San Francisco

PG&E’s $200,000 payment to Willie Brown?

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Is PG&E making payments to Willie Brown while he is writing a featured political column for the Chronicle/Hearst?

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Earlier today, I sent the following questions to Hearst Corporate in New York, which owns the San Francisco Chronicle. I sent copies to
its Chronicle management and staff. Read my blog below for context, details, and my take on the difference between a real progressive and a PG&E progressive. I’ll keep you posted.

“PG&E has disclosed a $200,000 payment to Willie Brown for
‘consulting services’ for 2007 in its annual report to the California Public Utilities Commission. Now that Willie is doing a featured top-of-the-page political column each Sunday in the Chronicle, I’m curious if he is doing a Chronicle column while still providing ‘consulting services’ for PG&E?

“If so, d oes Hearst have an ethics policy that covers this apparent conflict? Would it at minimum require disclosure of PG&E payments to Willie in this year and previous years and what was the nature of these ‘consulting services?’ I would appreciate a comment. Thanks very much. B3

Click here to read my blog, PG&E and a Rock Rapids, Iowa, liberal.

Follow the Money, online, if you can.

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by Sarah Phelan

“Follow the money.” That’s what Deep Throat told reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men, William Goldman’s classic film about the investigation that led to President Nixon’s resignation.

It was good advice then and now, no matter what story you are investigating, no matter what city you live/work in.

But Deep Throat’s classic advice got a tad harder to follow in the city by the Bay, thanks to kinks in new software, plus the overzealous efforts of some interns who apparently got carried away with the black pen, while redacting campaign finance records down at the San Francisco Ethics Commission.

The SF Ethics Commission, just in case you are wondering, is where people running for elected office, and people running political campaigns, file their financial disclosure reports.

All of which makes Ethics a good place to start if you want to follow the money in a particular political race.

It’s a pathway that you need to keep watching for months, if not years, after a race, since many donations and expenditures are made at the last minute and aren’t recorded, until long after the victory champagne has gone flat.

These days, campaign filings can be made the old-fashioned way, with paper filings, or the new Internet-enabled way, with online filings.

If you file electronically, Ethics’ software automatically redacts the street addresses and signatures of campaign donors from these online records.

These redactions aren’t undertaken because of new redaction policies over at City Hall, Ethics officials say, but to put the department in compliance with the Secretary of State.

But when Ethics started contracting with private vendor Netfile this spring, Netfile’s software apparently began deleting donor’s zip codes, too.

As a result of these unsanctioned redactions, it became impossible to follow online, exactly which parts of the City, the money was flowing from, in the June 3 election.

Meanwhile, the address of the Ethics Commission itself got redacted from a couple of online reports. (You can view an example of this redaction classic, by clicking here:

“For them to redact the actual address of the Ethics Commission speaks volumes about the mood over there,” one City Hall insider told us.

But the way Ethics’ executive director John St. Croix explains it, this classic blooper occurred because Ethics was trying to expand the amount of information that available online.

“Some overzealous interns got carried away,” St. Croix said, as they tried to help Ethics redact donor street addresses from paper filings, before posting them online.

“This happened because we were trying to scan copies of paper filings and post them online, which has never been done before, “ St. Croix explained.

“We decided it wasn’t worth the effort to redo it, all over again, St. Croix added, noting that you can still view the original, non-redacted paper filings at the Ethics Office.

Provided, that is, that you have Ethics street address, which is at 25 Van Ness Avenue. But shh, don’t tell anyone!

Rabbit Research Collective

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PREVIEW The cultural map has changed, and Paris is no longer its center. Still, how does a small, unknown company from Chambery — a city best known as a jumping off place for some of the most spectacular boating and skiing in France — all of a sudden pop up in San Francisco? As with a lot of gigs, networking helps. In July ODC/Dance performed in Chambery, and voilà, here comes Rabbit Research Collective, a three-year-old multimedia art group that, rather unusually, includes a semiologist. Company founder, ballet-trained Emilie Camacho and American-born Corine Englander first participate in ODC Theater’s House Special, the culmination of a two-week collaboration with other selected dancers and choreographers. Joining local artists Monique Jenkinson and the trio of Charya Burt, Vishnu Tattva, and Melody Tanaka, they’ll present a workshop performance of a new piece created during their ODC residency. Then the duo moves over to the Alliance Française, where they’ll showcase Vertige (Vertigo), choreographed in 2006 around the concept of falling. The evening includes rehearsal footage and a discussion about the work’s generation. A glimpse at the video suggests that these women perform with souls, bodies — and brains.

HOUSE SPECIAL Wed/20, 8 p.m. Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida, SF. $15. (415) 863-9834, www.odctheater.org

VERTIGE (VERTIGO) Sat/23 and Tues/26, 8 p.m. Alliance Française de San Francisco, 1345 Bush, SF. $15. www.afsf.com, www.brownpapertickets.com

Sweetest taboo

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PREVIEW The taboo has always had a special place in my heart. As a pre-adolescent, I was given a list of banned books from a rogue librarian and I hunted down and read every one of them. It may have seemed odd to find an 11-year-old black boy reading the likes of John Rechy’s City of Night (Grove, 1963) and William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (Olympia/Grove, 1959), but these verboten tomes, along with the librarian’s free beer and porn, served as an illicit gateway out of my little coal-mining town into the larger, lustier world. If not for the innocence-stealing pederast posing as the coolest adult I knew, I might still be in that town, feeling like I was missing something but never knowing what. In short, banned books saved my life: I never would have read a single one had they not been banned.

That’s why it’s exciting, even titilutf8g, that the San Francisco Center for the Book, in collaboration with the African American Museum and Library in Oakland, presents "Banned and Recovered: Artists Respond to Censorship." The 63 installation, multimedia, and graphic artists showcased at the two sites don’t so much address the issue of banned books as celebrate their favorites, which happened to have been banned somewhere at one time or another — and what great book hasn’t? Among those praising the forbidden at the Center for the Book are Enrique Chagoya, who offers a 2000 diptych to Burroughs, and ex–Black Panther propagandist Emory Douglas, who brings Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970) to light.

BANNED AND RECOVERED: ARTISTS RESPOND TO CENSORSHIP Through Nov. 26. Mon.–Fri., 10 a.m.–5 p.m. San Francisco Center for the Book, 300 De Haro, SF. (415) 565-0545, www.sfcb.org. Also Sept. 5–Dec. 31. Tues.–Sat., noon–5:30 p.m. Reception Sept. 5, 6:30 p.m. African American Museum and Library at Oakland, 659 14th St., Oakl. (510) 637-0200, www.oaklandlibrary.org/AAMLO

The circle game

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Say "Kumbaya," somebody. Despite vast differences in sound, intent, and commercial appeal, a thin yet unseverable bloodline connects the big, bold, Brill Building, pop-factory-perfect songcraft of Carole King, last heard coursing off the AM radio, and the stripped-raw, close-to-bare-bones rasp and moan of Tiny Vipers’ Jesy Fortino, delivered to a small clutch of listeners at the Elbo Room last year. Eyes squeezed shut, plucking her acoustic guitar beside just one other guitarist, Ben Cissner, she was a small dark star, poured fully concentrated into the sparse minor key chords of "Swastika," and, as gutsy as the loudest reaches of the underground, she sang as if her life depended on it: "If I would let you into my heart / Would you thank the Lord / Would you tear it apart?"

Superficially, so far away — doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore? — from King’s monumental oeuvre, which seems almost incidental amid the gushy, gossipy tidbits propelling Sheila Weller’s bio, Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation (Atria), concerning King’s beleaguered marriage to her first husband and songwriting partner, Gerry Goffin, with whom she wrote such songs as "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" and "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman," among many other classic pop numbers, even after he fathered a child with one of the pair’s vocalists. Likewise Weller makes much of Mitchell’s out-of-wedlock daughter and penchant for using her songs to seduce paramours like Leonard Cohen, Graham Nash, and James Taylor — the last often credited with spurring the singer-songwriter movement and acting as a unifying thread between Mitchell, King, and Simon — and Simon’s uninhibited, proto-pro-sex feminist "eroticism"; read: sex in a cab was "no problem." Yet as remote as the early-’70s phenomenon of the singer-songwriter seems, the form appears to have returned: could this be the revival of core values of craft and voice, the intimacy and immediacy of a writer on a single instrument, during a tumultuous time for the music industry, post-Auto-Tuned disasters and Ashlee Simpson lip-synch blowouts — the adult flip-side to the bubblegum remnants of High School Musical, Miley Cyrus, and the Jonas Brothers?

The initial energy of so many turn-of-the-millennium garage rock bands may have petered and innumerable hip-hop artists may have turned toward dully materialistic navel-gazing, so hail the return of the soft-spoken singer-songwriter who can break down a tunes to its bare, unadorned components. The stars are aligned; the signs, apparent: from Outside Lands headliner Jack Johnson landing at the top of the Billboard 200 chart with his latest album, Sleeping Through the Static (Brushfire/Universal), earlier this year, to ex–Castro Theatre ticket-taker, proudly folkie Devendra Banhart being adopted by Parisian couturiers and glitterati, from the MySpace-inspired success of Colbie Caillat and Kate Nash to the iTunes-buttressed popularity of Eureka native Sara Bareilles — hell, not to mention everyone and their dog documenting their solo acoustic version of "Bubbly" and posting the video on YouTube. This quiet flurry of activity undoubtedly whetted someone’s appetite for all things unplugged.

Those with eyes trained on pop cycles might point to the rise of antiwar sentiments throughout the country, coupling it with the renewed attention given to the softer, sincere sounds of singer-songwriters — a worthy theory, though apart from the many unfortunate CD-Rs of anti-Bush agit-pop that crossed my desk during the last two presidential elections, the generally apolitical vibe of the music from this crop of singer-songwriters seems to belie that notion: championing green issues are as didactic as these writers get. Instead this current wave of earnest songsmiths has more to do with both a reaction against the insincere, canned, possibly un-nutritious mainstream boy-band and Britney-centric breed of pop from the recent past — the likes of which could only be enjoyed with a semi-size dose of irony — and a response to an easy access of technology, which allows just about anyone and their mutt to make their own music at home, bypassing Brill Building–style hit-factories.

This time, the slew of sensitive men — solo fliers ranging from Iron and Wine, Conor Oberst, and Adam Green to Josh Ritter, Jonathan Rice, and Ray LaMontagne — sequestered behind acoustic guitars or pianos, working freak-folk, soft-rock, commercial pop, and Grey’s Anatomy–friendly veins, are being almost eclipsed by the multitude of womanly singer-songwriters. Natural women all, including Feist, Kimya Dawson, JayMay, Brandi Shearer, Yael Naim, and Ingrid Michaelson, among others. As much as King, Mitchell, and Simon are considered mothers of these singer-songwriters — along with predecessors like Woodside resident Joan Baez and ’60s folk hit mistress Judy Collins and successors like the many estrogen-laden ladies of the ’90s Lilith Fair outings — so too are indie sisters Liz Phair, Sarah Dougher, and Cat Power, a holy trinity to homemade, once-bedroom-bound DIY divas who make their own clothes, hope to carve out their own path, and find their own vox.

Of course, one can’t discount the release of resurrections and reissues of neglected and forgotten femme singer-songwriters such as Vashti Bunyan and Ruthann Friedmann and late greats Judee Sill and Karen Dalton, whose latest private recordings were unearthed via Green Rocky Road (Delmore) in June. And Mitchell’s unique guitar tunings, experimental mindset, and maidenlike purity of sound has made her one of the most oft-referenced artists of the last few years, thanks to such explicit shout-outs as Wayfaring Strangers’ Ladies from the Canyon (Numero, 2006). But no less influential is Phair, whose classic Exile in Guyville (Matador) got the royal reissue treatment this summer: her pro-sex, third-wave feminist, Midwestern rejoinder to riot grrrl writ large, with a gatefold sleeve and a slip of naughty nipple peeking through. At the same time, Dougher — cover girl in Johnny Ray Huston’s take on the last, more-riot grrrl-centered singer-songwriter movement in the Guardian about a decade ago — took a more polemical tack on the Northwest coast with her K Records releases, while working tangibly for greater female rock visibility by organizing the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls and teaching courses on the history of women in rock at Portland State University.

But Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, appears set to be the Joni Mitchell of this generation — even as Marshall has largely turned her back on originals with her latest Jukebox (Matador). The Seattle-based Fortino’s almost gothic melodrama seems to draw more than a little inspiration from Marshall’s What Would the Community Think (Matador, 1996), while San Francisco transplant Thao Nguyen of Thao and the Get Down Stay Down borrows Marshall’s clarion-call, half-sung, half-spoken phrasing for her far more fancy-free, loose-limbed, and shambling songs. Nguyen sounds positively, happily tipsy on the old-timey bounce, finger clicks, and sandpapery soft-shoe shuffle on We Brave Bee Stings and All (Kill Rock Stars).

Yet Marshall’s most indebted sib might be Emily Jane White, 27, whose Dark Undercoat (Double Negative) evokes the former’s haunted and haunting, hollowed-out sensuality as well as her songwriting savvy and way with a hook. "Everybody’s got a little hole in the middle / Everybody does a little dance with the devil," the Oakland singer-songwriter croons on her "Hole in the Middle," sliding around the curves of this verb or the other and letting her voice drift off into the meaningful silences between the words.

The surprise is that this intensely eerie, closely miked singer-songwriter also turns out to be one of the more deliberately political-minded. Of "Hole," she said recently while breaking from the recording her second album with Greg Ashley, "I originally wrote that in response to the war in Iraq when that first started. Yeah, it’s about American imperialism."

And perhaps that’s the key to why the music by this former member of an all-girl band, the Diamond Star Halos — much like those seemingly apolitical numbers by other singer-songwriters — has increasingly relevance today: White and other crooners are foregrounding the everyday loves as well as the overseas skirmishes in a way that transcends the desensitizing glut and so-called objectivity of news headlines, sound-bites, and bloggable blurbs — and acutely personalizes it all. Call it the resensitizing of pop.

"I’ve always believed that your personal experience is political," says White, echoing the first wave feminist tenets, "and everyone has a story to tell, about how they’ve lived their lives and what has happened to them, and the experiences they’ve gone through. Not that what I think I do is revolutionary or anything, but one positive thing about being a singer-songwriter is people have contacted me and said they’ve felt a strong sense of encouragement or inspiration, so I think putting myself out there says something."

Emily Jane White plays Aug. 22, 8 p.m., $8, at the Uptown, 1928 Telegraph, Oakl. www.uptownnightclub.com

From Silicon Valley to “City Hall”

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

WWLD: What would Lilith do? Described by besotted music writers as the love child of Frederic Chopin and Sarah McLachlan, the supple-voiced imaginary spawn of Paul Simon and Joni Mitchell, classically trained singer-songwriter Vienna Teng freely confesses she’d be nothing if not for Ms. Fumbling Towards Ecstasy and Tori Amos — staples from her college days spent immersed in computer science studies at Stanford. But what of the most shadowy love buried in the South Bay native’s past? Walt. As in Disney. "I think I’ve always been influenced by Disney musicals," Teng says with some wry humor from Brooklyn, where she moved last year from San Francisco. "At least those from the Little Mermaid and Aladdin era. Yeah, I know it’s not a cool thing."

Adam’s fierce first love might not approve. But as the inspiration for the feminist-centered, oft-unplugged folk-rock fest known for giving the music of Amos and McLachlan a forum in the ’90s, Lilith would undoubtedly delight in the sweet, subtly elegant mixture of classical melodicism and pop chart-friendly folk on the 29-year-old Taiwanese American vocalist’s most recent CD, Dreaming Through the Noise (Zoe/Rounder).

Perhaps that early affinity for Disney’s protean fairy tale characters allowed Teng to imagine leaving her software engineer job at Cisco Systems, Inc. and begin playing coffeehouses on downtown Mountain View’s Castro Street seven years ago. Maybe that imaginative affinity led her to build the substantial following that fills venues like the Independent and has purchased 60,000 copies of her first two albums (Warm Strangers [Rounder, 2004] and Waking Hour [Virt, 2002]), and made it easy for Teng to put herself in the shoes of, for instance, gay couples on the brink of marriage ("City Hall") and drowned victims of Hurricane Katrina ("Pontchartrain").

For Teng, music is way of fully grasping topics weighing on her mind, "a more gentle exploration than editorials or speeches": she aims to write songs she doesn’t already hear out there. And next up for her forthcoming album is the challenge of crafting lyrics about global warming and suicide bombers. The latter is one number she hasn’t been able to finish, she says: "The more I read about it and research it, I realize, gee, it’s really hard to write about."

Still, the process of putting together her fourth full-length has been a refreshingly unrestrained experience. Teng and South Bay–bred coproducer Alex Wong assembled a chamber orchestra, tapping into Wong’s classical percussion background, and recorded everywhere from New York City and Indiana to SF’s Noe Valley Ministry and a spooky Victorian in the Mission District ("It was indeed haunted, but the owner explained it was just haunted by her old pets") — just to get that eerie feel for couple songs revolving around the past. "We pretty much indulged in every outlandish idea we’ve come up with," Teng says happily. "The joke is it’s basically two Asian American kids from an overachiever culture making an album together."

Vienna Teng performs 3:25 p.m., Sun/24, at Outside Lands‘ Avenues stage, Polo Fields.

Singing softly, carrying big ideas

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NICOLE ATKINS AND THE SEA


Atkins would probably do well on American Idol. Her big, bellowing voice sounds tailor-made for balladeering, and breathy, heartbroken pixie girls have edged talent like hers out of the indie market. But Atkins refuses to cover "Bridge Over Troubled Water," and has instead crafted a huge power-pop sound all on her own. (Laura Mojonnier)

1:40 p.m. Sun/24, Presidio stage, Lindley Meadow

DEVENDRA BANHART


Is the Venezuelan-bred naturalismo god a freak-gypsy poet-prophet, or just a rambling, acid-damaged ghost of San Francisco past? You decide, long-haired child. (Mojonnier)

2:15 p.m. Sat/23, Sutro stage, Lindley Meadow

BON IVER


Which one’s Bon? And is this really a … singer-songwriter? Regardless, Justin Vernon has made a gorg album — multitracked vocals and all — with For Emma, Forever Ago (Jagjaguwar). (Kimberly Chun)

3:10 p.m. Sun/24, Presidio stage, Lindley Meadow

BECK


Known as much for his musical range as his idiosyncratic artistic sense, Beck’s songs veer from dadaist dance tunes —à la Guero (Interscope, 2005) — to melancholy blues ballads like those on Sea Change (Geffen, 2002). He’s come a long way from 1994’s single "Loser" with his latest album, Modern Guilt (Interscope), a collaboration with coproducer Danger Mouse and guest Cat Power, proving that he’s no one-hit wonder, but rather a truly multidimensional songwriter. (Molly Freedenberg)

6:40 p.m. Fri/22, Sutro stage, Lindley Meadow

ANDREW BIRD


It isn’t easy to overshadow Ani DiFranco — especially in a concert hall filled with her fans. But that’s exactly what Bird did when he opened for the quintessential singer-songwriter on her 2005 tour. Bird’s spectacular vocal and musical abilities — particularly his trademark whistling and violin playing — are mesmerizing. But even more so is his ability to weave beautiful, emotionally honest songs from so many kinds of lyrical and musical threads. The combination has brought him not only acclaim, including a position blogging about his songwriting process for the New York Times, but status as an indie heartthrob. (Freedenberg)

3:35 p.m. Sun/24, Twin Peaks stage, Speedway Meadow

JACKIE GREEN


Polished Versatility is the SF singer-songwriter’s middle name, his first is Jackie, but fans call him their own personal Roots Savant. (Chun)

1 p.m. Sun/24, Lands End stage, Polo Fields

SEAN HAYES


Don’t you know you gotta water sunshine? The fiercely independent SF singer-songwriter has worked with all manner of great artists round town, including Ches Smith, Ara Anderson, Etienne de Rocher, and Jolie Holland. (Chun)

3 p.m. Sat/23, Presidio stage, Lindley Meadow

NELLIE MCKAY


So get off McKay’s back and take your ape-ish size 12 shoes off her madcap persona because, as the New York City singer-songwriter drawls on "Identity Theft," "I’m tired of maturity, airport and security, running from the thought police, fighting with the go-betweens." Yes, I hear Bob Dylan in those wildly loopy lines, but you gotta love the musical theater-inspired, wittily whittled wordsmith’s divine verbosity — via songs that leave ’em crying, with glee, at the disco. (Chun)

4:20 p.m. Sat/23, Panhandle stage, Speedway Meadow

REGINA SPEKTOR


Is it Spektor’s old world beauty or postmodern songwriting — both evident in her breakthrough video "Fidelity" — that charms audiences so much? We think it’s probably both, though her distinctive vocal style, songs that read more like short stories, creativity with instrumentation, and magnetism onstage are surely what have brought the Russian-born chanteuse so much success. (Freedenberg)

5:15 p.m. Sat/23, Sutro stage, Lindley Meadow

M. WARD


Sometimes Ward’s friends let him play on their records (Bright Eyes, Cat Power, Jenny Lewis). Sometimes Ward gets his friends to play on his records (My Morning Jacket’s Jim James, Neko Case). Sometimes Ward’s gently rollicking guitar flirts with Zooey Deschanel’s sweet country honey (She and Him). And sometimes Ward plays a big outdoor festival all by himself. (Mojonnier)

3:40 p.m. Sat/23, Sutro stage, Lindley Meadow

Love songs

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TYSON VOGEL OF TWO GALLANTS

* Hazy Loper (San Francisco)

* Ted The Block (Oakland)

* Michael Hurley (Northwest area)

Two Gallants play at 6:05 p.m., Sat/23, at Outside Lands’ Presidio stage, Lindley Meadow.

MICHAEL HILDE OF MOUNTAINHOOD

Locally I’m into David Enos. David is a filmmaker who also played keys in the Papercuts and did the art for their album. His songs are great, haunting, and unflinching.

Nicky Emmert from Mammatus plays solo acoustic as Misty Mountain. The songs are all superlong and unfold in slow motion. Incense [is] in his guitar. We’ve done a couple of shows together, the first was at the San Siern Holyoake and Wood Festival, May ’07.

I also want to especially mention Jonathan Arthur from the All Night Sunshine band in Seattle. He’s brilliant, and plays very, very rarely. As far as I know, the only two times have been with me when I go to Seattle. Maybe more. I hope more.

MATT NATHANSON

* Brett Dennen. He is so good, and he’s just beginning. He has decades of greatness ahead. It is inspiring. His phrasing makes me wish I had soul.

* Bill Foreman. Best songwriter I have known, period. I feel like he moves forward with every song. It is the most natural evolution I have seen. He has so many great ones. His stuff is hard to find, but it’s worth every step. The full band version of "St. Louis" will change you.

* John Vanderslice. His songs sound like they were beamed in from Mars. His records are sonic perfection. He doesn’t think like a normal person. His lyrics crush me.

* Steve Perry. Not really a singer-songwriter, I guess, but who doesn’t wish they had written "Don’t Stop Believing" or "Oh Sherrie"? And who doesn’t love yellow, sleeveless, zebra-striped T-shirts?

Matt Nathanson plays at 7 p.m., Sat/23, on Outside Lands’ Twin Peaks stage, Speedway Meadow.

BART DAVENPORT

(1) Thom Moore (Nevada City)

(2) Greg Moore (Nevada City)

(3) Mia Doi Todd (Los Angeles )

(4) Kelley Stoltz (SF)

(5) Brian Glaze (Oakland)

(6) Kacey Johansing (SF)

(7) Jesse DeNatale (SF)

(8) Mark Eitzel (SF)

(9) Miranda Zeiger (SF)

(10) Amy Blaustein (Berkeley)

Davenport plays 9:30 p.m., Sept. 19, Café Du Nord, 2174 Market SF. www.cafedunord.com

KIRA LYNN CAIN

My favorite singer-songwriters (who are not family members):

* Nico, circa Desertshore (Reprise, 1970), The Marble Index (Elektra, 1969), and The End (Island, 1974)

* Syd Barrett, circa The Madcap Laughs (Capitol, 1970) and Barrett (Capitol, 1970)

* Leonard Cohen

GARRETT PIERCE

"In all honesty, I think SF has been struggling to find a new batch of singer-songwriters to latch onto. I thought Daniella of Snowblink was going to be the next voice of SF, but she just moved to Toronto.

Favorite local singer-songwriters: Peggy Honeywell, Joanna Newsome, and Sean Hayes.

Fave nonlocal singer-songwriters: Diane Cluck, Bon Iver, Tom Waits, Jolie Holland, M. Ward, Matt Bauer, Hayden, and Michael Hurley.

SONNY SMITH

Welllll, Jonathan Richman is nothing new under the sun, but he’s been one of my heroes for a long, long time.

Smith plays 7:30 p.m., Aug. 29, at the Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com

BRITTANY SHANE

My favorite local singer-songwriter: Stephanie Finch (Chuck Prophet’s wife and keyboard player). I loved her band Go Go Market and their CD, Hotel San Jose (Evangeline, 2002)!

Other singer-songwriters I love: Kathleen Edwards, Liz Phair, Susanna Hoffs, Dido, Sheryl Crow, Fran Healy, and Josh Ritter.

Comic drama

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Rock me, sexy Jesus — I mean, sexy, sniffle-y Steve Coogan. With a little luck, the British actor’s latest comedy will soon place those lyrics on the lips of teenaged malcontents — the same ilk that Coogan’s hemorrhoid-commercial thespian and high school drama theater Dana Marschz haplessly mentors in Hamlet 2. As a parody of inspirational teacher flicks, Hamlet 2 (see our review) is a rousing success — the type Mr. Holland would toss his opus for. It’s almost completely due to Coogan. In contrast to his brief, blotto turn through that other cinematic lampoon in the theaters, Tropic Thunder, he klutzes, kibitzes, and futzes, hilariously, through nearly every frame.

Hamlet 2 finds Coogan playing an American mired in a monochromatic Albuquerque. Marschz is a pathetic synthesis of ditziness, show-must-go-on hope, and ambition — writing Hamlet 2 seems the perfect way for him to exorcise his own fatherly ghosts and put a feel-good spin on that downer play. Yet it was the character’s bare-faced vulnerability that Coogan — known in the United Kingdom for his TV commentator Alan Partridge and stateside as an independent actor who has appeared in films by Michael Winterbottom, Jim Jarmusch, and Sofia Coppola — found most daunting.

"I think I’m going to fall flat on my face in everything I do, really," allows the actor, congested and "bunged-up" during the San Francisco stop of a press tour. "I’m used to playing comic characters who are often unpleasant people and who you somehow have some kind of empathy for. This guy isn’t awful or nasty. He’s vulnerable and foolish and slightly self-delusional. I could see how you could make him funny. [The trick is to make sure] the audience would care enough about him to see it through to the end. That was the tough thing."

Coogan meets the challenge. Now perhaps kids in music stores will call out for the actor’s drama geek or rocker Christ figure as much as his smirking, überhipster version of Tony Wilson in 2002’s 24 Hour Party People. "I feel very, very close to that film," Coogan says of Wilson, partly because he grew up in Manchester, where he often slipped into Wilson’s Hacienda nightclub. "All the events in that movie, I witnessed as a young teenager. When I did the movie, I felt like I was reliving my youth — except I was playing the guy at the center of the events, rather than the spectator."

Hunters and collectors

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› a&eletters@sfbg.com

REVIEW It wasn’t so long ago that the term "curated" moved from dusty archive territory to popular lexicon. When did curated databases, boutique merchandise, and Netflix queues become commonplace? In the Bay Area, more than one school offers a master’s degree in "curatorial practice" — but who has a concise description of what that really means? The term has become elastic, perhaps because there’s too much material — of all sorts — to deal with in contemporary culture. Someone’s gotta figure out how to marshal and present it coherently.

Two current high-concept group exhibitions are equally about their curatorial premises and respective curators — Henry Urbach and Jens Hoffman — as the objects on display. Both have extended titles — "246 and Counting: Recent Architecture + Design Acquisitions" at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and "Passengers" and "The Exhibition Formerly … ," at the Wattis Institute at California College of the Arts — and will evolve during their runs into 2009. Both are activated by transparent systems that generate their form.

"246 and Counting" includes every object Urbach, SFMOMA’s Helen Hilton Raiser curator of architecture and design, acquired during his first two years at the museum. In the wall label, he admits the show "aims to focus our attention on collection building." It’s not a stretch to say it has something to do with shopping: Urbach, who previously ran a commercial gallery in Chelsea, NYC, admits as much in the audio guide: "To shop well is half my job" (the other is to experiment with "curatorial practice"). And the presentation will grow to include each new piece he buys before "246" closes. The exhibition itself is a surprisingly refreshing take on the "collection show," the homely, hometown sibling to the bigger traveling exhibit.

Playing out on low platforms and arranged chronologically based on the date the works were purchased or given, "246"<0x2009>‘s structured format ironically allows for a degree of irreverence. Urbach leans framed photographs by Richard Barnes against the wall, stacks 1986 Beosystem stereo equipment, and splays silkscreen posters by the beloved activist nun, Sister Corita, on the floor under transparent Plexiglas boxes. It’s the same means used to showcase an iPhone, a donation from Apple, credited to Jonathan Ive. The fact that many of us have one makes for an automatic entry point.

The objects are identified on laminated cards, so the display initially resembles a high-end vintage store or the apartment of an aesthete/design guru — the format affords an approachable sense of personality. Urbach’s gesture is one of exposure — of the museum’s hierarchy and of his own sensibility. He uses this to assert a curatorial identity, and the narrowed focus makes for satisfying, authored viewing. If there’s an inclusion you question, you know who’s to blame.

The former director of exhibitions at London’s Institute of Contemporary Art, Hoffman — who just completed his first year of programming at Wattis — expresses a similar tastemaker sensibility. The contemporary art has a more experimental vibe because the gallery doesn’t collect. It feels as if Hoffman selected his picks from international art fairs. As noted on the Wattis Web site, "Passengers" is a "constantly transforming exhibition of emerging international contemporary artists, none of whom have ever had a solo presentation in an American public art institution." It’s structured around 12 artists: 11 with a few pieces, and one with a somewhat larger presentation, in a literal white cube space, before the latter artist leaves the show and another from the 11 remaining cycles into the bigger box.

The eclectic range of works — by artists familiar to Frieze readers but who will probably turn up in biennials down the line — tend to be funky and/or conceptual in bent and include Annette Kelm’s serial photos of a woven baseball cap; Valérie Mréjen’s short films about enacting various identities; and Federico Herrero’s painting project (though Aug. 30), which also involves a mural on a Potrero Hill home.

On Sept. 2 the show morphs into "The Exhibition Formerly Known as Passengers" — coincidentally with a showcase of works by San Francisco artist Tauba Auerbach, whose Alphabetized Bible (2006) is included, in editioned form, in "246" and "Passengers." The exhibition’s form will shift as well: after each solo presentation, the artist will leave the show, but none will be added. The final artist, Aurelien Froment, gets the entire space in August 2009. This may not be fair to the previous "Passengers," but it does make for a tidy denouement.

Like "246," the "Passengers" structure is perhaps more memorable than any of its works, making both meta-projects: shows about the act of making shows. It’s fitting, then, that Hoffman’s title salutes Prince, who has constantly reinvented himself, the structures of music distribution, and performance platforms. The musical artist has had his share of misfire projects, but you always know he’s going to come up with some convincing new challenge to cultural consumption. *

246 AND COUNTING: RECENT ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN ACQUISITIONS

Through Jan. 4, 2009

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

For hours and prices go to www.sfmoma.org

PASSENGERS: 1.12 FEDERICO HERRERO

Through Aug. 30

"The Exhibition Formerly Known as Passengers" runs Sept. 2–Aug. 29, 2009

CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts

1111 Eighth St., SF

For hours go to www.wattis.org

The trip

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Everyone I tell about my project thinks I’m nuts. Maybe they’re right. But many progressives have been pushed to the brink of madness by what this country is becoming. Besides, it’s too late to turn back now, so I’m going to take the trip and try to drag all of you along with me.

The basic plan is to drive from San Francisco to Denver in a rented Chevy Impala, stopping by Burning Man on the way there and back, covering the Democratic National Convention in the middle, reporting and posting to the Guardian‘s Politics blog the whole way, and then producing a cover story by the end.

What do these two epic events have in common besides synchronicity? For starters, they each have strong roots in San Francisco and will be disproportionately peopled by Bay Area residents. And this year’s Burning Man art theme — American Dream — is an obvious effort to achieve sociopolitical relevance. These two great American pageants are promoting similar goals from opposite directions.

"Burning Man doesn’t mean anything unless it affects the way we live our lives back home," event founder Larry Harvey told me earlier this year as we chatted in his rent-controlled apartment on Alamo Square. "That city is connecting to itself faster than anyone knows. And if they can do that, they can connect to the world. That’s why for three years I’ve done these sociopolitical themes, so they know they can apply it. Because if it’s just a vacation," he said, pausing to choose his next words carefully, "we’ve been on vacation long enough."

Liberal Democrats also feel they’ve been lost in the political wilderness for long enough, and they hope Barack Obama is the one to lead them out of the desert and into power. And I’ll be chronicling their launch, from when I pick up my convention press credentials the morning of Aug. 25 to when Obama addresses 75,000 people in Mile High Stadium four days later, on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" speech. Then it’s back to the playa for the big freakout.

If truth be told, which is my intention, I don’t know what I’ll write. I’ll embrace the chaos and let the road provide the narrative. But expect insightful juxtaposition of two realms I’ve covered extensively over the past two decades — the political culture and the counterculture — peppered with perspective from my yin-yang travel mates: Democratic Party bigwig Donnie Fowler and performer Kid Beyond, a.k.a. Andrew Chaikin.

This is a story of who we are and what we may become. I hope you’ll join the journey.

Personal or political?

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› sarah@sfbg.com

The Board of Supervisors Clerk’s Office has quietly begun redacting contact information — including phone numbers, street addresses, and e-mail addresses — from all communications sent to the supervisors by members of the public.

The Clerk’s Office will not redact personal information if individuals indicate that they authorize its release, Clerk of the Board Angela Calvillo wrote in a May 23 memo. Yet the policy shift brings to an end a long-standing tradition in which members of the public could peruse copies of all of the weekly communications to the Board simply by asking to see the petitions and communications file.

Instead, Clerk’s Office staff are now asking people which items they want to see before letting them access the file, in case the requested items need to be redacted.

"If it’s a redacted item, it needs to be handled differently," Clerk’s Office deputy director Madeleine Licavoli explained, noting that a Controller’s Office report wouldn’t need redactions, but public communications would.

The COB’s office does provide a one-line summary of each item in the Board’s weekly agenda packet, but it’s hard to know which pieces are of interest until they are read in full. And the public’s contact information has always provided a handy way for citizens to identify like-minded individuals and for reporters to find story sources and material.

Licavoli said the new policy did not occur in response to specific incidents or complaints, but as a result of a discussion about the need to redact personal information. "The first time people encounter this policy, they say, ‘Whoa, what’s this about?’<0x2009>" Licavoli acknowledged. "But we’re trying to protect personal information, not make things harder for people who just want to look at them.

"We are always trying to expand what’s available," Licavoli added, noting that the Clerk’s Office is working to ensure that when the supervisors return from recess next month, people will be able to access redacted public communications by viewing a CD in the Clerk’s Office.

But open government advocates claim there is no provision for the redaction policy under the California Public Records Act or the city’s voter-approved Sunshine Ordinance. Instead, they fear the new policy reflects a growing trend of trying to scare people into believing that the public’s right to privacy trumps its right to know.

Sunshine advocate Kimo Crossman told the Guardian that the overwhelming reason people need access to redacted contact information is for political speech or technology-savvy new media outlets.

"The city is preventing it because they don’t want to have organized citizen push-back," Crossman said. "This is not about private personal information like your blood pressure."

Like Crossman, Sunshine Ordinance Task Force member Rick Knee also opposes the clerk’s new requirement that people must request the release of their contact information.

"There has to be a very narrow application of the redaction policy," Knee told us. "If the law does not require it, the default is for disclosure."

Bob Stern of the Los Angeles-based Center of Governmental Studies told us he understands the arguments for privacy. "But if an individual does not want their contact information posted online, it should be an opt-out situation at the very worst," Stern added.

But some blame the new policy on San Francisco’s sunshine advocates, such as Crossman, claiming it was their attempts to make databases to screen Sunshine Ordinance Task Force appointees that led to the tightening of the redaction policy.

"Certain people insisted that the Clerk of the Board make a policy, thereby forcing them down this particular path," said Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition. "These folks wanted a confrontation, but they ended up worse off than [under] the ad hoc, unarticulated policy that existed."

Scheer believes that if this redaction policy is contested, the government could win. "If you’re not a reporter, then people care more about their privacy than access," he said.

"Everyone is terrified about identity theft," he continued. "There have been all sorts of horror stories about the government inadvertently leaking information. And anything the Clerk of the Board agrees to give to one person, they have to give to everyone, including sleazebags who put it into a big database and sell it to spammers and telemarketers."

But Terry Francke, general counsel for Californians Aware, believes that if the case goes to court, the judge would conclude that this information is presumed to be public. "To withhold information, you have to find a specific public interest in keeping it confidential," Francke said.

Francke notes that the CPRA exempts, for example, the home addresses of school district employees, but does not delegate the authority to create new exemptions. "When you have rules that say apples, oranges, and bananas are exempt, that provides evidence that fruit as a general category is not exempt. The example of CPRA exemptions shows they were decided against a background of documented, actual harassment, not the decision of a faceless bureaucrat."

Francke believes public organizing is hindered by the new policy.

"The value of privacy is not one that the government decides," he said. "It’s your choice how private you want to be. It’s your privacy, not the government’s. So unless they give you an informed opt-out choice, then what they are managing is not privacy but government secrecy."

Money for nothing

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› gwschulz@sfbg.com

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi seems to be feeling pretty confident in her reelection prospects this November, despite an independent challenge by high-profile peace mom Cindy Sheehan.

But that hasn’t stopped the San Francisco Democrat from raising big bucks from scores of interest groups who are contributing to her campaign committee and to the political action committee she controls, known as PAC to the Future.

Most of the money she’s raising is going toward assuring her continued power in Washington by giving it to the campaigns of other Democratic members of Congress, particularly those facing tough election battles that could threaten the party’s House majority.

Pelosi’s reelection committee has raised $2.36 million over the past two years, hundreds of thousands more than the average House member, according to federal campaign disclosure records and data maintained by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Her PAC raised an additional $585,000 during the current election cycle and spent $769,000, much of which has also gone to other candidate committees in payments of $5,000 and $10,000.

Many newly elected Democrats in the House represent conservative constituencies, and with her blessing they sometimes vote with Republicans to distance themselves from the party’s perceived liberal leaders like Pelosi, according to a new book published this month, Money in the House: Campaign Funds and Congressional Party Politics (Perseus, 2008). Democratic leaders in the meantime have continued a phenomenal fundraising spree to help protect those House members.

"Speaker Pelosi’s extraordinary financial commitment to her party, and especially to her party’s vulnerable members, illustrates the overriding emphasis congressional parties and members place on money," writes author Marian Currinder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute. "And her encouragement of selective ‘opposition votes’ demonstrates the complexity of governing in a highly partisan and highly competitive political environment."

Even the day-to-day reelection expenses of Washington’s unrivaled leading lady are outsize, as Pelosi’s spending records show. In June 2007, she celebrated her 20th year in Congress with a glitzy fundraiser held in the capital’s Union Station that cost at least $92,000 and featured a performance by soul singer Patti LaBelle.

The bill included $25,393 for a slick video production; $61,105 on catering, rentals, and securing the site; $2,000 for hairstyling and wardrobe assistance insisted on by LaBelle; $2,824 on flower arrangements; and $1,396 for chocolates from a Pennsylvania-based confection maker.

Pelosi spent at least $650 from her campaign on makeup for the steady string of appearances she made after being sworn in as House speaker in January 2007. An annual fundraiser held this year at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco cost $23,454 for catering and other expenses.

As for the top contributors to Pelosi’s reelection committee, they include several members of the Gallo family, proprietors of the E&J Gallo Winery, who gave a total of $23,000 through maximum individual donations of $4,600. The Modesto-based company has long made contributions to both parties, particularly enriching candidates who show a willingness to scale back or even throw out the federal estate tax, which affects the inheritances of the wealthiest American families.

The Corrections Corporation of America gave $2,300 to Pelosi and $2,700 to her PAC. CCA is part of a storied group of for-profit privatization companies in Nashville, Tenn. that are closely tied to former Republican Senate majority leader Bill Frist and includes the Hospital Corporation of America and Ardent Health Services.

Just this year, the state of California hired CCA to house 8,000 inmates at six of the company’s facilities; a significant portion will go to a new $205 million CCA complex under construction in Arizona.

The nation’s largest private jail company suffered bad publicity during the 1990s due to a series of high-profile escapes and inmate killings inside its prisons. It teetered on the edge of bankruptcy after overbuilding jails without having enough inmates available to fill them, but the George W. Bush administration helped save the company with a new homeland security agenda that called for confining rather than releasing undocumented immigrants while they awaited deportation or asylum-request proceedings. The company’s revenue jumped nearly a half-billion dollars over the last five years and its lobbying activities in Washington, DC have increased similarly.

The entertainment industry has ponied up its share to Pelosi as well. The maximum $4,600 donation came from Aaron Sorkin, powerhouse writer behind the long-running TV series The West Wing and the 2007 film Charlie Wilson’s War. Christie Hefner, a regular donor to Democrats and heiress to Playboy Enterprises, contributed $1,000.

Steven Bing, a Hollywood producer who inherited a real estate fortune, and billionaire Las Vegas developer Kirk Kerkorian gave thousands to Pelosi over the last two years. Kerkorian has given to both parties, but he and Bing share a special relationship after having fought a nasty tabloid war.

Kerkorian allegedly hired private investigators to sift through Bing’s trash in search of DNA evidence that would link him to a child borne by Kerkorian’s ex-wife, whom he was divorcing, according to a lawsuit filed by Bing. Vanity Fair in July described Bing as part of a skirt-chasing entourage that ran with Bill Clinton and threatened to tarnish Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid with its freewheeling bachelor reputation.

The wealthy Herbert and Marion Sandler, major supporters of MoveOn.org and other social justice causes, gave Pelosi a combined $9,200. The couple presided over the meteoric rise of Oakland mortgage lender Golden West Financial, which sold to Wachovia for $24 billion in 2006. The housing crisis led Wachovia to post staggering multibillion-dollar losses this summer, and some business writers have attributed its declining fortunes to the Golden West purchase.

In June, George Zimmer of Fremont, founder of the Men’s Warehouse, gave $2,300. Notable husband and wife political team Clint and Janet Reilly, both active as candidates and donors, contributed a total of $19,200 to Pelosi’s campaign and PAC.

"Essentially, raising money for the party and its candidates is required of leaders," Money in the House author Currinder told the Guardian. "Pelosi wouldn’t have been elected speaker if she wasn’t a stellar fundraiser."

So where is Pelosi’s money going if not to television ads for her own campaign? She divided $250,000 among the campaigns of approximately 70 congressional candidates, and disbursed about $532,000 more to them through PAC to the Future. The beneficiaries included $14,000 to Democrat Chet Edwards of Texas, whose district includes President George W. Bush’s Crawford ranch. Pelosi has publicly recommended him to Barack Obama as a possible running mate.

In addition, about half of the money Pelosi has raised since the beginning of 2007, slightly more than $1 million, went to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in Washington, DC. She also gave to the Democratic parties of key battleground states including Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Ohio. She singled out Democrat Travis Childers of Mississippi for extra cash totaling $21,000. In May, Childers stunned observers by defeating a Republican in a special election held when a representative vacated his House seat to take over for conservative icon Sen. Trent Lott.

"She has had prodigious success raising funds for individual Democratic candidates, for the DCCC, and for her own campaign and PAC," Thomas Mann, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institute, told us. "Most party leaders represent safe seats but nonetheless try to set a high standard for raising money to advance their party’s broader objectives."

Pelosi’s Capitol Hill and San Francisco offices directed our questions to her fundraising operations at the DCCC. Her political director there, Brian Wolff, called the war chest "another vehicle for her to communicate with constituents in California." But he conceded that the pressure is on, "especially now that we have so many candidates and incumbents that need help. It definitely falls on her to be able to have a very aggressive fundraising campaign."

Wolff insists, too, that the Democrats revolutionized fundraising by seeking out smaller donations from large numbers of people instead of returning to the same short list of affluent contributors they had in the past.

In general, top donations to Pelosi still have come from lobbyists and lawyers, the real estate industry, insurance companies, banking and securities firms, and Amgen, a major biotech researcher based in Thousand Oaks. Officials from the labor movement’s biggest new power broker, the Service Employees International Union, also gave substantial sums, as did other major unions. But they fell far behind the contributions of large business interests.

Art Torres, chair of the California Democratic Party, told us that health care reform failed in 1990s at least partly because of political spending by drug companies. But he said that Democrats winning the White House and expanding their majorities in Congress would create a greater mandate to overhaul the health care system.

"It’s always been about issues" rather than fundraising, Torres said. "When I’ve talked to her, it’s always been about ‘How can we get this or that legislation through?’<0x2009>"

It’s worth pointing out, however, that the nation’s largest drug wholesaler, McKesson Corp., is based in San Francisco, and donors from pharmaceutical companies gave Pelosi more than $85,000 this cycle. Drug companies have given freely to Democrats in the past, but Democratic officeholders "still voted against their interests every time," Torres said.

Pelosi’s campaign spending on everything but her own reelection shows she doesn’t regard Sheehan as much of a threat. But the antiwar candidate did make it onto the ballot Aug. 8 and the Sheehan campaign has raised approximately $350,000 since December in small contributions after refusing to accept money from PACs and corporations.

"We didn’t have the party infrastructure going into this," said Sheehan campaign manager Tiffany Burns, adding that Pelosi’s campaign expenditures are "just another example of how Pelosi believes she is entitled to this seat."

JROTC is not a choice

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OPINION To hear proponents of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) talk, it’s a matter of personal choice for 14- and 15-year-olds to sign up for the Pentagon’s military recruitment program, which is being phased out of San Francisco’s public schools June 2009. The San Francisco Board of Education also recently voted to remove physical education credit from the program this school year. It had to: the retired military officers who teach the course don’t meet the educational standards of state law, and the course doesn’t meet state physical education standards.

Supporters of JROTC are taking the issue to the November ballot. Their initiative, albeit non-binding, would put San Franciscans on record as in support of the military program.

As Democratic clubs and other political organizations begin their endorsement process, progressives need to understand the importance of defeating this initiative. It’s not a harmless measure. If it passes, the new school board can use it to reinstate JROTC. If it loses, it’s less likely the board will change its course. Thankfully, last week the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC) voted overwhelmingly not to endorse the measure.

JROTC is not summer camp or a harmless after-school activity. It is one more way the military finds bodies for its illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Denisha Williams can tell you that. The African American high school senior in Philadelphia told the City Paper that she left JROTC and opted out of the military having her contact info. It hasn’t made any difference: “I have received phone calls, e-mail, three letters and a 15-minute videotape. I even received a phone call from a female recruiter asking if I was still interested in the Navy. I told her I wasn’t and hung up. A week later I received another letter and the tape.”

Capt. Daniel R. Gager, commander of the US Army recruiting station in south Philadelphia, said he and other recruiters were ordered by the US Recruiting Command to put more time and energy into recruiting high school upperclassmen such as Williams.

In San Francisco, at least 15 percent of the cadets have been placed in the program without their consent. It seems the military will do whatever it takes to get in front of our youngsters in our public schools.

Pressuring kids to join the military is wrong. International law says kids under 18 should not be recruited at all, and the ACLU agrees (see www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen). Recruiters in every high school and at every mall in this country break that law every day.

Nationally about 40 percent of JROTC kids end up in the military. In San Francisco, proponents claim only 2 percent go on to military careers. They are wrong. According to the school district, no tracking of JROTC students is done.

Please work to defeat Proposition V, the pro-JROTC initiative.

Mark Sanchez and Tommi Avicolli Mecca

Mark Sanchez is President of the San Francisco Board of Education and an eighth grade science teacher. Tommi Avicolli Mecca is a radical queer activist and writer whose regular columns appear at beyondchron.org.

Feed our elders well

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› amanda@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Conventional wisdom is that it costs more to eat well, but Alameda County Meals on Wheels has found real value in switching from processed foods to the kind of fresh, local, sustainable fare being touted at the upcoming Slow Food Nation conference, which begins Aug. 29 in San Francisco.

Bay Area Community Services (BACS), the nonprofit that manages Meals on Wheels, has been struggling with a perennial budget deficit, rising fuel and food costs, and a waiting list of 200 seniors eager to join the program.

Even though the easy, heat-and-serve method is the national model for feeding large amounts of people cheaply, BACS was finding that trying to supply 1,200 people a day with meals in their homes and at 21 different congregate sites through a contract with a food processing company just wasn’t working.

"Our solution to the problem was a social enterprise kitchen," Jenny Huston told the Guardian. The 20-year veteran chef and educator is director of Culinary Social Enterprise at BACS. She and her boss, executive director Kent Ellsworth, took the program in a new direction. They went "farm to table," meaning they stopped serving frozen food and started serving meals made with fresh meat, dairy, fruits, and vegetables, and they did it by establishing a culinary arts training program with a curriculum based on the day-to-day work of preparing the Meals on Wheels fare from scratch.

"If you have a structural deficit, why are you spending more money on food?" Huston pondered, asking herself the question many critics might raise. "Sure," she said, "processed stuff is much cheaper, but you’re not seeing the full cost."

What is that full cost? That’s a hot topic for the Slow Food Nation forums, such as how far an avocado travels to become guacamole in Maine. Beyond aligning meals with produce that’s locally available, Huston and Ellsworth are attuned to what happens to a community when its most vulnerable populations — children, seniors, and the disabled — stop eating well.

"Good foods are not the privilege of people who have money. It’s the right of everybody," Ellsworth told the Guardian. "When we buy wholesale, local, and fresh, we get a better product for a good price. It’s the right way to do business."

But raw ingredients require more kitchen work. By partnering with a number of organizations, including the Pleasant Valley Adult School and Oakland Adult and Career Education Program, BACS was able to find budding cooks though a free, 12-week job training program.

They also connected with Community Alliance for Family Farms, a network of local growers and distributors who could provide up to 350 pounds of each raw ingredient a day. Just a few months into the new program, a typical Meals on Wheels lunch now includes all local milk, 10 percent local meat, and 19 percent local produce — and it’s made from scratch by workers who are learning enough food preparation skills to qualify for entry-level kitchen jobs.

And they’re doing it for just pennies more a day. "Our food cost has only gone up five cents per meal since we’ve gone farm to table," Huston said. Yet donations since April have increased 25 percent — about $20,000 — meaning that people who were once asked to give a dollar or two for their lunches are voluntarily giving more for better food.

Though the Meals on Wheels budget gap hasn’t disappeared, Huston likens it to the first few months of any business, when turning a profit is elusive. They’re hoping to expand catering services and market the meals to other day and residential programs.

At the Aug. 14 graduation dinner, Ellsworth announced that a foundation had approved a $200,000 program investment loan to purchase new equipment, remodel their kitchen, and grow the school. It was welcome news for the first class of five cooks. Reflecting on the experience, Geri Haas said, "It was really nice going there, knowing I was relied upon to provide fresh food for our elders."

Orlando De’Aguero, another graduate, announced that he got a job with a local organic food preparation company, eliciting cheers from the gathering of friends, family, and fellow classmates. He said, "I wouldn’t have traded the three months I had here for anything at a culinary school."

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

The San Francisco Chronicle has come up with a new name for the broad spectrum of political leaders and activists who make up the San Francisco left. We’re now "ultra-liberals."

The term first appeared in Heather Knight’s Aug. 15 article on the changes in the local Democratic County Central Committee. Her lead sentence was almost breathtaking in its drama: The party, she wrote, "has veered dramatically to the left, telling voters that on Nov. 4 they should elect a raft of ultra-liberal supervisorial candidates, decriminalize prostitution, boot JROTC from public schools, embrace public power, and reject Mayor Gavin Newsom’s special court in the Tenderloin."

There’s no question that the progressives made significant advances in winning control of the DCCC in June. And I think it’s entirely fair — and a good thing — that the party has veered to the left. It’s "dramatic," though, only because for so many years the Democratic Party in one of the world’s most liberal cities wasn’t particularly liberal at all: it was controlled by political machines and friendly to real estate developers and big business.

It shouldn’t really surprise anyone that San Francisco Democrats support public power and decriminalizing sex work and oppose military recruiting in the public schools. Those are pretty basic San Francisco values. What’s surprising is that it took a wholesale organizing effort and a huge battle to get the party to where it is today.

But I still cringe at the term "ultra-liberal."

David Campos, a Police Commission member (and generally a fairly even-minded guy) who is running for supervisor in District 9, called me this weekend to tell me he was laughing about the new tag: "It’s a badge of pride," he said. And of course, on one level, I agree with him.

But there’s something more to the story here. The way the Chron uses it, "ultra-liberal" is supposed to be a derogatory term, just a bit short of "radical" (or in another era, "commie." It suggests candidates who are out of touch with the mainstream, who don’t represent the majority, who can’t entirely be trusted.

I asked Knight what she meant by that term, and she had no comment. But here’s what I think is happening: Newsom’s political operatives are mad that the progressives have seized control of the term "progressive" — which is, in fact, an accurate and historically valuable term. They’d like to call Newsom a progressive mayor — which is inaccurate and historically invalid. But since they can’t get away with that, they’ve pushed the Chron to use another term for people like Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin, and the best the editors could come up with is "ultra-liberal."

Weak.

Speaking of progressive issues: the move to reinstate JROTC in the public schools is really a wedge campaign that will be funded by downtown interests and used against progressives like Eric Mar, who is running in a more moderate district. The issue itself is a no-brainer. Do we want military recruitment programs in the public schools? The progressive candidates for school board need to stand up on this one and make it clear that they aren’t going to back down — JROTC has to go.

Marian Shelter closing, but not without fight

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Marian Residence for Women has been called a “model for shelter and transitional services for women,” yet it’s closing for good on August 31, adding another 60 beds to the 400+ that have been lost from the San Francisco’s homeless shelter system since Mayor Gavin Newsom took office.

That fact was reiterated once again during an August 7, 2008 City Operations and Neighborhood Services committee hearing on the closure, a mostly somber affair except when Quintin Mecke, chair of the city’s Shelter Monitoring Committee, praised the shelter’s model service, eliciting cheers and applause from the crowd of onlookers – many of whom were current or former Marian residents. “It really is a catastrophic loss,” he added. Mecke and the committee are tasked with monitoring health and safety in the city-funded shelters. Marian receives no city money.

The 60-bed shelter and transitional housing facility is owned by St. Anthony Foundation and, as we previously reported, the nonprofit is short on cash and shuttering the facility. To generate revenue it’s hoping to lease the building – and as testimony at the hearing showed, it’s the city who will be renting the space and converting it to a medical respite facility, thus serving a different, yet equally desperate homeless population.

Currently, medical respite – which provides bed and care for homeless patients too ill for the streets but not critical enough for the hospital – is conducted at two different locations in the city, though the Dept. of Public Health and Mayor Newsom have long desired a single, comprehensive facility.

Joyce Crum of the city’s Human Services Agency said they were working with St. Anthony Foundation to ensure that all of the women staying at Marian would have a place to go. In an effort to ramp up the waning services for women, HSA has also identified a building with 56 units that they plan to lease and devote entirely to housing homeless women. Mayor Gavin Newsom’s homeless policy director, Dariush Kayhan, said the mayor had set aside $500,000 for the project.

That’s a far cry from the $1.3 million St. Anthony spends every year to run Marian Residence. While some might say that’s what it takes to run a model shelter, Kayhan said, “It seems that it’s an unsuitable program design.”

PG&E and a Rock Rapids, Iowa, liberal

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By Bruce B. Brugmann

I confess. I am an old-fashioned Rock Rapids, Iowa, liberal. For starters, that means I grew up in a little town in northwestern Iowa that has had public power since 1896 and so i know personally that public power is cheap, reliable, and accountable.

In San Francisco, where PG&E private power is expensive, unreliable, and unaccountable, I was startled to find that I am suddenly an “ultra liberal,” along with a host of other progressives and independents who support the Clean Energy Initiative and public power.

Yes, according to PG&E and the San Francisco Chronicle, we are all suspicious characters and ought to be kept under watch for the duration for advocating such “ultra-liberal” things as clean energy, renewables, public power, mandates for making San Francisco a world leader in renewables, and kicking PG&E out of the mayor’s office and the DCCC.

As Tim Redmond points out in his Editors notes (8/20/08), the term first appeared in Heather Knight’s Aug. 15th article on the changes in the Democratic County Central Committee (DCCC), for decades the unassailable bastion of the Burton/ Brown machine. Her lead, he noted, was “almost breathtaking ” in its drama. She wrote that the party “has veered dramatically to the left,” and that it would be telling voters to vote for a raft of “ultra-liberal politicians supervisorial candidates” and, among other things, to “embrace public power.” (The Clean Energy Initiative, as it is appropriately known, mandates aggressive goals for renewables but PG&E gallops swiftly by this point and loves to say without evidence that the initiative is a $4 billion takeover of PG&E, which is yet another Big PG&E Lie.)

Meanwhile, the new Chronicle columnist Willie Brown, who ran endless errands for PG&E as mayor and as a private attorney on the public payroll, and collected a nifty $200,000 in “consulting services” in 2007 from PG&E, wrote without gulping:

“It was quite a week for local politics, with the certified takeover of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee by outgoing Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin and Chris Daly…But what’s really going on here behind the headlines is a move by the ‘progressives’ to take over the central committee a la Tammany Hall or Richard Daley’s Chicago. The goal is to control the party money and endorsements–and that way be able to pick candidates for office as well.

“In other words the central committee will be Peskin’s shadow mayoralty, allowing Peskin to keep calling the shots even when he leaves office.”

Tammany Hall? Richard Daley’s Chicago? Why didn’t Wiillie just say what the facts are: that the Burton/Brown machine, and Mayor Newsom and PG&E et al, are no longer calling the shots on the DCCC and that a group of real progressives are cutting the umbilical cord to machine politics and calling the shots with real progressive issues and initiatives, such as the Clean Energy Act. Willie also couldn’t say of course that PG&E got much of its influence through his office as mayor and the Burton/Brown machine, which never put as much as a pebble in PG&E’s monopoly path. Thus, until now, the machine-dominated DCCC has been a safe haven for PG&E and even this time around the real progressives only won through a major organizing effort and tough battle.

Tim wrote that he thinks Newsom’s political operatives are mad that “the progressives have seized control of the term ‘progressives.’ which is in fact an accurate and historically valuable term. They’d like to call Newsom a progressive mayor, which is inaccurate and historically invalid. But since they can’t get away with that, they’ve pushed the Chronicle to use another term for people like Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin and the best the editors could come up with is ‘ultra liberal.'” The Chronicle, which appears to be once again revving up for PG&E, tosses a juicy T-bone to PG&E and its campaign theme that only the loony left would support such dread issues as clean energy and public power.

Maybe we have a new insight into the term progressive. A real progressive supports the Clean Energy Act and public power, while a phony Willie Brown/Gavin Newsom ‘progressive,’ in quotes, supports PG&E and opposes the Clean Energy Act. In short, there is a big difference between a real progressive and a PG&E ‘progressive.’

And me? I’m still just an old-fashioned Rock Rapids, Iowa, liberal.

More to come on this illuminating subject, B3

P.S. 1:Hearst ethics policy: If Hearst wants to present Willie Brown as a “legitimate” journalist and featured political columnist, making value judgments and ethical pronouncements on who is and is not a real progressive and whether the DCCC has been taken over by clean energy progressives playing Tammany Hall/Richard Daley machine politics, the Chronicle ought at minimum to require disclosure of his “consulting services” for PG&E and other private interests that would conflict his column? What specific “consulting services” did he provide for PG&E in 2007? What is he doing now for PG&E and for how much in the November election? Is he writing a political column for the Chronicle and working for PG&E at the same time? Is he advising PG&E on how to “steal” another election?
(I left a message for Willie at the Willie Brown Institute and I put out an email to Hearst corporate for comment on Willie’s PG&E/editorial role.)

It was Mayor Willie, as the public power campaign was winning in the 2001 public power election, who ordered that the ballots be moved from City Hall to the Civic Auditorium because of an anthrax scare. I remember standing with Angela Alioto about l0:30 p.m. on election night when then Elections Director Tammy Haygood, announced the anthrax move. “Angela,” I said, “we’ve lost the election.” She didn’t believe me and kept saying, “No, no, we couldn’t lose the election now.” Alas, I was right.

We raced over to the Auditorium where there was only minimal security. There was no evidence then or later of an anthrax scare. PG&E came from behind and won by a bare 500 votes. Several days later, several tops of the election boxes were found floating in the bay. There was no explanation from Willie nor his election director and no real investigation. The gallows humor was that the campaign should hire divers to go into the bay and find the missing ballots.

PG&E’s big payments: PG&E discloses the $200,000 payment to Willie Brown for “consulting services” in 2007 in its annual report to the California Public Utilities Commission. In a key section of this report (called page 257), PG&E is required to list every payment that it made to an outside company or consultant. This amounts to billions year.
PG&E has the entire annual report posted on its Investor Relations website, but, significantly, page 357 is missing.
PG&E’s statement explaining the omission says: “Details of this page are filed with the California Public Utilities Commission.” Reporter Amanda Witherell formally asked the CPUC press office for it and they said they’re “trying to track it down.” But she did get a copy.

Clubs: Frisco Disco ends, Transfer over?

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Alas, the rumors — most of them anyway — are seeming to be substantiated. Word kept hitting my hotline last week that owner and fairy impressario Greg Bronstein was effecting a management and direction change at the fantastic gay/hipster/hipster-gay ground zero, The Transfer. Many of the Transfer’s beloved party institutions appear to be fleeing. (Update: even more are fleeing.)

That includes, incredibly unfortunately, the wonderful six-year-old Frisco Disco, which has grown world famous as an international hotspot for scenemakers who don’t mind a little party puke on their stilettos. Alas! This Saturday is the final Frisco Disco at the Transfer.

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This party’s been homeless before — it journeyed to the Transfer after a successful — perhaps too successful — run at Arrow Bar, now Matador, on Sixth Street. It may be back, too, after a short hiatus — but definitely not at the Transfer. The Frisco-ites claim that Bronstein said they were too rowdy for him, although they still adore the Transfer staff etc. I’m trying to get a hold of Bronstein now for comment. Also announcing Transfer departure: Lustre, the goth new-wave night. San Francisco may be on the verge of losing one of its most interesting alternative party venues … more to come!

FINAL FRISCO DISCO
w/ DJs Jeffrey Paradise and Richie Panic
Sat/23, 10pm
The Transfer
198 Church at Market

Newsom heads South

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By Steven T. Jones
In the latest indication that Mayor Gavin Newsom intends to run as far away from San Francisco values as possible during his bid for governor, his campaign announced today the hiring of Garry South as its senior adviser.
I got to know South during my years as news editor for the Sacramento News & Review, when he was an adviser to then-Gov. Gray Davis, and I share the concerns of others that he represents the antithesis of Democratic Party values.
While the California Energy Crisis was barreling down on this state’s citizens and government, with enough time to head off the worst impacts, I listened to South indignantly defend the governor’s laissez faire approach until way after such passivity was indefensible. I argued with him as Davis became the most mindless law-and-order governor in California history (Davis famously argued for patterning our criminal justice system on that of repressive Singapore, a ludicrous South-inspired statement he never disavowed). And I sat in court while South and his Republican counterparts pleaded with a judge to overturn voter-approved campaign finance limits.
Garry South’s conservative triangulation approach to politics is arguably a big reason why Davis was recalled, leaving us with the Governator. Along with other soulless, scorched-earth political operatives in Camp Newsom — including Nathan Ballard, Peter Ragone, and Chris Lehane — South is sure to drag this campaign down into the lowest common denominator muck.
Hmm, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all. Newsom can run from us, lose, and then we won’t need to keep explaining why Newsom is from San Francisco, but not of San Francisco.

Semiconscious Consumerism: Dope gear for idiots

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Blogger Justin Juul ponders high-end street gear in a time of economic crisis. Read his saga of American Spirits here, and his sassy deconstruction of the Nike and American Apparel connection here.

Here’s a bunch of shit I bought because I thought I was the only person in San Francisco tuned into the world of supercool urban fashion. Most of these items cost hundreds of dollars and almost nothing fit straight out of the box. So, genius that I am, instead of re-selling my stuff on Ebay for a profit, I took everything to a tailor for resizing. Which, most times, wound up costing almost as much as the actual item.

semiccstreetweara.jpg

It wouldn’t have been so bad if I had been right, if indeed I could ever hope to know more about “high-end streetwear” than your average 15 year-old skater thug. But I don’t. By the time most of this stuff got my to house you could buy knock-off versions at any store on Sixth Street. And besides, look at it! I’m almost thirty years old, man. I can’t go outside in this shit. Still, even though I never wear any of the stuff I buy, and even though I’m fully aware that the whole street wear industry is a marketing sham that preys on the ridiculous aspirations of clueless suburban kids, I’m insanely proud of my ghetto-fab wardrobe.

I mean, whatever, right? These clothes may not be worth the money I spent on them, and they may not make me cool, but I have them and you don’t, so there. You can call me shallow and you can call me crazy, but you can’t deny that if you could get your hands on my gear you’d be happy for life. I win.

Here Are the Top Five Coolest Garments in my Collection:

Willie Brown complains about political power

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Okay, this is incredibly ironic: Former Mayor Willie Brown, now a Chronicle columnist, is suddenly complaining about the use of political power. From his piece yesterday on the changes at the Democratic County Central Committee:

But what’s really going on behind the headlines is a move by the “progressives” to take over the central committee a la Tammany Hall or Richard Daley’s Chicago. The goal is to control the party money and endorsements – and that way be able to pick candidates for office as well.

In other words the central committee will be Peskin’s shadow mayoralty, allowing Peskin to keep calling shots even when he leaves office.

Willie, Willie, Willie — YOU were the one who took Chicago-style machine politics to a new level in San Francisco. You were the one who controlled the money, the endorsements, the DCCC, the Board of Supervisors … Now you’re complaining?

The “ultra-liberal” city

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By Tim Redmond

I don’t know what Heather Knight means by “ultra-liberal,” but to say that the San Francisco Democratic Party has taken a “sharp turn to the left” is a bit miselading. Yes, the progressives ran an agressive campaign and picked up some seats this spring, but most of the votes on most of the issues were pretty close to unanimous; public power, fro example, had support from across the spectrum. Same with most of the supervisors races.

In fact, the only reason the Democratic Party seems a little more progressive now is that it has so often in the past been controlled by moderates (and in the days of Willie Brown, by a political machine).

So what’s up with the “ultra-liberal,” anyway?

I mean, the word “liberal” used to mean someone who believed that government was part of the solution to social problems, that income ought to be redistributed and the weathy should pay their fair share and that taxes levied and collected in a progressive fashion should be used for programs to help the needy.

That describes most of the people the Chron is now calling “ultra-liberal.” It does not describe, for example, Gavin Newsom.

In San Francisco, taking liberal stands on social issues is easy. The economic issues are a lot more tough, and that’s where you can draw political lines. The Shorensteins, Walter and Doug, are (generaly speaking) social liberals who give money to Democrats, and they always have. But when it comes to regulating land use and development and taxing downtown — when it hits the Shorensteins in the pocket book — they’re as anti-tax and anti-regulation as most Republicans.

John Burton asked me once why I didn’t call him a progressive, and I told him that the difference between a liberal and a progressive these days is that progressives don’t trust real-estate developers. That’s just a small example, but it makes the point. The progressives in San Francisco stand for both social and economic justice.

Here’s what I think is going on: The Newsom camp is angry about the use of the term “progressive” to describe Newsom’s critics, because it implies that Newsom somehow isn’t progressive. (Honestly, by any meaning of the word, he’s not. Care not Cash was the opposite of a progressive program. His budget is the opposite of a progressive budget. On economic issues, he’s very much a centrist.)

But Newsom’s operatives have been putting pressure on the media, and I’m sure on the Chron, to change that terminology. So now that Chron has come up with the disparaging term “ultra-liberal.”

Really, based on the recent endorsement, the Democratic Party in SF today pretty closely reflects San Francisco values. The nasty label’s got to go.

Newsom hacks away at the budget

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It’s no surprise that many of the items Mayor Newsom hacked out of the city budget at the last minute were important to supervisors who didn’t go along with the mayor’s original budget proposal.

Just look at the complete list (here as a pdf). Among the items axed: $130,000 for a Bernal Heights childcare center (a project Sup Tom Ammiano has been working on for two years or more), $397,000 for homeless drop-in services (which progresive board members have pushed for); $300,000 for home health nurses (a priority of SEIU Local 790) … the list goes on.

The Chron quotes Robert Haaland:

“It’s a very aggressive and obviously retaliatory move. But we’re not just going to roll over,” said Robert Haaland, a political organizer for SEIU. “Imagine you’re a working person and all of a sudden your salary gets slashed. People can lose their homes just because the mayor wants to retaliate. It remains to be seen how we’ll fight back, but we’re certainly not going to watch our members lose their homes.”

I just got off the phone with Haaland, and he went even further: “What they did is an unfair labor practice, retaliating against someone who refused to make concessions,” he said.

Which pretty much sums it up. SEIU Local 1021 wouldn’t play ball with the mayor, so now the union members get hit.

Ammiano was more than a bit pissed off. “It’s all retaliatory,” he told me. “Look at the Bernal preschool. This is a tiny amount of money, but it’s important to the community. And he didn’t even have the courtesy to call me himself and tell me about it.”

Added Ammiano: “It’s particularly ironic since he talks all the time about keeping families in San Francisco. I guess that doesn’t mean low-income families.”

The killer here is that these kind of cuts seem minor when they’re part of a $5 billion budget, but on the ground, on the streets, they really matter.

I’m still waiting to hear if the mayor will support Sup. Aaron Peskin’s revenue measures on the fall ballot, which would provide plenty of money to avoid these kinds of cuts.

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