams down on top of you. The harmonica- and glockenspiel-laced tune taunts with the invasively ironic refrain of “music is a terrible thing.” The phrase might not be so tongue-in-cheek, considering that Cohen, Black Fiction’s primary songwriter, has some reservations about music industry conventions.
For starters, the notorious multi-instrumentalist has a flimsy history of formal musical training. “Basically, if I can figure out how to make a sound on an instrument, I can figure out how to play it,” Cohen explained before deadpanning, “I can play the recorder as well as any eight-year-old.” Conservatory learning isn’t the only grain Cohen is going against. October will bring a minitour stretching over parts of California, but the year-old band — which includes percussionists Jon Bernson and Jason Chavez, multi-instrumentalist Anthony Marin, and bassist Evan Martin — is being patient about planning a longer route. “If we are going to tour, we want to do it right,” said the bandleader. “You need to know about the evils of the industry and guard yourself from them. I have a lot of apprehensions about asking people to help us out — I don’t do a lot of schmoozing. I’m a musician at heart, and that’s all I want to do.”
The tracks of Ghost Ride were painstakingly recorded on a Tascam 388, a reel-to-reel eight-track. The idea was borrowed from local songwriter Kelley Stoltz, who recorded Antique Glow on the same machine. The 388 is unique because it is essentially an entire sound console complete with EQ built into an easily transportable recorder. “I appreciate the qualities of analog recording over digital,” Cohen explained. “Digital recording isn’t as challenging — you can just cut and paste your stuff together.” As I upload the tracks of Ghost Ride into the inner sanctum of my iPod mini, my cheeks begin to sweat a bitter taste of shame — I can only ascribe it to the way an amateur wine connoisseur must feel after plopping a few ice cubes into a well-crafted sauvignon blanc.
Live, Black Fiction take the form of a whirling dervish minstrel show. Intensely cerebral and bubbling over with epileptic grace, the album projects a whimsical playfulness in full force onstage. They will melt off your musical preconceptions. You will run to the merchandise stand to buy this album.
They toppled Noise Poppers last year like a house of vandalized playing cards, leaving the audience with the same “what the hell just happened?” epiphany that early Velvet Underground and Talking Heads audiences must have felt. Black Fiction are laying down some new bricks. I can’t wait to see where they lead. SFBG
BLACK FICTION
With Tussle and the Dry Spells
Sat/26, 9 p.m.
Cafe du Nord
2170 Market, SF
$10
(415) 861-5016
www.blackfictionband.com

A sister fears Halloween in the Castro

0

OPINION Any attempt to organize an official Halloween in the Castro is a terrible idea, maybe even a deadly one. But before I rant, let me give a little history. In the wake of the Oct. 17, 1989, Loma Prieta earthquake, a BBC story reported that “a massive rescue effort is now underway in what experts believe is the second biggest earthquake ever to hit the United States.”
More than 3,500 people were injured and 100,000 buildings damaged. For this reason, a few members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence made a spontaneous decision to stand in the Castro among the drag queens and costumed folk that Halloween to put on street theater and collect donations for the mayor’s relief fund for the victims of the earthquake. A brilliant move. We collected thousands.
This put a bee in our bonnets … er … wimples to use Halloween as a fun fundraiser the next year. A tremendous success. Each year the caliber of entertainment drew more people and brought in more donations, enabling us to entertain the otherwise unruly crowds while collecting donations for AIDS charities. The events were a hit, until we saw attendees getting hit — with bottles, bats, and other deadly weapons — by drunken gay-bashers out to get their kicks. The next year we saw that police checking for weapons had collected garbage cans full of baseball bats, hammers, knives, axes (none of these were the rubber kind), and many blunt instruments that could harm people. I saw someone with a mask running a gas-powered chain saw. But when police told us that among other weapons they had confiscated an AK-47 assault rifle, that was the year the Sisters were through with Halloween in the Castro, frightened that an event we had sponsored might bring about death.
So we tried something different. Luring people away from the Castro and into a private club, we turned the Pleasuredome in SoMa into a Halloween-themed party space with ornate All Hallows Eve–oriented backdrops and props. We had stellar entertainment, and the door charge went to AIDS and cancer charities. There was only one rule: you had to be in costume. The event was called HallowQueen, with the slogan “Evolve with the Sisters as Halloween moves to the next level.” It was successful in getting people out of the Castro and into a safe space, but we couldn’t afford to do it again on our meager budget.
The attempt to move the party to the Civic Center did not work because of poor planning and insufficient advance public relations. And since the Castro was still gated off, the queer-bashers thought that was the better locale in which to be violent. There were several stabbings that year.
There should be no official gathering in the Castro. No gates set up to make it look like an event. Police should infiltrate the area to keep peace but not harass the costumed folk. And something must be scheduled by the city outside the Castro and managed well to draw the crowd away to safety. Then perhaps the Sisters will get involved again. Then maybe the Sisters will MC and run a stage. But as it is now, the cordoned-off section of the “official” Halloween will end at Market and Castro. That is potentially deadly — inviting bashers and spoilers to assemble right at the very entrance of the Castro. Boo! SFBG
Sister Dana Van Iquity
Sister Dana Van Iquity is a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

Blow up

0

› kimberly@sfbg.com
SONIC REDUCER I’ve lived in the Bay Area for more years than I ever imagined I would back in my nomadic grad student days and devoured my share of quintessentially San Francisco experiences, like parking on the faux median on Valencia and falling drunkenly off an It’s Tops fountain stool round about 3 a.m. after tucking into a few too many down the street at Zeitgeist. But the one must-see post-punk happening I’ve always missed — never at the wrong place at the right time — was Survival Research Laboratories in full-effect performance mode. No wonder — weary of being shut down by the local fuzz and fire officials, founder Mark Pauline told me three years ago that SRL had decided to lavish their monstrous, robotic attentions on tolerant, fire-retardant overseas audiences in Europe and Japan instead — that is, until Aug. 11, when the longtime Potrero Hill area crew unfurled a new three-ring destructo-circus titled Ghostly Scenes of Infernal Desecration at the Zero One festival in San Jose.
I hightailed it down to downtown San Jose to catch the seldom-sighted SRL flash their permits, then proceed to burn it all down. Late for the last media seating, I was told it was all good because SRL were moving very slowly (as slowly and deadly as their ’bots, I presumed) and to please have a survival kit in a brown paper sack: peanut butter crackers, Chips Ahoy!, a moist towelette, a bottle of water, and a pair of earplugs. In the back of the hall, the jumpsuited and helmeted SRL crew strolled merrily around, throwing bottles of water playfully at each other, testing flamethrowers, as we studied the grounds for signs of action. It felt like fishing or bird-watching — only the critters were big hunks of metal and the gods were knowing wiseacres who wear lots of black.
With an ominous turbine wail or two later it began — as a giant inverted foiled cross spun in place like a sacrilegious music box, a giant gold figure with a massive red phallus dropped Styrofoam balls, and a doghouse sheltering Cerebus shuddered. Purple lighting shot out of a towering Tesla coil and a woman beside me started screaming, “Omigod, that’s so cool!” Sorry, we all weren’t that dweebish — although almost everyone in earshot tended to laugh nervously in both fear and amazement as fire poured out of several flamethrowers in our corner and blew toasty gusts against our faces.
If you, er, burn at Black Rock, I guess you could consider this a preview of sorts. At one point, about five machines, including a short, squat teapotlike ’bot, were firing on all cylinders, blaze-wise, and that’s not even counting the V-1, a fire-farting flamethrower-shockwave canon that resembles the butt of a jet fighter. And of course fire without smoke loses a bit of the drama, so roving smoke machines were placed behind large rectangular photo screens depicting a gas station on fire, gap-mouthed kids, etc. And of course the flames started to spread, eating up the gold idols and turning the Lord of Balls into an impressive column of heat. Sparks flew into the sky, robots like the crabby, clutching Inchworm tussled in the center of it all, and the ungodly din of popping, whirring, and grinding sounded for all the world like a construction crew armed with Boeing engines run amok and set to detonate. What other mob would pride itself on creating “the loudest flamethrower in history”?
Me, I had to duck when the loudest machine of all, the shockwave canon, started lobbing rings of air left and right of our heads, taking the leaves off the surrounding trees. In the process of putting together a robot army, SRL created their own scary symphony, their own atonal, noise-drenched Ride of the Valkyries to go along with their future-war enactments. And by the end, even the hausfrauen in the bleachers raved about how they couldn’t tear their eyes away from the smoke- and noise-belching spectacle. In the aftermath, viewers gathered around the barriers like groupies, bickering over which ’bot was their favorite and picking the brains of the SRL-ers. Thank Vulcan, some things were sacred — there were no T-shirts on sale. Those are on the fire-retardant Web site (srl.org).
TACO LIBRE I suspect it takes either careful SRL-style planning — or its carefree antithesis — to achieve a much-coveted sense of freedom in performance — the latter approach is doubtless embraced by Inca Ore, a.k.a. Eva Saelens, once of Portland, Ore.’s Jackie-O Motherfucker and the Alarmist and of the Bay’s Gang Wizard and Axolotl. She was happily howling at the full moon in Oakland last week with her paramour and collaborator, Lemon Bear, in celebration of their noise–improv–sex magik album, The Birds in the Bushes (5RC, 2006), recorded in a cabin outside Tillamook, Ore. I spoke to the sweet, uncensored Saelens at about midnight, after some enchanted evening spent slow dancing in a parking lot to Mexican radio, finding inspiration in a fish taco, and playing music under the stars.
Saelens, 26, may not completely adore her current O-town abode — “It’s criminal how not affordable it is” — but at least she’s not on tour, as she has been for long periods with Jackie-O, Yellow Swans, and Axolotl. “When I was in Europe, we drove through Provence from Italy to Spain, and we couldn’t even get out to smell the lavender — we were so late,” she said sadly. “Touring is so frustrating — you really have to juice yourself. Even sometimes doing improv, it isn’t easy to bring it, but when you break through it’s like being in another world. Sometimes I’ll try to push an explosion or try to lose my mind, and if you do that on a nightly basis, it’s unreliable and it’s also abusive. You’re pushing your emotions in an athletic way, almost, and sometimes your body refuses to compete.”
For Saelens, it’s now a race to reach a meditative spot with a violin or clarinet — a change from the spooked state of her album. “We played the stove a lot, banged on bottles,” she said. This after Lemon Bear hacked his toe while chopping wood barefoot one morning. “We got sloppy — we were so happy.” SFBG
INCA ORE
Tues/22, 8 p.m.
Thee Parkside
1600 17th St., SF
Call for price
(415) 503-0393
Also with Tom Carter (and Ghosting, Bonus, and Axolotl)
Hemlock Tavern
1131 Polk St.
$6
(415) 923-0923