Review

Remembering Peter L. Petrakis, the pioneering Guardian investigative reporter who exposed the biggest urban scandal in U.S. history

Maria Poblet
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Peter L. “Pete” Petrakis was the Guardian investigative reporter who developed the stories in the mid-1970s that became known to Guardian readers as the PG&E/Raker Act scandal.

Pete died Feb. 28 in Everett, Washington.

In story after story, Pete laid out the scandal that the local media had buried for generations: how PG&E had in effect stolen San Francisco’s electrical power supply from the Hetch Hetchy dam in violation of the public power mandates of the federal Raker Act of 1913. The act allowed the city an unprecedented concession, to build a dam in a national park (Yosemite), on condition that the city have a public water and public power system. Pete detailed how PG&E used its corporate and political muscle to keep the cheap, green, hydro power from city residents and businesses and instead forced them to buy PG&E’s expensive private power, at a cost through the years of billions of dollars.

Pete learned of the scandal in the mid-1960s as a student of Prof. J. B. Neilands, a biochemistry professor and citizen activist at the University of California-Berkeley.

Joe Neilands had in the late 1950s started the campaign in his living room in the Berkeley Hills that ended up stopping PG&E from building a nuclear power plant upwind of San Francisco at Bodega Bay.

This was a truly historic victory of citizens fighting the local private utility, as recent events have demonstrated with the nuclear disaster in Japan.

In the process of researching the Bodega Bay story, Joe came upon an even bigger scandal: the PG&E/Raker Act scandal. After winning at Bodega Bay, Joe did the research into the scandal and then brought it to me shortly after the Guardian began publication in 1966.

This was a huge story and I remember saying, “Joe, why are you bringing a big story like this to me?” He replied, “Nobody else will print it, because of PG&E. You’re my only hope. If you don’t print the story, nobody will.”

I was happy to publish Joe’s story and it appeared in our March 27, 1969 edition, pretty much as Joe wrote it. The story was solid, and created ripples, but it was only a start because PG&E had successfully managed to bury the scandal over the years, and had used its political muscle to keep San Francisco’s City Hall  as a virtual PG&E subsidiary. The story needed much more research and development on several levels.

A few weeks after Joe’s story appeared, Pete came to me at the Guardian with the big new angle. He had figured out that the city’s charter revision committee was about to gut quietly the provision in the 1932 charter that updated the Raker Act and mandated the city to “gradually acquire” and “ultimately own” its own power system.  Pete swung into action with a three page story on Sept. 30, 1969,  that detailed the capitulation to PG@E  under the headline: “The Charter Board–afraid to enforce the Raker Act and bring cheap public power to San Francisco.”

He added a timeline: “How to Hetch Hetchy the city charter.” And he explained that “to Hetch Hetchy” meant to “confuse and confound the public by adroit acts and deceptive words in order to turn to private corporate profit a trust set up for the people” This was a quote used by U.S. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes in a speech to the Commonwealth Club in 1941 in support of a bond issue to buy out PG&E. PG&E Hetch Hetchyed the bond campaign to death and it lost.

In short, Pete dug into the scandal  with gusto and research skill and wicked wit. He  produced several major stories over a five year period  with shocking new information on how  PG&E was systematically screwing the city by stealing its Hetch Hetchy power. Each year, we would turn Pete’s  stories over to the civil grand jury, with his documentation, and formally ask  the grand jury to investigate the Hetch Hetchy scandal and make a report and recommendation.

Finally, in 1974, the grand jury to our great surprise came out with a report that corroborated Pete’s reporting. As our editorial put it in our Jan. 17, 1974 edition, “In short, the grand jury has corroborated almost everything the Guardian has been saying about the Hetch Hetchy scandal for the past five years…
What the grand jury did was to independently review the history of the Raker Act and the performance of the city in fulfilling its conditions. The jury retraced our steps, read documentation we have read and some we haven’t, never once quoted us or cited us and still came to the same conclusion–that San Francisco is forbidden to transfer Hetch Hetchy power to private utilities.but is nonetheless doing so, and that PG&E must be replaced in San Francisco by a municipal power and light department.”

As it had for years, City Hall and the local media promptly buried the story. And PG&E quietly put its surrogates into succeeding grand juries to bury the report and see that it would never again see the light of day.

As Pete noted wryly, “Are San Franciscans too dumb to run their own electricity system? As the grand jury pointed out in the relevant point of comparison, our water bills are lower today than they were 40 years ago before the city acquired the Spring Valley Water Company. How high are our utility bills after seven PG&E rate increases just this last year?”

Pete was an editor’s dream, using his science training to be thorough, accurate, fair, and on point.  Not once did a story “bounce” and never did anyone catch him in a factual mistake. He put legs and muscle on the the PG&E/Raker Act story that helped inspire three public power campaigns and a  strong public power movement in the city with a passion to enforce the Raker Act, kick PG&E out of City Hall, and bring our own Hetch Hetchy power to our citizens and businesses in San Francisco.

Pete was born on July 9, 1928, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the second son of first generation Greek immigrants. Pete served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War at the military hospital in Rantoul, Illinois. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology from the University of South Dakota, a Master of Science in Biochemistry from the University of Oklahoma, a PHD in Biochemistry from the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, and an MPH from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. He taught biochemistry at San Francisco State University.

Pete married Lorraine (Mardie) Tecklenberg in 1953. They moved to San Francisco in l959 where they raised two daughters.

Pete left the Guardian in the mid-1970s and went to Washington, D.C. to use his new journalistic skills to start a new career as a technical writer and editor.

He worked first as the editor of AMINCO (American Instrument Company) News and later as a writer-editor for many U.S. government agencies. He was an award-winning science writer for the National Institutes of Health. Pete met and married his second wife, Julia, in 1982, and the couple lived in Annapolis, Maryland, before relocating to Camano, Island, Washington where they lived for 20 years. Using online technology, Pete continued the editorial work of his one-man company, Life Sciences Editorial Services. Earlier, Pete had purchased one of the first home computers a VectoGraphic, taught himself programming and in the 1990s wrote and distributed commercially a DOS software program, TimeSet.

Pete was something of a renaissance man. His formal education was in the sciences, but he was an enthusiastic self-learner and student of American culture, politics, and history. Most recently, he was researching climate change. He enjoyed taking his family traveling and camping throughout the U.S., working to ensure his daughters had outdoor survival skills and and an appreciation of national parks. He loved jazz and bluegrass music. With no formal musical training, he taught himself to play banjo, guitar, fiddle and mandolin, and he designed and hand-crafted 5-string banjos.

He was also an avid astronomer and built several reflecting telescopes and enjoyed participating in neighborhood “star” parties. In 1973, he took his family to Africa to witness and record on film one of the longest total solar eclipses of modern times.

Pete is survived by his wife Julia of Camano Island; daughters Sonya Lee Petrakis and her husband Bruce Couch of Lake Oswego, Oregon; Tina Petrakis and her son, Lorenzo of Pacifica; brother Nicholas and his wife Patricia of San Francisco; step-daughter, Elizabeth Stam, her husband, Randy Kinnunen, and their two daughters, Julia and Caitlin, all of Camano Island; step-son, Allan Stam, his wife Eileen, and their three sons of Saline, Michigan.

At Pete’s request, a Celebration of Life service was held privately at the family home on March 13. Pete requested memorial contributions be made to the American Red Cross. Condolences can be sent to Julia Petrakis at petrakisjw@yahoo.com.

So long, Pete, you left the Guardian and San Francisco with one helluva story. B3

Early Peter Petrakis articles, from 1969 to 1973

The Charter Board–afraid to enforce the Raker Act and bring cheap public power to San Francisco

Sept. 30, 1969

SF power — in the great tradition of Abe Ruef and Candlestick

Feb. 28, 1970

PG&E keeps public power out of UC-Berkeley

April 17, 1970

PG&E, staunch defender of private enterprise, is the biggest welfare recipient

Oct. 26, 1970

The great 1965 James K. Carr public power disaster

Dec. 23, 1970

PG&E steals $40 million a year from San Francisco

June 7, 1971

If they ration our gas and our heat, why not ration PG&E and Standar Oil Profits?

Nov. 28, 1973

 

 

 

SF in top 38 counties nationwide that deport “non-criminal aliens”

Mary Magee
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SF in top 38 counties nationwide that deport “non-criminal aliens”

So much for San Francisco being a sanctuary city. The National Day Laborer Organization (NDLON) and two other organizations have unearthed statistics that show San Francisco in the nation’s “top 38” counties, when it comes to deporting immigrants who had not been convicted of crimes.

The statistics, which the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department provided as part of a public records request,  also show that California is the top state in the nation, when it comes to deporting “non-criminal aliens,” which is how federal authorities categorize immigrants who lack visas and green cards, since both are simply violation of civil administrative law, and not criminal acts.

These revelations come as internal documents, procured by the New York Times, suggest that federal immigration officers, facing resistance from Chicago and Cook County to join ICE’s controversial Secure-Communities program, pushed local officials to secure the participation of reluctant police departments.

Immigrant advocates say these newly released documents are fueling concerns that S-Comm is being used to circumvent due process for immigrants, and futher illustrate the need for reform, at the statewide level, to avoid abuse.

But ICE refutes charges that it is circumventing due process and primarily deporting immigrants who have not committed serious crimes.
“Secure Communities is a comprehensive initiative to modernize the criminal alien enforcement process,” an ICE spokesperson told the Guardian. “While ICE prioritizes the removal of convicted criminal aliens, the agency still enforces the law with regard to other aliens who are subject to removal. In addition to criminal aliens, ICE’s priorities include other individuals who pose a potential threat to public safety – such as those with known gang affiliations and prior drunk driving arrests – as well as immigration fugitives and individuals who have tried to game the immigration system.”

ICE officials also said that their review of the latest S-Comm statistics for San Francisco County show that “more than 60 percent of the aliens who’ve come into ICE custody since Secure Communities’ local activation are convicted criminals. What’s more, nearly one third of those cases involve individuals who’ve been convicted of Level 1 offenses [felony crimes].

But NDLON spokesperson B. Loewe said the newest data show that, several years into the S-Comm program, problems that immigrant advocates have been raising since S-Comm began, are continuing.
“There is no protection for the innocent, or even victims of crime, and the program appears to lend itself to circumventing due process,” Loewe said. “The latest numbers should raise concerns for anyone who cares not just fro civil rights but also for public safety for all.”

The S-Comm statistics emerged as part of a Freedom of Information Act request that NDLON, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Immigration Justice Clinic of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law filed pertaining to ICE’s controversial Secure -Communities program.

Launched in Texas in March 2008, S-Comm involves state and local entities in the enforcement of federal immigration law by turning on a mechanism to run fingerprints through various databases when individuals are arrested, even if those individuals are brought in on minor charges or if their charges are subsequently dismissed.

“What’s most significant is that San Francisco is among the top 38 counties nationwide, and among the top 13 California counties,” said Jon Rodney, communications project coordinator at the California Immigrant Policy Center.

“The numbers speak for themselves,” said Angela Chan, a San Francisco Police Commissioner and Asian Law Caucus staff attorney. Chan noted that between October 2008, when California began implementing S-Comm, and February 2011, California has deported 35,643 local residents.
“That’s 10,000 more than Texas, which deported 24,152 residents,” Chan observed. She also noted that California is the state that deports the highest numbers of residents nationwide.
 
The top 13 counties in California deporting the highest percentage of non-criminal?  Merced, Fresno, Tulare, Solano, Monterey, Kern, San Luis Obispo, San Francisco San Joaquin, Contra Costa, Riverside, Sonoma, and Alameda, in that order.

This latest round of charges comes ten months after S-Comm was first activated in San Francisco, and fresh on the heels of Assemblymember Tom Ammiano’s announcement of AB 1081, a bill that would honor the right of local governments to opt out of the federal S-Comm and set basic safeguards for those municipalities that do decide to participate.

Chan notes that the Assembly’s Public Safety Committee will hold a hearing on AB 1081 on April 26.

“Ammiano’s bill is timely and crucial,” Chan said, noting  that California signed an S-Comm agreement without public input, notice or negotiations.

“That [process] raised concerns that California signed a boilerplate agreement that was dictated by ICE” Chan said. “And it’s part of the reason why we have such high numbers of deportations,” she continued, noting that Ammiano’s bill “connects to an existing clause,” in the memorandum of understanding  that the California Attorney General’s Office signed with ICE, back when Gov. Jerry Brown was still California Attorney General.

Ammiano’s bill would require the California Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information to modify the agreement it entered into with the US Department of Homeland Security in May 2009, regarding S-Communities. 

Meanwhile, in a March 7 memo (a copy was procured through NDLON’s public records request) ICE noted that its Secure-Comm program produced over 133,000 matches in the first five months of 2011, compared to 248,000 matches in 2010.

ICE also noted that since the program was first activated in Harris County, Texas, on Oct. 27, 2008, the agency has removed over 94,000 aliens and over 24,600 criminal aliens convicted of Level 1 (felony offenses) that were identified through the program.

“Deployment continues to be the primary driver for increased identifications,” ICE stated, observing that in the first five months of 2011, ICE will deploy S-Comm in 409 new jurisdictions. This means that by the end of May, 1,067 jurisdictions will be activated in 39 states, “covering 70 percent of the foreign non-citizen population.”

ICE’s goal is to deploy the program to an additional 488 jurisdictions by the end of 2011, bringing the total jurisdictions deployed by year’s end to 897.

But as Chan notes, Ammiano’s AB 1081 has implications for how and whether S-Comm gets activated in any more California counties,
“AB 1081 requires needed modifications to California’s S-Comm agreement, which was signed in April 2009 by California,” Chan said. “ It was one of the first, if not the first, agreement signed by a state to enter into S-Comm.  AB 1081 taps into this contract term, which allows modification and termination of the agreement, to allow counties to opt in or out of the deeply flawed program.”
 
 

Why I’m pushing pension reform

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Why I’m pushing pension reform

OPINION Some have questioned why I, as a long-time supporter of progressive policies and programs, chose to venture into the uncharted waters of pension reform. The answer is simple: I believe in the value of government, particularly in providing a safety net for the poor and those who need help. When the government no longer has the ability to provide these services, everyone suffers.

I became aware of San Francisco’s pension problem through advocating for my department’s budget. Beginning in 2005, year after year, I saw pension and benefits costs rise, while services and programs were cut or eliminated. Funding for education, parks, street repair, AIDS, senior and after-school youth programs, mental health clinics, drug treatment programs and other basic services have evaporated while pension costs continue to escalate. Today, we spend $1 out of every $7 on pension and benefit costs for city employees; in five years, it will be one out of every $4.

In the next 12 months, pension costs are projected to increase by nearly $100 million more than last year. Think of the number of jobs, programs, and services that will have to be cut to pay this debt. These costs come at a time when the city faces a $360 million budget deficit.

Some may argue that taxes should be raised to pay for these costs. Yet progressives have shied away from tax measures in these difficult economic times. Even if there is a planned tax measure this November, it would have to raise $300 million — 10 times what last November’s millionaire real estate transfer tax raised — over the next three years to keep pace with pension costs.

While conservatives have seized on rising pension and benefit costs as a vehicle to push their anti-union agenda, we cannot cede the responsibility for addressing this fiscal challenge to the right. We must protect collective bargaining for workers, while presenting a solution that strikes an appropriate balance between our obligations to retired workers and the need for continued city services.

Shortly, I will be introducing a new ballot initiative that will help reduce costs while ensuring that the pension and health benefit system is there for future generations of workers. And the initiative will do so in a manner that is fair and equitable. The highest-earning workers, including elected officials, will be asked to contribute more while the lowest-earning workers will be entirely exempt, a lesson learned from the last pension reform effort. The reforms will help eliminate the abuses of the pension system that benefit a few workers at the expense of others. Residents, elected officials, city employees, and labor leaders are invited to review the proposals at www.sfsmartreform.com and provide any comments or ideas.

The fact that pension reform is one critical component of a more comprehensive solution that may include changes to our tax policy, generation of other revenue, and even state or federal cooperation, is no reason to excuse supporting real reform.

Jeff Adachi is San Francisco’s public defender.

Sister Liz : A loving look back at “Liz: Unhinged”

John Elberling
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Sister Liz : A loving look back at “Liz: Unhinged”

This review originally appeared (as “Liztrionics: Taylor blows hinges off YBCA!”) in the Dec. 5-11, 2001 issue of the Bay Guardian:

“Elizabeth Taylor is my sister. You might as well know it.”

So begins A Superficial Estimation, poet John Wieners‘s homage to the women in his life, including his aunt, Dorothy Lamour, and his mother, Bette Davis. Overtly conflating movie stars with family is A Superficial Estimation‘s gay masterstroke, one typical of the tiny tome’s undersung author. Liz gets the first chapter; Wieners lovingly notes that she “peruses her surroundings with dignity and harmony,” which leads one to believe that he’s describing his sister before the era — 1968 to 1973 — covered in film curator Joel Shepard‘s current Yerba Buena Center for the Arts series “Liz: Unhinged.” Beginning with a Boom! and ending with Ash Wednesday‘s on-screen plastic surgery, these were Liz’s Divine years: the period when she treated audiences to one throttlehold after another, angrily rubbing their faces into her larger-than-larger-than-life image.

This is star power as deadly weaponry. Daring to dive into Liz in the book Deeper Into Movies, Pauline Kael — reviewing X, Y, and Zee — deems Taylor “Beverley Hills Chaucerian,” a “great bawd” with upholstered hair who uses vulgarity as “a form of assault.” Actually, that movie is the sweetest concoction in “Liz: Unhinged”‘s liquored quartet. (Lore has it that Boom!‘s cast began each day with Bloody Marys.) X, Y, and Zee is a sort of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?-lite, with Michael Caine pinch-hitting for Richard Burton. “I just love eating between meals,” Liz proclaims, but the real bite is in her voice, a tone that translates to “Fuck you! All of you!” Caine and smug other woman Susanna York share precious mmoments (replete with silhouettes in sunset) on the glorious coast of Scotland, but who cares when they’re up against Liz, wearing a gold headband as she roars at her hairdresser, “Yes, I am a bitch! Open and straight!”

Yes, indeed — thank god. Bitchy Liz has been credited as the first major female star to use the word “fuck” in a movie (Boom!), a rather literal factoid; her line readings regularly translate sunny nicety into no-shit-Sherlock sarcasm. When she breaks free from the florid language of Tennessee Williams, Edna O’Brien, and other, less-esteemed screenwriters, unhinged Liz shoots off an arsenal of yuck-yucks, yoo-hoos, grunts, groans, seagull shrieks of panicky delight, and crying jags that mutate into laughing fits. She triumphs over blue eye shadow. She dons kaftans, cloaks, shawls, ponchos, and diaphanous nightgowns; at one point (in Boom!) her ensemble matches the lamps in her room. And then there’s the headwear, one fur hat after another, capped by a piece (also in Boom!) that transforms her cranium into a dangerous stalactite formation. Gorge your eyes before she gouges them out.

Elizabeth Taylor (with Noël Coward) in Boom!:

Other period details recur throughout “Liz: Unhinged.” Cannelloni is devoured, mineral water flows freely, Liz’s beauty is haunted by Parma violets in not one but two of these burnt offerings: Boom! and Ash Wednesday. Liz herself is a wilted flower in the latter, but then, full-body plastic surgery (captured in loving detail) is exhausting. Especially when it’s meant to win back the arthritic caresses of Henry Fonda. Now, Liz, we know you can do better than that — even if you aren’t sick and tired of wearing loose wraps.

Joseph Losey’s Secret Ceremony locks Liz and a wigged-out Mia Farrow in a mansion to play a fatal game of pseudo-profound, authentically pretentious hide-and-seek. The same director’s Boom!, made the same year (1968) is a sort of debauched Contempt; the film finds Liz dictating her memoirs over an elaborate intercom system and entertaining the Witch of Capri (played by Noël Coward, since Katherine Hepburn — cementing her snooty, uptight image — rejected the part). “Pain…injection!” Liz’s hypochondriac gulps at the outset, shortly before Losey’s portent-laden camera lands on her biggest diamond ring. (Another bit of lore: during this era, Taylor was paid for her jet-setting film roles in rare jewels rather than money.) “Bring me my menthol inhaler and tweezers!” she demands a little later, after coughing up a lung and comparing an X-ray machine to a “baby buggy from Mars.” Death comes in the bedroom, in the form of a bloated, red-eyed Richard Burton.

Smart meters, stupid company

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Smart meters, stupid company

news@sfbg.com

Smart meters seemed like a good idea at first glance — a little wireless device that, unlike it’s dumb analogous predecessor, would track precise readings of household energy usage in real time, identifying wasteful activities and helping consumers make informed choices about conservation and consumption.

Considered a crucial first step in enabling a smart grid that would modernize the existing power grid for the information age, the technology was touted as offering potential benefits such as cheaper service, fewer new power plants and transmission lines, cleaner air, and more reliable services.

But Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s $2.2 billion program for installing smart meters has now become the subject of caustic criticism by thousands of customers and activists as the culprit for skyrocketing rates, adverse health effects, and threats to privacy.

Since deployment began in California in 2009, consumers have mobilized to halt the spread of the devices, demanding further studies of the technology and options for those who don’t want to join the rush toward a wireless world. Thirty-three local governments have called for moratoriums on the installation of the devices.

The California Public Utilities Commission, which in 2006 authorized the state’s investor-owned utility companies to install more than 10 million meters in California, has done little to quell the storm of protests and concerns. But that began to change March 10 when CPUC President Michael Peevey announced that the agency would require PG&E to develop an opt-out proposal for consumers within two weeks.

Prefacing the decision with an observation that almost every speaker against smart meters the CPUC heard from was a PG&E customer, Peevey called out Northern California residents as the main opponents to the program.

“I am directing PG&E to prepare a proposal for our consideration that will allow some form of opt-out for customers who object to these devices, at a reasonable cost to be paid by the customers who choose to opt-out,” Peevey said at the hearing. “Obviously I cannot prejudge how this commission will evaluate any such proposal by PG&E, nor can I predict what PG&E itself will propose. But I think it’s clear the time has come for some kind of movement in the direction of customer opt-outs.”

But the announcement did little to quell the opposition by the scores of customers, local governments, health professionals, and advocacy groups that claim it undercuts the true concerns while simultaneously opening another avenue the utility behemoth could profit from.

“Admitting to the problem is the first step to resolving it,” says Joshua Hart, executive director of grassroots organization Stop Smart Meters!, which has been at the forefront of the rebellion. “But we obviously think a ton of things were left out of this.”

The makeup of the meter haters spans interests and ideals, from Tea Party conservatives to liberal environmentalists. Their unifying trenchant criticism of Peevey, who was president of Edison International and Southern California Edison Company until 1995, has only increased with each meter installed. PG&E has already replaced 74 percent of its analog electrical meters and 83 percent of its gas meters.

Resolutions critical of PG&E’s smart meter deployment have been passed by many Bay Area cities and the counties of Santa Cruz and San Luis Obispo. Assemblymember Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) introduced a bill in December 2010 that would create a statewide system for opting out.

Although PG&E officials didn’t return repeated Guardian calls about the controversy, they have told other media outlets that the meters are completely safe and installation is continuing as scheduled, despite the growing furor.

 

BABY STEPS

A total of 670,000 meters are planned for San Francisco, and installation has already begun in the Marina and Richmond districts, much to the dismay of many residents. During a series of public meetings at the CPUC since 2010, dozens of people regularly line up to ask for alternative options and conclusive, third-party studies on the technology.

Speakers mainly consist of those claiming to suffer from exposure to electromagnetic fields, a condition known as electrohypersensitivity (EHS) that causes headaches, nausea, fatigue, and ringing in the ears. Sufferers liken themselves to canaries in coal mines and say smart meters are just one aspect of larger problem: understudied, overhyped wireless technology.

“The bottom line is it’s a debacle that been rolled out without any public input, without any long-term study,” Hart said. “This is the wireless technology industry being too greedy and going too far.”

Smart meters emit less powerful electromagnetic fields than many smart phones, but activists worry about the effects, both cumulative and on those with EHS, a condition recognized by the Swedish government. But here in the United States, few experts outside of holistic and alternative health circles take it seriously as a health threat.

Hart pointed to the recent publication of a study by the National Institutes of Health finding cell phone emissions affect brain activity, calling it the “smoking gun.” But most scientists found the report inconclusive about how that stimulation affects the brain.

Yet the activists have held regular protests lambasting PG&E for endangering their health and invading their privacy. “This is forced installation of untested devices on an unwilling public,” Carol Page of Marin County told us at a large Feb. 24 protest outside the CPUC meeting in San Francisco. “It’s time this commission stopped enabling and started regulating.”

CPUC officials have said there was no need for additional analysis of the program, arguing that the meters are safe and that installation is a routine procedure allowed under existing utility contracts.

But the venerable consumer watchdog The Utility Reform Network (TURN) has long-opposed the program, focusing primarily on its cost and privacy threats from the data that is being transmitted. Hundreds of customers have contacted TURN to complain about the meters, and the group says Peevey’s policy change misses the mark.

“It’s certainly a step in the right direction, but the devil is going to be in the details,” TURN spokesperson Mindy Spatt told us. “We would review any proposal to charge customers very carefully. We don’t want to see them have pay again.”

She said PG&E’s consumer outreach efforts have been “abysmal,” and TURN supports a moratorium on smart meter installation.

“We are not hearing from any people who are benefiting from it,” Spatt said. “We are hearing from people who are upset about it, and we remain unconvinced that these meters offer any benefits commensurate with their costs.”

TURN’s website offers a flyer that reads “Do Not Install,” which customers can print and place on their analog meter. Wellington Energy, the company performing installations, has respected the signs, Spatt said.

“The flyer is still getting tons and tons of play,” Spatt said. “PG&E has done nothing to address customers who say that the smart meter is unwanted and unwelcome. We are very anxious to see what sort of an opt-out they can offer.”

Although the flyer conveyed a direct message to utilities, some chose the more radical route of blocking installation physically. In January, two women, one a grandmother, were arrested in Rohnert Park for blocking a Wellington truck carrying a load of smart meters.

Sandi Maurer, founder of the EMF Safety Network, believes the movement from the CPUC falls short of taking real action addressing the threat of harmful electromagnetic frequencies to the environment and human health.

“We really need a moratorium while we study the health impacts and have evidentiary hearings where we could determine whether they are safe,” she said. In December 2010, the EMF Safety Network’s request for the CPUC to open an investigation into smart meters was denied.

 

CUSTOMER DISSERVICE

One smart meter claim the CPUC did investigate was the allegation that the new meters weren’t accurate, following up on more than 600 complaints from customers that their energy bills shot up after the new meters were installed.

The Structure Group, a Houston-based consulting company, tested 750 smart meters and 147 electromechanical meters and concluded that they worked fine. But the study also found that PG&E didn’t properly handle the complaints.

“PG&E’s process did not address the customer concerns associated with the new equipment and usage changes,” the report said. “Some customers interviewed during this assessment did not consider their complaint resolved, despite indications from PG&E and the CPUC that the customer agreed with the resolution.”

As a demonstration of how the program could have been rolled out differently, one needs only to look up the road to Sacramento. The publicly owned Sacramento Municipal Utilities District has installed 184,000 meters and encountered little opposition.

“I’ve seen what’s happening in the Bay Area and we haven’t seen anything like that whatsoever,” SMUD spokesperson Chris Capra said. “I’m amazed at the difference in our customers compared with customers around the country. “

Capra credits the relative embrace of the meters to the method SMUD used to mobilize them. Before installing any meters, SMUD build its wireless network. Then SMUD installed 78,000 trial meters in two separate areas — one in close-quartered downtown and one in suburban areas — to see how the meters behaved under topographical and proximity challenges. Then it led the meters through automated trials doubled with traditional manual reads and found that they were 99 percent accurate.

“We wanted to be certain before we began with full deployment,” Capra said. “We had estimated reads, manual reads, and made sure everything is functional. “

But some problems go beyond customer service. Along with health and safety concerns, critics remain unconvinced that the smart meters live up to their purported benefits to consumers, even though they’re the ones paying for the program.

“If I wanted to monitor my usage, I could go buy an in-home electricity monitor myself and just plug it in,” Maurer said. “For utilities to say we absolutely need this technology to reduce energy costs is false.”

Privacy advocates warn the meters could erode the privacy of daily life unless regulators limit data collection and disclosure. In a joint filing in March 2010, the Center for Democracy and Technology and the Electronic Frontier Foundation urged the CPUC to adopt rules to protect consumer’s energy usage information.

“Smart meters generate more information in formats easier to share and analyze, which is part of the future of energy utilization,” said Jim Dempsey, vice president of public policy at CDT. “That being said, some significant questions remain.”

Smart meters collect 750 to 3,000 data points a month per household. This detailed energy usage data can indicate whether someone is at home or out, how many people are in the house, and if they are using particular appliances. In effort to stave off data mining by marketers or hackers, CDT and EFF urged the CPUC to adopt comprehensive privacy standards for the collection, retention, use and disclosure of consumers’ household energy data.

Smart meters represent a worst case scenario in terms of security, Dempsey warned. Not only do they lack sufficient power to execute strong security software, they are easily accessible and installed in numbers large enough that a few may not be missed if they are stolen. The safest way to protect cyber security is to assume from the outset that they will be attacked.

“You are not going to stop technology and the benefits,” said Dempsey. “It’s hard to say we should not take advantage of something that gives us more information, but you need corresponding security. It’s not too late to adopt the privacy rules, and we certainly hope that the commission will do that soon.”

CDT and EFF say that utilities collecting the data from smart meters must set rules specifying in advance how data will be used. Disclosing information to marketers and government agencies should be restricted.

“Smart meters really do penetrate into the ways we live in ways that no other technology is doing now,” said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney at EFF. “It’s a special circumstance because there isn’t anything else like this that is in everyone’s home.”

 

STUDYING METERS

As opposition increased along with the installations, further requests for investigation into the program were filed. In July 2010, Huffman asked the California Center for Science and Technology to analyze whether the federal safety standards were sufficiently protective of public health, a move that was supported by fellow Assemblymember Bill Monning (D-Carmel) and the City of Mill Valley.

In December, Huffman also introduced Assembly Bill 37, directing the CPUC to offer an opt out alternative to customers who did not want smart meters and to disclose important information to the public. However, like the ordinances passed throughout the state, the move was largely symbolic and wouldn’t be implemented until the time most installations would have been completed in 2012.

The report released by the CCST in January analyzed the threat posed by smart meters, concluding that additional research was needed to accurately gauge the potential threat and had found “no clear evidence that additional standards were needed to protect the public from smart meters or other common household devices.”

The report has since served as a reference point for both PG&E and the CPUC as evidence of safety of the meters. Nevertheless, consumer groups dispute the findings.

“We need investigations from a truly independent third party, not an industry-promoting group hired by PG&E,” Maurer said. “We need evidentiary hearings on the health impacts of microwave facilities. Every time someone buys a new wireless router on a cell phone, it’s a drop in the bucket of more wireless technology. But [with smart meters] we’re talking about a massive increase of the density of these wireless emissions.”

The CPUC’s Division of Ratepayer Advocates was also unconvinced by the CCST’s conclusion. It noticed that the report did not fully explore issues related to cumulative exposure or from multiple co-located meters, as would be the case on apartment buildings and close quarters typical in San Francisco.

A California Senate bill imposing restrictions and revisions on utilities regarding their handling of smart meter information passed in February 2010, and in June the CPUC announced it had adopted a framework requiring utilities to modernize security standards, but details on upgrades have not appeared.

For now, protesters remain focused on pressuring regulators to stop the installation and they plan to keep up the fight for as long as needed.

“It is shock and awe to get the meters installed before people figure out that they are being scammed,” Hart said. “Until there is a moratorium called, we are urging people to resist. Stopping smart meters is just one part of the battle against the telecommunications companies.”

Live Review: Warpaint at The Independent, 3/16

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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0

The anticipation was brewing: even before the the ladies of Warpaint took the stage at the Independent, a guy standing at front and center passed out. His muscle failure could have been a product of over-intoxication, but I’m guessing it was an overdose of hard excitement. I admit, I too got the jimmy-legs during the show but I managed to keep them clenched until the encore came to a wow-worthy close. And then I hit the floor with a smirk. 

The LA band of four was nothing short of stunning. The set was gorgeously long, stacked with songs from their debut, The Fool [Rough Trade, 2010] and an exceptional jam-session during the encore. The guitars were intense, the drums fierce and the bass lines sanded rough edges with impressive force. Warpaint rocks hard and yet continually taunts with such an eerie, feminine mystique. 

It’s the girly details I liked best: Theresa Wayman hugs her guitar while she sings, Emily Kokal’s hips sway while she plucks a rift, the constant and very mischievous smirk on drummer Stella Mozgawa’s lips and Jenny Lee Lindberg’s relentless wild-child energy. They laughed, they kissed and hugged and flirted– and all the while the music was still totally rad and introspective. Harmonies oozed like honey from the nest and the simultaneous head-banging kept emotions on the rail. They drew the crowd in with a taunting index finger and then pushed us flat down when we got too close. It was the perfect mix of sensual and edgy. 

The Warpaint women are obviously best buds and their complimentary energies explode on stage. They’re like an upgraded version of the Babysitters Club— a hippie, feminist, grown-up version of the girl clan that could have been totally badass if they had traded all their boy-drama and horseback riding for band practice. 

I already totally loved the recorded version of Warpaint but their live performance upgraded my feelings to overflowing admiration for their mad skills, sex appeal and sweetness. No doubt this group is going to blow up and it’s totally deserved. 

Lit: A Slow Death: 83 Days of Radiation Sickness

John Elberling
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Lit: A Slow Death: 83 Days of Radiation Sickness

This review originally appeared in the Jan. 7-13, 2009 issue of the Bay Guardian:

John Gall’s art for A Slow Death: 83 Days of Radiation Sickness (Vertical 160 pages $19.95) is unique in a gaze-snatching fashion. It combines hues of yellow and green, block patterns, and a news photo backdrop into an attractive, enigmatic, and faintly disturbing image that makes a browser wonder, “What exactly is inside this book?”

The answer is an account of a nuclear plant worker’s gradual demise after he was accidentally exposed to 20,000 times the maximum tolerable amount of neutron beam radiation. As some alleged environmentalists (including figureheads such as Al Gore) have begun touting the benefits of “non-carbon sources” of energy — an evasive way of saying “atomic power” — Hisashi Ouchi’s death comes across as an extreme cautionary tale.

Credited to NHK-TV “Tokaimura Criticality Accident Crew” and constructed from a television documentary about the nuclear accident, A Slow Death bluntly but compassionately renders Ouchi’s physical symptoms, which included massive skin loss, and the emotional impact his plight had on the doctors and nurses who treated him. The last extraordinary aspect of Ouchi’s story involves his heart, which persevered and remained relatively healthy while the rest of him demonstrated the impact of radiation. As the book puts it, “it continued living amidst the destruction of virtually every other cell in his body.” 

Board considers extra $75.4 million for Mission Bay redevelopment

Mary Magee
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0
Board considers extra $75.4 million for Mission Bay redevelopment

UPDATE: An earlier version of this post reported that the Board was meeting in closed session. This was incorrect.

The Board is meeting today  to consider amending the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency’s (SFRA)  budget to issue an additional $70 million in tax increment bonds and appropriate $75.4 million ($70 million in bond proceeds, plus $5.4 million tax increment). The request, which comes on the heels of last year’s $64 million request, represents a 109.4 increase of tax increment bonds in 2010-2011. The city says thiis has nothing to do with Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposal to eliminate redevelopment agencies. But the last-minute timing of today’s session looks a tad fishy at best. And it’s playing out as a vote on Treasure Island’s final environmental impact report approaches, and against a backdrop of extreme funcertaintly related to all things Redevelopment, as Mayor Ed Lee and other city leaders try to figure out ways to prevent or reduce the affordable housing fallout from the governor’s elimination proposal.

According to a Budget and Legislative Analyst’s summary of today’s request, the requested bond issuance and expenditure is part of the “SFRA’s normal course of fulfilling its obligations under the tax increment allocation pledge agreements between the city, SFRA and FOCIL-MB (Catellus’ successor entity at the Mission Bay redevelopment sites), and not as a result of the Governor’s proposal to eliminate local redevelopment agencies. Ms. Lee [deputy executive director at the SFRA] states, that, as of the writing of this report, the impact of the Governor’s proposal on the Mission Bay Redevelopment Project is currently unclear and ambiguous as to whether approval of the Governor’s proposal would affect the requested bond issuance and expenditure authority.”

“At the time of the development and approval of the FY 2010-2011 budget, the Agency and Tax Assessor did not have available tax roll information that resulted in a significant increase in property taxes in Mission Bay due to the accelerated assessment agreement between the Assessor and the Agency,” states today’s Board resolution that Mayor Lee sponsored, explaining why there’s a request for an additional $70 million in bonds, so soon on the heels of the $64 million that the Board approved last year.

“The Agency wishes to amend its budget for the fiscal year 2010-2011 to permit the receipt of additional tax increment of $5.44 million and bond proceeds in the amount of $70 million for the purposes of low moderate housing and for the reimbursement of public improvements made by Catellus pursuant to the tax increment allocation pledge agreement between the City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and Catellus made in November 16,1998 for Mission Bay North and South,” the resolution continues.

 Mission Bay North and South are two separate redevelopment areas that encompass 303 acres, bounded by King Street and AT&T Park on the north, the San Francisco Bay and the I-280 freeway on the east and west, and Mariposa Street to the south, according to Redevelopment Agency documents.

The Budget and Legislative Analyst notes that of the $5.4 million in additional tax increment, an estimated $3.48 million would fund a portion of the Agency’s required educational revenue augmentation fund payment to the state for FY 2010-2011. And that the remaining $1.95 million would be distributed to tax entities, with $870,400 to be expended on the agency’s low and moderate income housing fund.

 The BLA notes that the proposed sale of $70 million in tax increment bonds will provide $60.345 million bond proceeds, including $12 million (20 percent) to fund the construction of 1180 4th Street, a development of 150 units of family rental housing, including 25 units for formerly homeless families and $48. 276 million (80 percent) to reimburse Catellus’ successor, FOCIL-MB, LLC, for public infrastructure development that FOCIL-MB constructed..

“If the proposed resolution is approved, of the $177 million total estimated debt service, $100, 890,000 or 57 percent will be paid from the City’s General Fund. The City’s General Fund estimated additional annual cost would be $3,648,000 for the first 20 years, decreasing to $2,793,000 for the next ten years.” The BLA concludes, explaining that approval of the proposed resolution is a Board policy decision because it adds up to a total General Fund cost of more than $100 million.

 According to the BLA report, Amy Lee, SF Redevelopment Agency deputy executive director, the requested $70 million in tax increment bonds would be sold in late March 2011, “such that no debt service payments would be required in FY 2010-2011.

 The BLA also notes that if the Board approves the proposed resolution, the net effect of each property tax dollar expended for tax increment that is provided to SFRA would result in a reduction of $0.57 on each dollar from the city’s General Fund.

“In other words, for each tax increment dollar provided to SFRA, the City would no longer have to provide payments to other tax entities,” the BLA observes.

These entities include the city’s Children’s Fund, Library Preservation Fund, Open Space Acquisition Fund, and the General City Bond Debt fund, the Community College district, the San Francisco United School District, BART, and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, which total approximately $0.43 of each property tax dollar.

It’s because of these property tax dollar equations that the annual cost to the city’s general fund for proposed increased debt service would rise, if the Board approves today’s Redevelopment resolution, by more than $100 million over the next 30 years.

And as local Democratic Party chair and former Board President Aaron Peskin explains, there’s nothing much the Board can do about the deal today, but they might want to reconsider getting into more deals like this at Treasure Island and beyond, in future.

“A deal is a deal is a deal,” Peskin said. ‘So, there’s nothing the Board could do differently, but that’s $3.648 million that otherwise would be going into the General Fund, and it’s a sign we should pay attention to, when considering Treasure Island, as deals like this will continue to impoverish the General Fund.”

 “Even though they deny it has nothing to do with Gov. Jerry Brown’s pending legislation to eliminate redevelopment agencies, I have never seen something scheduled so quickly,” Peskin added, noting that the Board’s agenda is published Thursday evening or Friday morning, but this item wasn’t on that agenda, hence the need to publish a separate notice.

Meanwhile, Treasure Island’s final environmental impact report has been released, and the way the current plan looks, will forever alter our view of the Bay.

“It will have enormous impacts on services for the City and traffic for the entire Bay Area,” Saul Bloom, executive director of Arc Ecology, told the Guardian.

On April 7, a joint session of the San Francisco Planning Commission and Treasure Island Development Authority will be meeting to consider certifying the EIR, but Arc is asking for an extension of two more weeks to provide the public with 42 days for review.

“Fourteen additional days for public review is a very modest request for a project with such significant impacts yet, the City has thus far refused,” Bloom notes.

Census no surprise to outmigration taskforce

Mary Magee
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Census no surprise to outmigration taskforce

 “San Francisco is losing its black population faster than any other large city in the United States — and the trend is unlikely to stop unless the city takes immediate action.” That’s what the Guardian wrote in August 2008, when we covered a draft report that the Mayor’s African American out-migration task force produced.

But despite the taskforce’s dire warnings, the Mayor’s Office didn’t hold a press conference when the final report was published in 2009. Instead, it was quietly posted on the Redevelopment Agency’s Website, where you can still find it today tucked into the bottom lefthand corner.

And despite the report’s numerous recommendations, taskforce members say that little funding had been made available to turn their ideas into realities.
So, it comes as no surprise that San Francisco’s black population continues to shrink while that of Asian Americans and Latinos make big gains.
According to newly released 2010 Census figures, San Francisco’s total population grew by 3.7 percent to 805,235 in the past decade, the Asian and Latino populations each swelled by 11 percent, the white population shrank by 12.5 percent—and the black population shrank by 22.6 percent.

This means, San Francisco now has 337,451 white residents (42 percent of total population), 265,700 Asian residents (33 percent of population), 121,774 Latinos (15.1 percent of the population), and 46,781 blacks (5.8 percent of population).
In 2009, the out-migration task force, which used 2005 US Census and state demographic data, placed the city’s African American population at 1/16 of San Francisco’s total population, compared to its two largest minorities, Asians and Hispanics, which made up 1/3 and 1/8, respectively.

“We saw that the African American population has declined by 40.8 percent since 1990, and as a share of the population decreased from 10.9 percent in 1990 to 6.5 percent in 2005,” the AAOMTF’s 2009 report states.

(As it happens 6.5 percent of the population in 2005 translated into 46,779 black residents. So, while the black population appears to have grown by two people, when viewed as a share of the city’s entire population in 2010, it can be seen to have shrunk by 22.6 percent, reflecting a flight to the East Bay and other states.)

“That’s not enough people to fill Candlestick Park,” Fred Blackwell, executive director of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, stated in 2008, during a presentation about the taskforce’s draft report. He cited a lack of affordable housing and educational and economic opportunity, severe environmental injustice, an epidemic of violence, and lack of cultural and social pride, as the reasons blacks were leaving.

But sadly not much has changed, including the frustration of local black leaders.
“We could paper the walls of this building with reports that have been made on this issue,” task force chair Aileen Hernandez said in 2008, pointing to similar studies that were done in 1995 and 1972, while fellow task force member Barbara Cohen said the draft recommendations “should have long ago been called the final recommendations.”

Reached by phone today, AAOMTF task force member Sharen Hewitt recalled how she and London Breed called for the creation of the taskforce, only to see many crucial recommendations ignored.
“We called for the creation of the taskforce in face of an imminent threat to the sustained presence of African Americans in San Francisco, especially low-income residents,” Hewitt said. “The taskforce’s draft report did not capture 80 percent of the discussion.”
Hewitt says a key flaw was the absence of a “real plan to address the fate of  African Americans who live in subsidized low-income housing.”

Fellow AAOMTF task force member Regina Davis, director of the San Francisco Housing Development Corporation, agrees that a lack of action didn’t help.
“Today’s numbers could have looked different based on actions,” Davis said.
She hopes that today’s increasingly dire financial system will be a call to action.
“Especially with the threat of the elimination of redevelopment agencies, because a lot of the housing for low-income folks is jeopardized in ways we haven’t experienced for three decades,” she said. “People are understanding that this is a market they haven’t seen before.”

Davis remains optimistic that the 2010 Census figures will galvanize folks.
“I’ve been mystified why people haven’t protested the war more,” she mused. “Maybe they will now that dollars they have taken for granted aren’t on the table. And maybe they’ll start to realize that tax cuts cost money. I don’t know where folks get the notion that tax cuts are free.”

Other AAOMTF members say the whole taskforce process was very discouraging for those who worked so diligently to find solutions.

”After all that intense work, we were all left with no notable action taken, (At least no action that I am aware of),” wrote AAOMTF member Larry Saxxon in an email. “At the least, the report should have been released to the general public for their review and feedback. It left me questioning the motives for the process from a political point of view.”

Saxxon said that because of feeling a great deal of dissatisfaction with the AAOMTF’s Education Committee’s findings, he and fellow taskforce member Barbara Cohen wrote a minority report on the needs for greater educational services for the African American community.

In their report, Cohen and Saxxon noted that there was a need to increase awareness and advocacy for African American students who are classified as special needs students.

And in his email, Saxxon noted that as an African American and an active advocate for the African immigrant community, he strongly suggested that AAOMTF include the presence of the African immigrant community in the final report as this was the only known incoming source of Blacks arriving in San Francisco. 

“From the statistical data that we had access to, we know that the African immigrant comprises, at a minimum, of 10 percent of the overall African American presence in San Francisco. This 10 percent is only counting those that are documented.  When we view the ratio of undocumented African immigrants… that number increases considerably! Sadly, that fact never manifested in the final report.”

“This is an issue that is very dear to my heart, as I too feel like an endangered species as an African American man and father trying to survive, and indeed thrive, in San Francisco,” he said. “The prospects seem to get dimmer as the months and years go by.”

Saxxon was pleased Mayor Ed Lee “did at least acknowledge the nature of
the problem and also by his alluding to the fact that some concerted action
needs to be taken.”

And it’s true that Lee has signaled a commitment to the African American community through his support for Sup. John Avalos’ local hire legislation, which kicks in March 25. (The AAOMTF identified jobs, as well as housing, education, economic development, cultural and social life, and public safety and quality of life as key policies and practices that can “help stem the outflow and even entire more African-Americans to make a home and establish roots in San Francisco, while making them feel like an integral part of the City’s stability and vibrancy.”)

But will Lee take other significant steps to stem the outflow in his ten remaining months in office (assuming he doesn’t throw his hat into the ring of the mayoral race, after all?) And will the plight of the city’s African American community even become an issue in the 2011 mayoral race?

An agenda as clear as 1, 2, 3

Sasha Cuttler
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16

Downtown hates democracy. Entities like the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and San Francisco Chronicle prefer elections with well-financed frontrunners willing to do their bidding. They don’t like messy democratic exercises like this year’s mayoral elections, in which the crowded field of solid, evenly matched candidates will be looking for support from progressives as part of their ranked-choice voting strategies and any of several candidates could win.

That’s why the Chamber/Chronicle are hyperventilating about the ranked-choice voting system, which resulted in a candidate from outside the acceptable establishment becoming mayor of Oakland, a result they fear might also happen here. The latest attacks come in a pair of misleading stories in today’s Chronicle, based on a loaded Chamber poll.

The main story ran front page above the fold, the big headline calling the seven-year-old voting system “a mystery” because the poll found many voters didn’t know precise details about how votes are tabulated. And even though the poll found “voters evenly split on whether they prefer the current system or a runoff,” according to the story, columnist CW Nevius writes that the poll shows voters “would prefer a two-candidate runoff.”

No, Chuck, you and your fearful downtown cronies prefer elections like that: costly, low-turnout elections in which the better financed and more conservative candidate wins every time. But most people are content with the current system, and they have a strong record of knowing how to use it and how it basically works, which why the paper reluctantly admits at the end of the story that voters preferred this system more than 2-1 in a 2009 poll.

Even without knowing how the Chamber asked the question (we’re still waiting for a response to our request to review the poll questions and data) in the current poll, and even in a newspaper with a consistent record of wanting to repeal this voting system along with other progressive reform like district election and public financing, as many respondents to this obviously leading poll said they preferred this system as did those who don’t like it.

But you better believe that the Chronicle/Chamber are going to do everything they can to scare and confuse voters into losing confidence in ranked-choice voting. Spotting these thinly veiled Chronicle/Chamber crusades is as easy as 1, 2, 3.

UPDATE: The Chamber did forward us its poll questions, including this one: “As far as you know, in an election that uses ranked choice voting, if your first choice, second choice and third choice candidates are all eliminated when the votes are tallied, what happens …. (ROTATE) is your vote counted or is your vote not counted … (READ LAST) or are you unsure?”

The results: 55 percent unsure, 29 percent “your vote is counted,” 15 percent “your vote is not counted.” And this confusing question is the basis for the Chron’s conclusion that “a majority of voters don’t know how the system works.” Actually, voters seem to understand just fine that they get three choices, that they ranks them in order of preference, and that there is a system for reassigning their votes as their top choices are eliminated. In this question, one might argue that the voters whose top three candidates were eliminated had their votes counted three times. Or you could say it wasn’t counted. It’s basically a philosophical question that was clearly intended to confuse respondents, and it worked. But they only way that would justify the screamer headline and high play for this story is if the Chron/Chamber was pushing an agenda.

Live review: Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise tour

John Elberling
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Live review: Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise tour

I caught up with the The Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise tour as it made its stop at the Independent in San Francisco on Sat./5, and it was nothing short of magical. A dozen or so core members of the Elephant 6 Collective rotated instruments and played each others’ songs. It was like a slice of Athens, Georgia performing on a holodeck-cum-stage for a bewildered SF audience that didn’t know what to expect.

Singing saw virtuoso Julian Koster (Neutral Milk Hotel, Music Tapes) looked like he was dressed for a slumber party, and some may say he stole the show with almost sickeningly adorable storytelling and mechanized organ-playing contraptions. But there were many high points. The Athens folks’ cover of Elf Power’s cover of the Tall Dwarfs’ “Nothing Is Going to Happen” and John Fernandes’ (Olivia Tremor Control) tricked-out viola solo blew my mind, and perhaps my favorite moment was when angel-voiced Scott Spillane (Neutral Milk Hotel, the Gerbils) and his famously epic neck beard led the group in a caroling of the Gerbils’ “Lucky Girl” which sounded better than the original. 

There were games, and crowd participation, with one winner getting to choose a song for the group to play. He opted for something by Mazzy Star. I would have chosen something more out of character, like “Juicy” by the Notorious B.I.G., but then again, I wasn’t playing. Maybe next year — fingers crossed. These folks know how to entertain, and they managed to make a two-hour performance seem short, leaving me wanting more.

Waste not

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Waste not

sarah@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors has delayed consideration of a city waste disposal contract while officials investigate a broad range of questions ranging from logistical considerations to whether to break up Recology’s current garbage collection monopoly.

Is it feasible to move the city’s entire infrastructure for waste and recycling to the Port of San Francisco? Would it be more sustainable to barge or rail the city’s trash directly from the port rather than drive it across the Bay Bridge to Oakland every day? Considering that recyclables get shipped from Oakland to Asia anyway, why not send them by barge rather than truck? Or is that idea just an empty gesture since recycles, mostly paper products, consitute only 10 percent of the waste stream?

Some of these questions are being studied as part of a survey the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) is trying to complete by April, others as part of a longer-term investigation by the Department of Environment (DoE). At LAFCO’s Feb. 28 meeting, commissioners requested a survey of how other jurisdictions in the Bay Area procure trash collection, hauling, and disposal contracts.

Although the studies differ in scope and duration, both were triggered by a Feb. 3 Budget and Legislative Analyst (BLA) report that revealed that the annual cost to ratepayers of San Francisco’s waste system is $206 million. Yet only the $11 million landfill contract is being put out to competitive bid (see “Garbage Curveball,” 02/08/11).

The BLA report revealed that a 1932 ordinance intended to address territorial disputes around trash collection and transportation in San Francisco ultimately gave Recology (formerly NorCal Waste) a monopoly on all post-collection recycling, consolidation, composting, long-distance transport to landfills, and waste disposal contracts. The report triggered a political firestorm by recommending that the city replace existing trash collection and disposal laws with legislation that would require competitive bidding on all waste contracts and that rates for residential and commercial trash collection become subject to Board of Supervisors approval.

Faced with these recommendations, the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee asked Feb. 9 for a two-month delay on DoE’s proposal to award Recology a 10-year contract to dispose of San Francisco’s municipal solid waste at Recology’s Ostrom Road landfill Yuba County when its contract at Waste Management’s Altamont landfill expires.

DoE officials predict the WM contract will expire in 2015. But company representatives estimate the contract will last much longer, based on reduced volumes that San Francisco has been trucking to Altamont.

Sup. John Avalos, a LAFCO commissioner, requested that the LAFCO study include a map to give folks “a visual” of landfill locations throughout the greater Bay Area. “And there’s been an interesting discussion about the use of barging,” Avalos said, pointing to the flotilla of barges involved in building the Bay Bridge, which could be repurposed when that jobs ends. “A new maritime use could help the port raise revenue and reinvigorate other maritime uses on its property.”

At that point in the hearing, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, the vice chairman of LAFCO, floated his “alternative barge plan,” under which only recyclables would get sent across the Bay to Oakland. Noting that he has met with Port Director Monique Moyer and Office of Economic and Workforce Development staff, Mirkarimi said that “the port is not equipped to deal with solid waste. But it is equipped to deal with recyclables, so this is something we should pursue.”

But Sup. David Campos, the chairman of LAFCO, clarified that the survey should still include a study of barging all trash. “Barging is complicated, but this is about providing basic information,” he said.

Records show the port reached out to DoE in 2009 with a letter that identified rail (but not barging) as an environmentally sustainable mode for moving waste from the city to its next landfill site.

In a June 23, 2009 letter to the DoE, Moyer and David Gavrich, president and CEO of the SF Bay Railroad (SFBR), stated that “rail directly from the port can not only minimize environmental impacts, it can provide an anchor of rail business for the port and a key economic development engine for the Bayview-Hunters Point community and the city as a whole.”

Recology’s trucks currently collect and haul about half the city’s waste to its recycling center, which sits on port-owned land at Pier 96. After the recyclables are offloaded for processing, the trucks haul the rest of the garbage through the Bayview and back onto the freeway to Brisbane, where it is loaded onto bigger trucks that haul the trash over the Bay Bridge each night to WM’s Altamont landfill near Livermore.

“It would seem most efficient to not double- or triple-handle the waste but to put it directly onto rail at the port instead,” Moyer and Gavrich wrote in 2009. “Collection vehicles could then go directly back out onto their routes, reducing time, fuel, emissions, and traffic impacts.”

The pair noted that SFBR and its affiliate Waste Solutions Group have used rail to haul more than 2 million tons of waste directly from the port in the past 15 years, using gondolas and 12-foot high municipal solid waste (MSW) containers on flat cars. They included an aerial photo showing Recology’s central recycling facility at Pier 96 and the extensive rail infrastructure and barge options that surround the facility.

But DoE never got back to them, Gavrich recalled last week as he fired up a SFBR locomotive and rode the rail tracks that crisscross the 20-acre port-owned facility that lies between SFBR’s outfit, Recology’s Pier 96 recycling facility, and the bay that is currently home to idle barges and rail cars that sit rusting a stone’s throw from the economically depressed Bayview.

“All that’s needed is two to four acres for an excellent transfer station,” Gavrich said. “Barge and rail access could not be better. It’s just waiting to be developed.”

In February, DoE officials told the Budget & Finance Committee that they had looked into and rejected barging as an option. But it turns out they did not conduct an official study. “There hasn’t been a study to date,” DoE’s Assmann said March 7, when the Guardian requested DoE’s barging report. “We had a discussion about it, but no formal policy.”

Assmann noted that DoE asked waste management companies that bid on the city’s landfill disposal contract to include a barging option. “But nobody did,” Assmann said, referring to Recology and Waste Management, the two finalists in the city’s landfill disposal contract bid process.

Assmann said DoE is currently doing a long-term study into three transportation and facilities options for waste using port facilities: the first option would involve moving the entire infrastructure for waste and recycling to the port. The second would be to use the port as a transfer facility for garbage, and truck, barge, or rail haul garbage from the port. The third would involve barging recyclables only from Pier 96.

Assmann notes that the majority of infrastructure for the city’s waste system is at Recology’s Tunnel Road facility on the San Francisco-Brisbane border, a situation he claims would make it impossible to design, permit, finance, and build new facilities at the port before 2015.

But Barry Skolnick, WM’s vice president for Bay Area operations, told the Guardian that 2016 is a more realistic estimate of the landfill expiration date. “At the current disposal rate, we do not believe San Francisco will exhaust its disposal volumes under the existing Altamont landfill contract until 2016 at the earliest,” Skolnick said. “There is plenty of time for the Board of Supervisors and LAFCO to explore best practices and options for its collection, recycling, composting, transferring, and residual waste disposal services.”

Skolnick noted that WM discussed extending the Altamont contract at the Budget & Finance Committee hearing and the LAFCO hearing, and is proposing to extend the city’s current contract by several years.

“We are preparing a proposed three-year extension of the disposal agreement for San Francisco’s review this week,” Skolnick said. “The extension would involve a price increase for disposal but less than the disposal rate offered under the proposed Recology rail haul to Ostrom Road in Yuba County. The three-year extension would provide disposal at the Altamont until 2019 or 2020.”

But Assmann noted that Recology, which currently pays the port $1 million a year to lease Pier 96, wants to expand its Brisbane facility on Recology-owned land. “We have offered to analyze [the Brisbane expansion] option,” Assmann said, estimating that a new transfer facility would cost $40 to $60 million, while a new integrated facility would cost $200 to $450 million.

“If the infrastructure moved to the port, that would have big positive implications for the port,” Assmann said, acknowledging that the port would lose money if Recology relocates entirely to Brisbane. Plus, Brisbane might demand fees from a new facility, he noted. “But consolidation would save ratepayers money in the long run because the operation would become more efficient.”

Unlike the LAFCO study, DoE won’t have its report ready by April, when the city needs to decide on the landfill contract.

“Our proposal is to look at the bigger picture,” Assmann said. “If the board approves Recology’s landfill contract, we’ll still go ahead and do it. The board can always delay its landfill decision. But this looks at infrastructure the landfill agreement won’t impact.”

DoE recommends working with Recology to implement a pilot program to barge recyclables from Pier 96 to the Port of Oakland as it studies long term infrastructure options including locating infrastructure at the port, Assmann said. DoE also recommends that the proposed plan to award Recology the landfill contract and facilitation agreement remain the same “since our analysis shows (and the port concurs) that all options for utilizing the port for any kind of landfill transportation would require a permitting process that would last a minimum of five years and a total timeline of at least seven to nine years.”

So far, the landfill contract has not come before the full board because of delays and continuations at the Budget & Finance Committee. As Judson True, legislative aide to Board President David Chiu, recently observed, the process over the last few months has raised more questions than answers, including unexpected angles such as how the port can be better utilized and the implications of the 1932 refuse collection and disposal ordinance. “We need to get these answers before we can move forward,” True said. “We all have a lot of work to do before we can figure out what’s best for the city and pick a path.”

But Gavrich hopes history doesn’t repeat itself and that Chiu shows some leadership on the garbage contract hornet’s nest. “There are so many compelling reasons and benefits for the city — but that hasn’t stopped the city from doing the wrong thing in the past,” Gavrich said. Gavrich pointed to 2007, when all members of the board except Sup. Chris Daly voted to give the sewage sludge contract to Recology even though its bid was $3 million higher than the competitor, S&S Trucking.

A Dec. 14 2007 San Francisco Chronicle article by Robert Selna quoted Mirkarimi as saying that a key reason for awarding the contract to Recology was that it was a union company. “That’s the elephant in the room,” Mirkarimi said, framing the board’s decision to go with Recology as being about “the devil we know.” Selna recently left the Chronicle to work as Mirkarimi’s legislative aide.

Mirkarimi’s recent suggestion that LAFCO explore barging recyclables as a pilot program has Gavrich worried. “Saying let’s explore simply barging recyclables makes no sense. It’s a fraction of what makes barge/rail haul economically viable.” Gavrich said. “It would put a greater burden on the ratepayer than the economic and environmentally inefficient system they have in place at Pier 96. The port should get the deal. It would be a cash cow.”

Our Weekly Picks: March 9-15

Andrew Lam
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WEDNESDAY 9

FILM

San Francisco Ocean Film Festival

Featuring more than 50 fascinating films about the ocean and its importance in nature, along with the role it plays in our society, the San Francisco Ocean Film Festival features programs ranging from documentaries on marine life and environmental science to surfing videos and panel discussions on International Marine Protected Areas. Highlights for this year’s fete include a program dedicated to sharks (and the ongoing debate over the sale of shark fins) and a chance to meet the filmmakers who work among the denizens of the deep at a special opening night benefit fundraiser. (Sean McCourt)

Wed/9–Sun/13

Tonight, 6:30–9:30 p.m., $60 (most festival programs $5–$12)

Theatre 39 and Aquarium of the Bay

Pier 39, SF

(415) 561-6251

www.oceanfilmfest.org

 

MUSIC

Damien Jurado

Despite a start with Sub Pop in the late 1990s and a steady stream of beautiful, literate albums ever since, Damien Jurado has always flown a bit further under the radar than some of his contemporaries. The Seattle-based singer-songwriter recalls echoes of Nick Drake’s sparsely intimate folk and combines it with modern arrangements full of strings, pianos, and clanking percussion, all of which is perfectly displayed on his 2010 LP, Saint Bartlett. The higher registers and slight twang that creep up in Jurado’s voice help bring his character-driven songs to life with a hushed, fragile clarity that can make you want to hang on his every word. (Landon Moblad)

With Viva Voce and Campfire OK

9 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

MUSIC

Castanets

Spawned from the quirky, vintage-clad loins of the early-aughts freak-folk movement, Castanets is sort of like psychedelic country without too much acid trippy-ness. Portland, Ore., (by way of San Diego) bandleader Raymond Raposa works with a merry-go-round of accompanists; his latest release, Texas Rose, the Beasts, and the Thaw, is just shy of 39 minutes — though a review posted on label Asthmatic Kitty’s website insists it is “Pink Floyd gone epic.” The review also notes, in case you were worried, that Texas Rose is “not a hippie record.” Even squares can have a ball. (Jen Verzosa)

With Holy Sons and Dolorean

9 p.m., $8

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

PERFORMANCE

The Islanders

Ever want the words you read to leap off the page and come to life? Word for Word Performing Arts Company makes it happen, and in this book-loving city they are truly at home. Known for staging performances of top-notch literary fiction, Word for Word presents The Islanders, a story about the bonds of friendship as two women reunite for a trip to Ireland, by best-selling author Andrew Sean Greer and directed by Sheila Balter. If you’re feeling fancy, come for Friday’s performance, which includes a champagne reception with the artists and a post-show conversation between Andrew Sean Greer and Daniel Handler (the face of the mysterious Lemony Snicket). (Julie Potter)

Wed/9–Fri/11, 8 p.m.;

Sat/12, 3 and 7 p.m., $15–$40

Z Space

450 Florida, SF

(415) 626-0453

www.zspace.org

 

THURSDAY 10

FILM

Human Rights Watch International Film Festival

On its opening night, the 2011 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival premieres “Youth Producing Change,” a collection of short films by teenagers from across the globe who’ve candidly captured their day-to-day experiences. As they document their realities on film, they give a face to important human rights and social issues: child labor, LGBT acceptance, the struggles associated with seeking political asylum, environmental contamination, land and water rights, refugee life, and ethnic persecution. Several of the young artists will be on hand to discuss their experiences. (Verzosa)

March 10–31

Tonight, 7 p.m., $6–$8

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

www.ybca.org

 

MUSIC

Triumph of Lethargy Skinned Alive to Death and Cave Singers

Though the Murder City Devils haven’t released a new record in almost 10 years and only play the occasional reunion show now and then (and are sorely missed by fans!), most of the band members have gone on to form other outstanding groups,. Two of these come to town tonight on the heels of recent excellent releases. Singer Spencer Moody appears with Triumph of Lethargy Skinned Alive To Death, whose Some Of Us Are In This Together came out in January, while Derek Fudesco brings the Cave Singers, whose No Witch was released last month. (McCourt)

With Lia Ices

8 p.m., $15

Great American Music Hall

859 O’Farrell, SF

(415) 885-0750

www.gamh.com

 

PERFORMANCE

Atlacualto (The Ceasing of Water)

José Navarrete and Violeta Luna, SF artists originally from Mexico City, summon the figures of the Aztec god and goddess of water for their multimedia performance, Atlacualto (The Ceasing of Water), which sheds light on the serious ecological issues of water rights and shortages. Highlighting the roles of water as sacred and as a commodity, Navarrete and Luna shift between striking ritualistic tableaus and humorous yet compelling scenes including an overzealous street vendor. The work combines contemporary dance, performance art, new music, visual art installation and video, stirring thought about this life-sustaining substance in the modern world. Water anyone? (Potter)

Thurs/10–Sat/12, 8 p.m., $25

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

701 Mission, SF

(415) 978-2787

www.ybca.org

 

FRIDAY 11

DANCE

13th Floor Dance Theater

If you like weird, Jenny McAllister is your woman. I mean, would you want to make a piece about the fun of being hit by lightening several times? Even the extreme weather nuts run for cover when Zeus starts throwing his thunderbolts. But then McAllister is not exactly your workaday choreographer: she has shared her skewed — and at times hilariously funny — perspective on weddings, Christmas, and everything that creeps, crawls, and walks. McAllister was half of Huckabay McAllister Dance for 15 years; last summer she started her own company, the 13th Floor Dance Theater. The current program, a collaboration with writer Kim Green and visual designer Michael Oesch, presents two works: Lighting Strikes Anonymous and Under the (Periodic) Table. (Rita Felciano)

Fri/11–Thurs/13, 8 p.m., $15–$18

ODC Theater

3153 17th St., SF

(415) 863-9834

www.odctheater.org

 

EVENT

Star Trek Convention

Bay Area Trekkers (Don’t call them “Trekkies!”) should set their coordinates for San Francisco this weekend as an official Star Trek convention takes over the Airport Hyatt. Joining them will be two of the most esteemed names in the Trek universe — Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock) and Nichelle Nichols (Lt. Uhura) — make appearances, chatting on stage about their careers and meeting with fans. Other notables set to participate include Rene Auberjonois (Odo), Bobby Clarke (the Gorn), and Grace Lee Whitney (Yoeman Janice Rand). Fans also will be able to peruse a galaxy of vendors and participate in seminars, workshops, and parties. Live long and prosper! (McCourt)

Fri/11–Sun/13, times and prices vary (general admission, $20–$40)

Hyatt Regency

San Francisco International Airport

1333 Bayshore, Burlingame

www.creationent.com

 

MUSIC

Pogo

Electronic music has an obvious relationship with technology, but South African Nick Bertke, a.k.a. Pogo, is indebted to one specific medium, YouTube. Pogo first gained attention with a video-based on Alice in Wonderland, which mined the 1951 Disney classic for new sounds, chords, and lyrics to create hypnotically familiar original music. The formula led to further sanctioned work from studios including Pixar. But if that all sounds a little too twee princess, Pogo’s selections surprise, taking musical inspiration from films as wide-ranging as The Terminator (1984) and The Apartment (1960). As previewed in “Gardyn,” a video recorded in his mum’s flower patch, Pogo hopes to extend the project to sample the world. (Ryan Prendiville)

With Lynx

9 p.m., $16

Slim’s

333 11th St., SF

(415) 255-0333

www.slims-sf.com

 

SATURDAY 12

MUSIC

Red Fang

Rock and roll! Hoochie coo! Truck on out and spread the news: Three bands, spawned from two cities of skinny-jeaned, tatted-up, new-boho meccas. One stage. My guess is Portland, Ore.’s, Danava, with its harmonized fuzz and searing synth, will flow seamlessly from the shreddy, Dixie-prone assault of Lecherous Gaze, an Oakland band boasting members of the now-defunct Annihilation Time and boldly claiming to embody “the future of rock and roll.” With tones of Black Flag, Thin Lizzy, and Queens of the Stone Age, can we up the rock ante any further? Yep: headliners Red Fang, also hailing from Portlandia, culminate a rawk-ous, piss-beer soaked night. Lordy mama, light my fuse. (Kat Renz)

With Danava and Lecherous Gaze

10 p.m., $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

DANCE

“Dance Repertory 2011 Showcase”

As a professional dancer and educator, Donnette Heath became painfully aware of the gap between student dancer-choreographers and the professional world. So for the last 11 years, her dRep company has offered young artists performance opportunities through the yearly Vision Series Dance Festival. Participants are chosen on a first-come, first-served basis, and the festival has attracted participants from Northern California high schools, private studios, and colleges from as far as Modesto. What was initially a modest event has become an intriguing showcase for those interested in what the next generation is up to. Now Heath is taking the next step by putting four of these high-caliber student groups — chosen by adjudication — on the same stage with professionals such as Kunst-Stoff. (Felciano)

8 p.m., $15–$20

Cowell Theater

Fort Mason Center

Marina at Laguna, SF

(415) 345-7575

www.fortmason.org

 

MUSIC

Slough Feg

Cultivating a vaudevillian approach that knows no equal or analog in the world of metal, Slough Feg is a San Francisco treasure. Though the strength of its recent album Animal Spirits has seen the band’s profile rise toward a more deserved apex, you can still catch the quartet in the close confines of the Hemlock Tavern, where the inimitable Mike Scalzi — the Lord Weird Slough Feg Himself — will be within spitting distance. The promised presence of incendiary Washingtonian NWOBHM troupe Christian Mistress and Portland, Ore., doom merchants Witch Mountain just adds to the already burgeoning excitement. (Ben Richardson)

With Christian Mistress and Witch Mountain

9:30 p.m., $8

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Accusations against SFPD officers impact D.A.’s race

Mary Magee
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Accusations against SFPD officers impact D.A.’s race

The decision by San Francisco prosecutors to drop a drug case that involved four of six plainclothes officers currently under investigation for illegally raiding residential hotel rooms and then lying about the busts in police reports, came one day after the Public Defender’s Office released videos that contradicted police reports in two separate cases. And it’s thrown another curve ball into the D.A.’s race, which veered into weird and uncharted territory the minute former Mayor Gavin Newsom appointed the city’s top cop George Gascón as SF’s next D.A.

The D.A.’s Office and the San Francisco Police Department have both announced that they have launched internal investigations into the SFPD officers after video footage from busts at the Henry Hotel in December and January was released. And D.A. spokesperson Erica Derryck sought to clarify that the D.A.’s office dropped the case because of ongoing investigations into the alleged misconduct, and that the D.A.’s investigation is independent of SFPD.

“As the District Attorney’s Office of this County, we are conducting our own, independent investigation into this matter,” Derryck said. “If there is criminal wrong-doing found it will be handled accordingly. Our Justice Integrity Unit will conduct an independent investigation to determine if any criminal conduct has occurred. This is separate from any SFPD investigation. Our Trial Integrity Unit will examine on a case-by-case basis, what, if any, cases may be affected by this investigation and the alleged conduct of these officers.”
 
But former Police Commissioner David Onek, who is running against Gascon in the D.A.’s race this fall, called for a completely independent investigation, citing the conflict of interest created by Gascón’s investigation of alleged officer misconduct that occurred during his tenure as San Francisco’s top cop,
“There is a clear conflict of interest when our current District Attorney investigates potential criminal activity that took place at the SFPD under his watch,” Onek said. “The foundation of a safe city is earning and keeping the public’s trust. And that requires calling in outside agencies when this trust will be undermined by a conflict of interest, such as the one presented by these facts.”

“Whatever decision Gascón now makes, he will highlight to the public his conflict of interest as the former police chief,” added Onek, who is the founding executive director of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice. “If he decides not to charge the officers, the public will question if he did so to protect his former officers or his former administration. If he decides to press charges, the officers themselves will ask if he is doing so because he is a candidate for office and feels the need to show a tough attitude towards his former department. In the interest of justice, former chief Gascón should recuse himself and his agency from investigating the SFPD  in cases that occurred when he was chief. If you are conducting a fair investigation, you not only review the conduct of individual officers, you also explore if this alleged conduct was the result of issues with training and supervision. No fair investigation of these facts can be conducted by the individual responsible at the time for that training and supervision.”

As close to the lens as possible: A (too brief) Q&A with David Weissman

John Elberling
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As close to the lens as possible: A (too brief) Q&A with David Weissman

One of the strongest aspects of the film We Were Here is the intimacy and depth of its interviews (read our review here), so it’s with embarrassment and regret that I’m presenting this relatively casual Q&A with director David Weissman with the caveat that it’s been marred by a snafu. While transcribing, I discovered that the ‘Rec’ button on my ancient tape recorder had been triggered when it was in my carrying bag, and a sizable portion of the talk – including passages about archives, filmmaking, community, San Francisco, the cultural influence of The Cockettes, and a younger generation’s view of AIDS – had been replaced by the muffled sound of footsteps and traffic. The conversation is lost, but the story isn’t: We We Here is screening at the Castro Theatre through Thurs/3. Here’s some of what Weissman and I discussed.

SFBG What was the response to We Were Here like at Sundance?
David Weissman Sundance was great. We’d had a sneak preview at the Castro, and an even earlier one in Portland at the festival [the Portland Gay and Lesbian Film Festival] that I curate with Russ Gage up there, but Sundance was the first really mixed audience. The Salt Lake City screening was particularly fantastic.

SFBG How so?
DW You can feel the energy in the room, and people cry a lot at this movie. But I think that people cry in a way that by the end of the movie they feel good. That was one of the most important things to me – I didn’t want to make a movie that would just be devastating. It was important to me that it be inspiring. In almost every review and every response, people talk about it being uplifting.

Trailer for We Were Here:

SFBG In some ways We Were Here continues a tradition in San Francisco of oral history in documentary. I wanted to ask about your methodology in terms of doing interviews, because spoken interview accounts are a fundamental, powerful part of the film. You really devote time to the people whose stories you tell, or to flip it, those who tell their stories.
DW The only person I knew I was going to interview at the beginning was Ed [Wolf] and that’s because we’d known each other through doing HIV work, and I knew he had a passion about this story being told, and there was enough existing personal trust between us that I knew he would be an easy person to experiment with.
Right before I interviewed him, I woke up in the middle of the night with a start and thought, “Oh my god, I’ve done no research and have no notes. What am I thinking?” On The Cockettes [2002] we’d done tremendous research before each interview. Then I quickly calmed down and realized, “This is my story. This is my history. I lived through this entire thing.”
The interviews were totally unplanned and they went where they went. Rather than being conventional subject-object interviews, they were deep, mutually therapeutic conversations between people who shared a painful history.

SFBG How did you find and choose the film’s subjects?
DW It was completely intuitive. Other than Ed, the only way any of these people wound up in the film is that I bumped into them somewhere. In the course of conversation, I’d think, “Oh, you’d be good,” and [from] their unambiguous [affirmative] response, I’d decide to go with it. To some degree, their willingness to be interviewed is reflective of their generosity during the years of the epidemic. They clearly got a lot out of being interviewed personally. Having that kind of focus on such an intense part of one’s life for the first time is a powerful experience. But each of them really did it for the community and for the world.

SFBG Some of the answers are obvious, but how was making this film different from making The Cockettes, as an experience?
DW In many ways, the two films are very similar. The experience was different emotionally simply because there was so much pain involved in revisiting [We Were Here‘s] history. But both ultimately wound up being films in which a very large historical moment is evoked by a very small number of people, without a lot of extenuating materials to contextualize the times. The idea was to have the times emerge from the storytellers. There’s a great similarity in that choice.
The intention of the two films is also similar. In describing my intention with The Cockettes over the years, I’d say it had a twofold purpose, in validating the complexity and beauty of a period of time for the people who lived through it, and illuminating it in a rich and complex way for people who didn’t know anything about it. I’d use the exact same language for We Were Here.
The emotional aspect was much different. This film was much less celebratory and more wrenching. But there was something gratifying about being strong enough to engage with the material. The working experience with [co-director] Bill [Weber], the shared quality, was profoundly beautiful and extraordinary.

SFBG In making this film, I’d think any tasks or parts of the process you did on your own would be difficult.
DW When I see other documentaries and look at the credits, there’s name after name, but basically, it’s me and Bill. Each of us wears multiple hats. There’s also the production crew, Marsha [Kahm] and Loretta [Mollitor], who were incredible, and we had some archival help, too. But the big tasks of the movie belonged to me and Bill.

SFBG How did the film structure and approach of the film develop? Was it an intuitive process, as you suggested earlier?
DW The Cockettes had a clear narrative arc that Bill and I [as co-directors] agreed on from the beginning, and it didn’t have the burden of an entire community of people who had a stake in the story being told. The burden of how people would respond to We Were Here was a huge one that I worried about every day.
I don’t think Bill initially trusted that we could do [We Were Here] with this few people. From my vantage point, it was the fewer the better. And the less music the better. I came into it at the beginning saying, “No music at all.” Bill said, “You’re insane, we’re going to need some,” and I decided, “When we get there, let’s deal with it, but I want to start from zero.”

We evolved together, and Bill’s an enormously sensitive editor, both visually and with music. We were a good team. Bill said he kept having to unlearn his normal way of doing things, because some of what we were doing was so contrary – people are on screen for a long time, and they breathe, and they pause, and they make mistakes, and there is no augmentation of sentiment through music.

Sundance Film Festival: David Weissman:

SFBG Did you both do the film’s interviews?
DW I did all the interviews. With The Cockettes, we were co-directors. With We Were Here, I’m the producer and director, and Bill is the editor, and he got a co-director credit because his editorial role was so important.

SFBG Were there points while looking at archival material or doing interviews where you encountered anything that changed your ideas about what you were making?
DW Yes. One of the more conventional beliefs when making a film about recent events is that filmmakers generally prefer to use moving images instead of archival and still images. At a certain point, we shifted away from that, particularly when covering the pre-epidemic period in San Francisco. We focused on faces, and almost all of  the faces are looking directly into the lens. That sense of personal intimacy is central to how the whole film works.

SFBG There’s a counterbalance that works well in direct relation to that decision – you move from those still images to the footage of people in clinics.
DW Some of that footage came from Tina Di Feliciantonio’s Living With AIDS [1987], and from Marc Huestis’s Chuck Solomon film [Chuck Solomon: Coming of Age, 1987]. I don’t know if we got any clinic footage from Ellen Seidler’s Fighting For Our Lives [1987], but we got a lot of footage from it. All of those films were made between 1985 and 1986. And there’s the footage from Silverlake Life [1993]. I still can’t bring myself to watch Silverlake Life all the way through. Bill did, and he chose the footage.
When I’m interviewing – and this is also true with The Cockettes – I sit with my ear literally on the camera. I want people looking as close to the lens as possible.

 

Messages to the next police chief

Sasha Cuttler And Mary Magee
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While researching Tasers in the wake of last week’s police commission hearing, I came upon an online series published while the city of San Jose was considering candidates for police chief. Created by Silicon Valley De-Bug as part of an effort with San Jose’s Coalition for Justice and Accountability, the project featured the messages of people who wished to share their personal stories with the next top cop. Each week leading up to the selection of the new chief, the group posted another “Message to the Next Police Chief.”

One video featured Art Calderon, whose 68-year old father was beaten by San Jose police, addressing how officers could improve their relationship with the Latino community. A young homeless person weighed in on their interactions with the police. Another contributor wrote that he was bipolar and wanted the next chief to train officers to be sensitive to people with mental-health issues, since he was slammed against a squad car once while delusional.

Raj Jayadev, director of Silicon Valley De-Bug, told the Guardian that the project also included surveying 3,000 community members in three different languages, and organizing seven community forums to generate input from communities of color on what qualities and characteristics they hoped to see in the next chief. When the former chief retired, “We knew for sure that we were standing at this really historic moment,” Jayadev said. “We wanted to get as much community input as possible.” The coalition was motivated to improve relations between police and communities of color in San Jose amid a history of fatal officer-involved shootings, accidental deaths following deployment of Tasers, and disturbing accounts of excessive use of force, particularly against young people of color.

The group focused their questions on three “hot-button issues,” Jayadev said, including use of force, racial profiling, and concern surrounding police cooperation with federal immigration authorities. Based on a review of the survey responses, the coalition generated a list of six tenets they hoped would guide the selection process for the new police chief.

San Jose Police Chief Chris Moore, who was sworn in last week, wasn’t DeBug’s first choice, Jayadev said. However, Moore has met with the Coalition for Justice and Accountability and plans to sit down with them a second time. Although the community lacked decision-making power, Jayadev noted, thanks to De-Bug’s project “there’s going to be clarity on what the community wants.”

Meanwhile, San Francisco is undergoing its own process of selecting a new police chief, and the San Francisco Police Commission is expected to submit the names of up to three applicants to Mayor Ed Lee by March 15. The process is overshadowed by the mayor’s race, since a newly elected mayor could opt to initiate a new candidate search if he or she isn’t satisfied with Lee’s pick.

That uncertainty hasn’t discouraged the 75 hopefuls who reportedly submitted applications. Police Commission Secretary Lt. Tim Falvey told the Guardian that the number of candidates under consideration was recently whittled down to 25, but he declined to say how many candidates were to be interviewed by commissioners. Nor would he say when the interviews were taking place, or where they were being held.

Meanwhile, the San Francisco Police Commission held three community meetings in February to garner community input on the selection of the next chief, with three commissioners present at each forum. Asked if there were any notes, recordings, or other documentation of those meetings available, Falvey said nothing like that was required since they weren’t official commission meetings. “I don’t know if [commissioners] just took mental notes, or maybe they took notes for themselves, but that’s not something I have here,” he said.

Falvey said the turnout ranged from 25 to 45 people at the three meetings, which were held at the United Irish Cultural Center on 45th Avenue, the Southeast Community Facility in the Bayview, and the San Francisco LGBT Center in the Castro. “A lot of people wanted a track record in community policing,” Falvey noted when asked what points came up repeatedly during the community forums. Another common issue was improved relations with the nightlife and entertainment industry, he said.

At the end of the day, the choice lies with the police commissioners — four of whom were appointees of former Mayor Gavin Newsom — and of course, Mayor Lee.

Falvey said that candidates had expressed concern that they did not want their names publicized, and that every effort was being made to keep the applicants’ identities secret until Mayor Lee makes his final announcement.

What do San Francisco community members want in a new police chief? And in the end, how much will their opinions matter?

Noise Pop Live Review: Dominant Legs and How to Dress Well

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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4

Synth and bass, rock and roll, some combinations are easily matched, but when you put How to Dress Well on the roster, pairings aren’t as obvious. Dominant Legs‘ mangy pop was an odd precursor to Saturday night’s How to Dress Well performance at Cafe Du Nord, but then again, what flatters eerie falsetto and awkward emotions? 

San Francisco’s Dominant Legs played like summer in a bottle. Happy guitars, lots of cowbell and rad bass made the winter weather outside melt. The only thing missing was sunshine, or lights in general. Half the band was hidden from the crowd due to a lack of lighting– particularly the adorable Hannah Hunt. One disgruntled lady in the audience voiced her disapproval by shouting, “We can’t see the pretty girl in the blue dress,” to which Hunt meekly responded, “It’s green.” Case in point. 

The band of five played three brand new songs, two cute and sleepy and one with tropical breeze, but the hits were any that picked up the pace. The real gem was as suspected– “Young at Love and Life.”

There was a brief interlude by Shlohmo and his way cool collection of old school tracks, including my personal favorite, TLC’s “If I Was Your Girlfriend”– brought me right back to Mr. Burg’s fifth grade class.

Then the stage cleared. A lazy stream of fog seeped from a small machine in the corner as Tom Krell grabbed the mic. Immediately things felt awkwardly intimate as the man behind How to Dress Well told the crowd, “This week things have been kind of tough for me,” said Krell. “But I guess we’ll see how it goes.” And it went in all kinds of ways: uncomfortable, pretty, sexy and repulsive. It was Krell, naked (only figuratively), revealing every last detail of his diary in a high-pitched squeal of sorts, accompanied by super smooth, shattering bass, electronics and R&B stylings. 

At first it seemed like a bad dream. My ears hurt. I thought slitting my wrists sounded like a nice alternative to listening to songs entitled, “Suicide Dream 1” and “Suicide Dream 2.”  I did enjoy the projected visual art and it seemed to pair well with the horror escaping his lips. I couldn’t believe all these people had paid to see this guy. Was this a joke? I turned to the dude next to me (just as his friend offered up some Flamin’ Hot Cheetos) and asked him if he ‘really liked this?” He laughed. “Uh…no comment.” Then he thought about it for a second more. “Well, I don’t hate it.”

And surprisingly by the end of his one-man show I realized I also didn’t ‘hate it’ but couldn’t quite get to the ‘liking’ part either. I grew to respect the dude for what he brought to the table. Krell has balls. Really big balls. Who else would stand up there and tell everyone that this song is about how his life “feels closed,” instead of “feeling open, like when I was young.” It was hipster poetry hour and I needed a cigarette. That’s some depressing shit, man. If only I could’ve understood the actual lyrics. Were those real words?

How to Dress Well is what it is, folks but whether it counts as live music, a band or a quality performance is still up for debate. The transition from amazing recorded material to live act still has some kinks; or maybe that’s the intention and you’re cool and totally hip if you get it. I’ve never been one to understand ‘performance art.’ Instead it seems easier to categorize this fiasco as another talented bedroom musician lured from his comfort zone, into the outdoors and onto stages. We should stop being so pushy.

 

 

Live Review: Paula West brings the best things to the Rrazz Room

John Elberling
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There’s a short list of outlets for female crooner aficionados these days. Sure, there are winning classic vocals from the likes of Madeleine Peyroux or Jane Monheit. But I’ve yet to witness the poignancy of Billie Holiday, the sass of Eartha Kitt, the sultriness of Julie London, or the sheer perfection of Ella Fitzgerald, in any current-day singer.

Though Paula West may not be a legend, she has become a leading international jazz vocalist and local treasure. Watching her perform every year for the past decade, I can vouch: she keeps getting better. She hasn’t recorded an album since 2002 and those she does have fail to fully capture the essence of live performance. Live, her impeccable breath control and diction shine, as does her soulful longing and contrasting wry humor.
What truly wows a jazz lover is West’s song selection. Each year she plays a multi-week run at Hotel Nikko’s Rrazz Room (how I miss her former setting, the now-shuttered Plush Room). West and composer/arranger, George Mesterhazy, convert songs to jazz in genres as wide-ranging as country or rock. Mesterhazy also leads West’s backing quartet (Mesterhazy on piano, Ed Cherry on guitar, Barak Mori on bass, and Jerome Jennings on drums). It’s not unusual to hear her sing the funky “Iko Iko” alongside the Scottish ballad “The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond.” Her love for Bob Dylan surfaces yearly in Dylan tunes arranged with jazz spirit — this year, it’s “Shelter from the Storm.”

This year, West keeps things upbeat with a bouncy rendition of Irving Berlin’s “The Best Things Happen While You’re Dancing,” “Come Runnin'” (made famous by Lena Horne), and the ever-delightful “At Long Last Love,” by Cole Porter, another songwriter she commonly performs. Hoagy Carmichael could never dream of his “Baltimore Oriole” being as sexy as it is with Mesterhazy’s sultry arrangement and Jerome Jennings’ exuberantly sensual drums. Easy listening rarely sounds as good as it does in West’s version of Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman.”

West thanked us for coming out instead of staying home to watch reality TV, launching into what she dubs the “Reality Show Trilogy,” evoking laughter with Pearl Bailey’s “Tired”: “Washin’ and a-tubbin’/ Cleanin’ and a-scrubbin’/ Sure leaves my glamour with a scar…Tired of the tears I shed/ Tired of livin’ in the red/ Tired of my same old bed…’Cause I’m tired, yes I’m tired of you.”

The yearning is palpable in her gorgeous delivery of Irving Berlin’s “Supper Time,” which Ethel Waters sang in the film As Thousands Cheer. West’s rendition of “Miss Otis Regrets” is equally emotional, even chilling. West starts off in a steady, pleasing pace, mesmerizing as her show progresses with her impressive memorization of complex verse and controlled belting.

Sipping Rrazz Room’s mediocre, over-priced drinks becomes less obnoxious when you’re enveloped by West’s clear, dusky vocals and Mesterhazy’s skillful quartet. Her current run lasts until March 13, so there’s still time for a little “Baltimore Oriole.”

PAULA WEST
Through March 13, $35-45
The Rrazz Room
222 Mason Street
415-394-1189
www.therrazzroom.com
http://paulawestonline.com

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