San Francisco

Questions for Gavin the Green

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Why did Mayor Newsom recently buckle three times to PG@E? How can he be a “green” mayor and a “green” gubernatorial candidate if he’s scared of PG@E?

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Last Saturday (July 26), out driving in my car, I was startled to hear Mayor Gavin Newsom on the Progressive Talk Radio Show Green 960 show. He was the host, interviewing Stewart Brand of Whole Earth Catalog fame, and generally sweating away to appear clean and green, green, green, and green some more.
However, he greened over his recent classics in green self-immolation. So I sent him and the station some questions by email and then on to his press secretary Nathan Ballard. No answer as of blogtime almost a week later.

Dear Gavin,

I was interested to hear you this morning on the Progressive Talk Radio Green 960 program. I am curious to know why, as a purported “green” mayor and a purported “green” candidate for governor, and a “purported” radio host on a green 960 show, you have buckled twice recently to PG&E? The first time you buckled to PG&E and changed your position on the Potrero Hill peakers, allowing PG&E to continue to control the power plant and city energy policy.

The second was your quick and hard rejection of the clean energy initiative. How can you be a “green” mayor if you are buckling to PG&E on the big green issues? I will be posting the questions and answers on my Bruce blog at sfbg.com, so I would appreciate hearing from you. Thanks, Bruce B. Brugmann, Guardian editor and publisher

P.S. 1:And now there is a third Newsom instance of buckling to PG@E: Newsom’s five PG@E-friendly appointments to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. None had any public power or community choice aggregation credentials. And Nora Vargas, director of the Latino Issues Forum, was not only considered PG@E friendly, but PG@E between 2004 and 2005 had given $150,000 as part of their community grantmaking.

More: Guillermo Rodriguez, former public relations flak for PG@E, is on the board of the forum (along with two other private private utility executives. Rodriguez left PG@E to head the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which receives gobs of money from PG@E on a regular basis and in return provides “community services” for PG@E.

This, ladies and gentleman, is yet another example of how PG@E exerts its power and uses the mayor to subvert any real moves toward real clean and green power, such as the Clean Energy Initiative. PG@E has used this maneuver successfully for decades: they influence the mayor to make PG@E-friendly appointments to the PUC and then the PG@e-friendly appointees never put a pebble in the path of PG@E or raise serious questions about its illegal private power monopoly. So far, it’s always worked but a new day may be coming. On guard!

P.S. 2:Why doesn’t the station bring on people from the clean energy campaign? Why doesn’t it appear to allow call-in questions on the show (at least I didn’t hear any during my listening time?)

P.S. 3: Alert: Let us know of any PG@E astroturfing and greenwashing as the campaign goes along. PG@E is more worried than ever and it will be spending millions to try to convince San Francisco voters that clean green energy is not for San Francisco. Their propaganda line: leave the greening to PG@E and Gavin the Green. B3

Click here to hear the podcast of the Gavin Newsom Show from Saturday July 26th.

Baghead: There’s more to it than just mumbling

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By Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

It’s difficult to call most films independent nowadays. But the Duplass Brothers’ 2005 Sundance sleeper The Puffy Chair is as Indie as an American feature film can be. Made for $15,000, it brought the grit of John Cassavetes and the introspection of Richard Linklater to a whole new generation. Now considered to be part of the godfathers of “Mumblecore,” a genre defined by this generation’s talkative nature, the Duplass brothers have returned with their follow-up. Baghead is a hilarious and often unsettling stalker film that delves into the personal relationship minutia and woes of two guys and two girls who are trying to write a screenplay together in remote cabin.

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Um, Baghead

Both of the Duplass brothers, Mark and Jay, were recently in San Francisco for an interview on a windy summer afternoon.

Mark Duplass: There’s this book that someone sent to us once to maybe adapt into a movie about a couple who had a lot of trouble breaking up. They would break up, get back together, break up, and get back together. So they basically picked their 10 favorite things from the relationship that they loved to do, and they were gonna do all those things and then end the relationship after completing them. Great concept, but it ended up being really bad. I thought it would be great if, while they were trying to do those things, they came upon more obstacles. But the book ends with: since they can’t live with each other and they can’t live without each other, they do a double suicide in a poetic and oblique way.

SFBG: So you’d have to ruin the book if you adapted it into a film.

MD: Yeah, which we’ve done before.

Radiohead Jonny Greenwood’s ‘Popcorn’ gets its West Coast premiere in SF

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There will be “Popcorn.” Radiohead player Jonny Greenwood’s “Popcorn Superhet Receiver” will get its West Coast premiere in SF, courtesy of the Wordless Music Series, right before his group appears at Outside Lands music fest in Golden Gate Park. This press release came over the transom yesterday:

“On August 21, 2008, New York’s intrepid Wordless Music Series concludes its ’07-’08 season with a surprise San Francisco debut, reprising the centerpiece of the inaugural Wordless Music Orchestra concerts from last January by presenting the West Coast premiere of “Popcorn Superhet Receiver.”

“The night before Radiohead takes the stage at the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, Wordless Music will feature composer and multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver for string orchestra. Maestro Benjamin Shwartz, resident conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, will lead the Magik*Magik Orchestra in a program of music by Arvo Pärt, a major influence on the music of Greenwood and Radiohead, along with Bay Area composers Fred Frith, Mason Bates, and John Adams.

Carbs rebound: ahoy gourmet donuts

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See you latte: Lemon and thyme and vanilla bean donuts with caffeine side. All photos by Kimberly Chun.

Remember turn-of-the-century Atkins? Remember pushing that bread basket away and diving head first into a slab of sirloin? Well, maybe those nutty notions are ready to go the way of cut-glass Jello salad and all-pineapple diets. Carbs are back – big time. Proof: the line forming every morning – much earlier than you’d expect – at Dynamo Donuts and Coffee at 2760 24th St., San Francisco.

It’s those little niblets of fried batter that are making it happen. Personally, I’ve been waiting for the donut revival to hit any moment: few treats can beat a piping hot wad of cake dough covered in sugar or glaze or whatever, as the ideal desert. Add in the lovely, imaginative, only-in-Ess-Eff flavor combos at Dynamo Donut and you’ve got a hit. Enough of a hit that the line gently wound out of the almost brand new little stand on two separate weekday morns.

So far I’ve tried the lemon-thyme donut, the apricot honey-stuffed and iced number, the spiced chocolate, the salted caramel with fleur de sel, and the vanilla bean, all priced at $2 to $2.50. The lemon-thyme is bedecked with glaze, but the petite flecks of lemon and herb still peek out from their cakey home. The spiced chocolate was complex and amazing – my fave and worth the extra 50 cents. I even dug the apricot – I, who otherwise despise ‘cots. All appear to be low on the grease factor, and amazingly not too sweet despite the thick swathe of frosting and the liberal amounts of sugar coating the top and bottom of each donut. More, please.

P.S. I can’t wait to try the maple-glazed apple and bacon number, though I’ve no clue when that comes around next. Better to keep it a surprise. And word has it the current three flavors – which often sell out early – will soon expand to seven.

DYNAMO DONUTS AND COFFEE
Mon.-Sat., 7 a.m.-5 p.m.
2760 24th St. at Hampshire, SF
(415) 920-1978

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Puppy brutally stabbed to death

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First there was this news about a horrifying “puppy mill” being busted in Los Gatos — then we got this release. Please contact Lt. Le-Ellis Brown of Animal Care & Control at (415) 554-9400 if you have any information!

Animal Care & Control Seeking Info on Stabbing Of Foster Puppy

San Francisco – San Francisco Animal Care & Control is asking the public for help to find the person – or persons – responsible for stabbing to death a seven-month-old puppy in foster care with Grateful Dogs Rescue.

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Pogo

The puppy – named Pogo – was being exercised by his foster parent at Ocean Beach in San Francisco at Sunset on July 22. He disappeared behind a sand dune and wasn’t seen again until his body was discovered dumped in an unincorporated area of the Bayview on the morning of July 29. Pogo had been brutally stabbed to death.

Pogo was a friendly, trusting pit bull puppy who had been taken from Animal Care & Control – SF’s open-door animal shelter – by Grateful Dogs Rescue. He had a genetic defect that required the amputation of one hind leg. The surgery to remove the leg was partially donated by San Francisco Veterinary Specialists – Pogo had fully recovered and was expected to lead a long and normal life. Grateful Dogs Rescue is one of the most active animal rescue groups working with Animal Care & Control. Their volunteers have taken and re-homed hundreds of needy dogs from the shelter.

Pogo was a brindle pit bull puppy with a white blaze, white around his nose and a white chest. He weighed approximately 40 pounds, was missing his right rear leg and was wearing a red collar when last seen.

Anyone with information about Pogo’s death – or info on Pogo being taken from Ocean Beach – should call Animal Care & Control at (415) 554-9400. A $2000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the perpetrator has been established by Grateful Dogs Rescue and The Friends of SF Animal Care & Control. To contribute to the reward fund, please contact Animal Care & Control at (415) 554-9412.

Sports: Down for the count

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By A.J. Hayes

Our limited experience atop a pitching mound – and the corresponding disastrous results – precludes us from properly evaluating major league baseball pitch counts.

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Tim Lincecum

But based on Saturday’s buzz kill of a finish at AT&T Park – Arizona’s 5-3 comeback win over San Francisco – one thing is abundantly clear. If the Giants are going to continue to keep a clicker on young star Tim Lincecum’s deliveries and routinely yank him from the game after a certain number of throws – the club is going to have to come up with a better mound contingency plan when he exits

Any more results like Saturday’s eighth inning implosion and the Giants risk a redux Chicago’s 1978 disco demolition night, sans burning wax platters of Donna Summer’s Greatest Hits.

As usual, Lincecum was rolling right along, striking out a career high 13 batters through seven innings, when he was abruptly yanked from the game. It wasn’t because Arizona had mounted a rally or Lincecum appeared to be gassed – he had just struck out the side in the seventh. No he was sent to soap up with Irish Spring because he had thrown 111 pitches and the team feared possible injury if he pitched any more.

Lincecum had thrown 121 pitchers in his previous game and San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy didn’t want to push the All-Star.

“The consensus was he was coming off a high pitch game. We’ve got to look after him a little bit here in the second half,” Bochy was quoted as saying.

The fact that he seemed to be throwing with just as much velocity as he had in the early innings or that Lincecum has never injured his throwing arm didn’t seem to figure into the decision. He was gone and that was that. Lincecum was yanked, and the beleagued reliever Tyler Walker was summoned.

What happened next was nearly sadly predictable as watching a gaggle of besodden twenty-something in tight fitting denim wobble down Union street on a given weekend night.

The best story in Guardian history

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Joe Neilands and Harold Ickes describe how PG&E has Hetch Hetchyed San Francisco for decades

By Bruce B. Brugmann

Le me add my own Best of selection to our splendid Best of issue this year. It;s a Guardian story with all the elements of great story: It has drama, intrigue, corruption, a cast of characters from John Muir to Hiram Johnson to Harold Ickes to Mayor Newsom, a classic battle between progressives and conservationists, a breathtaking theft of a major public asset by a private corporation, and a long sordid history that continues to this day in San Francisco.

Three years after my wife and I founded the Guardian in 1966, a UC-Berkeley professor by the name of J. B. Neilands came to our tiny Guardian office and offered me a big story. I quickly looked it over and said, Joe (he was known as Joe) this is an incredible story.

Why can’t you get it published in the Chronicle or the Examiner or another major news outlet? Why me? Why the Guardian?

“Nobody will touch it,” said, shaking his head sadly. “It’s too big a scandal. It’s up to you to publish it. If you don’t publish it, nobody else will.”

And so started the saga of what we came to call the PG@E/Raker Act Scandal, the biggest urban scandal in American history. Joe had buried the lead and put some professorese but he had done the research, he had nailed the story and the culprits, and all it needed was some editing, which I was happy to do. Joe and the Guardian had an astounding scoop which no other local paper would publish then and few publish to this day.

The story appeared in our March 27, l969 edition under the fold on the front page. And we have followed it up through the years with literally hundreds of stories, editorials, cartoons, graphics, and charts. . Virtually everyone who worked in Guardian editorial has covered or researched a piece of this story.

The head: “How PG@E robs S.Fl of cheap power”

The lead: “A few months before he died last year, Frank Havenner sat up in his bed in a nursing home in San Francisco and told me of how the Pacific Gas & Electric Co. swindled San Francisco out of hundreds of millions of dollars of cheap hydroelectric power.

“The story was incredible: PG&E and its political allies had defeated eight successive bond issues to establish a municipal electric system in San Francisco and grant city residents and businesses the benefit of low cost power produced by the city’s Hetch Hetchy water system in the Sierra.

“The result: San Francisco has paid through the nose to PG&E for its power and the city loses about $30 million a year in profits it would get from a public system.”

The key quote: Joe research turned up a magnificent phrase used by then U.S. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes in a speech to the Commonwealth Club in 1944 in support of a city bond issue to buy out PG@E. Said Ickes: “The disgraceful history of the handling of Hetch Hetchy power should place a new verb in the lexicon of political chicanery: ‘To Hetch Hetchy’ means 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.”

“I need not repeat the scandalous story thas has given birth to this new verb, but I would remind you that the last chapter of it has not been written. The pledge that the people of San Francisco, with full knowledge, made to their government has not yet been redeemed.” Ickes was making the point that San Francisco was in violation of the public power mandates in the federal Raker Act that and he had sued the city in federal court to force the city to bring its Hetch Hetchy public power to establish a public power system in San Francisco. .

A key Examiner editorial quote: Joe even found the Examiner, then a strong supporter of the dam and public power, stating that “It is a wrongful and shameful policy for a grant of water and power privilege in the Yosemite National Park Area to be developed at the expenditure of $50 million by the taxpayers of San Francisco, only to have its greatest financial and economic asset, the hydroelectric power, diverted to private corporation hands at the instant of completion; to the great benefit of said corporation, and at an annual deficit to the city of San Francisco.” (The Examiner of William Randolph Hearst was of course referring to PG&E. Hearst later switched sides, as a result of getting a chunk of money from a PG@E-controlled bank, but that is another story that a Hearst biographer and the Guardian have previously disclosed.)

Joe asked James Carr, then San Francisco’s general manager of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission,
when the city would enforce the Raker Act. Carr replied to Joe, in a letter 5l years after the Raker Act passed as the Magna Carta of public power, that it was ‘premature to discuss municipal distribution of power in San Francisco.'” Joe concluded: “In March, 1969, it still is.”

Well, in July of 2008, according to PG&E and Mayor Newsom,
it still is.

Click here to read the original Joe Neilands Guardian story on the PG&E/ Raker Act scandal.

Lennar’s lawsuits

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› sarah@sfbg.com

Two years after Lennar Corp. reported that asbestos dust had neither been monitored nor controlled during major grading and earthmoving operations on its Parcel A construction site on Hunters Point Shipyard last year (see "The corporation that ate San Francisco," 3/14/08), the fallout from these failures continues.

On June 19 a dozen Bayview–Hunters Point residents and workers sued Lennar, as well as international environmental consultant CH2M Hill and Sacramento-based engineering consultant Gordon N. Ball, in Superior Court on behalf of their preschool and school-age children. The parents allege that their children suffered headaches, skin rashes, and respiratory ailments during Parcel A excavations, which occurred next to a predominantly African American and Latino community.

The plaintiffs charge Lennar, CH2M Hill, and Ball with public nuisance, negligence, environmental racism, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and battery. They are asking for monetary damages, a jury trial, and court costs.

But Lennar is apparently seeking to deflect the blame for these problems at the site entirely onto CH2M Hill through a new federal lawsuit, despite revelations in the Guardian (see "Question of intent," 11/28/07) that Lennar reprimanded its own staffer, Gary McIntyre, when he tried to bring Ball to heel for the company’s failure to properly control the toxic asbestos dust.

On June 23, Lennar BVHP LLC sued subcontractor CH2M Hill for negligence, negligent misrepresentation, breach of contract, express indemnity, and unfair business practices in connection with its work on Parcel A.

"Lennar seeks to recover for the significant economic harm it has suffered in addressing the ramifications of CH2’s gross and reckless misconduct in failing to provide competent asbestos air monitoring services for Lennar’s redevelopment of a portion of Hunters Point Shipyard in San Francisco," states the suit, which seeks damages, restitution and indemnity, attorney fees, court costs, and a jury trial.

"Lennar’s economic harm vastly exceeds $75,000," the suit notes. "CH2 has provided no compensation to Lennar and no other relief for its failures. Indeed, CH2 has never publicly acknowledged its clear responsibility for these failures."

CH2’s Oakland-based vice president, Udai Singh, who signed a $392,600 contract with Lennar in January 2006 for asbestos dust monitoring services, told the Guardian, "Unfortunately I’m not working on that, so I have no clue what you are talking about.

"I thought I might have seen something about that, but since I have been working mostly on EPA stuff, I haven’t been involved in this one," continued Singh, who has been project manager for remedial projects on Superfund sites for the federal EPA’s Region IX, which includes Arizona, California, Hawaii, and Nevada.

Singh referred us to CH2’s Denver-based counsel Kirby Wright, who referred us to CH2’s public relations director, John Corsi, who did not return the Guardian‘s calls as of press time.

But while Lennar BVHP continues to contract with Gordon N. Ball at the shipyard, local resident Christopher Carpenter has sued the Sacramento-based contractor in Superior Court for whistleblower retaliation, wrongful termination, racial discrimination, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

As the Guardian reported, ("Green City: Signs of asbestos," 8/29/07), Carpenter was fired shortly after he complained about dust that was kicked up by a Ball backhoe excavating the Parcel A hillside on Oct. 2, 2006.

"Carpenter became surrounded by a cloud of dust that was caused by Gordon Ball’s failure to water the ground prior to commencing grading," the suit alleges, noting that Carpenter complained about Ball’s unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, some of which violated Bay Area Air Quality Management District regulations and the city’s Health Code, before he was fired.

At City Hall, Sup. Sophie Maxwell is seeking to amend the city’s Building Code to require more-stringent dust control measures for demolition and construction projects. (The Building Inspection Commission opposed Maxwell’s proposal in December 2007, in a 4–3 vote).

On July 22, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to support Maxwell’s dust legislation.

Meanwhile, the Rev. Christopher Muhammad, who represents the Muhammad University of Islam adjacent to Parcel A, asked the San Francisco Health Commission to investigate why it took until July 14 for the local community to learn of an asbestos-level violation that occurred at Lennar’s Parcel A site just four days before the June 3 election.

Muhammad suspects the infraction was hushed up because Lennar was engaged in the most expensive initiative battle in San Francisco’s history, plunking down a total of $5 million to support the ultimately successful Proposition G, which gives the developer control of Candlestick Point and the shipyard.

Amy Brownell of the Department of Public Health told the Guardian that the violation, which registered at 138,800 structures per cubic meter of air (the city’s work shutdown level is set at 16,000 structures) did not trigger a work suspension because there was no work planned at Lennar’s site May 31 or June 1, which was a weekend.

Pelosi backs Bush on Iran

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OPINION Has Nancy Pelosi signed off on the George W. Bush administration’s covert CIA operations in Iran? Yes, according to Seymour Hersh’s July 14 New Yorker article, "Preparing the Battlefield." Late last year, the White House submitted a Presidential Finding, a highly classified document signed by the president, to be cleared with the leaders and ranking intelligence committee members of both parties in both branches of Congress — a group that, by dint of her position as Speaker of the House, includes Pelosi.

According to a Hersh source, "Although some legislators were troubled by aspects of the Finding … the funding for the escalation was approved" — noting that congressional leaders authorized up to $400 million for increased efforts to destabilize Iran’s government.

When some Democrats became uncomfortable with the prospect of approving "potential defensive lethal action by US operatives in Iran," they conferred with CIA Director Michael V. Hayden who, Hersh writes, "reassured the legislators that the language did nothing more than provide authority for Special Forces operatives on the ground in Iran to shoot their way out if they faced capture or harm."

Nothing more than to shoot their way out? If President Bush were to reveal evidence of Iranian agents dropped into this country and authorized to kill Americans, we can well imagine Pelosi speaking forcefully about the outrage she and the House delegation would feel about such an egregious breach of our sovereignty. But how in the world does the representative of perhaps the most antiwar city in the country sign off on the United States doing this to another nation?

Then there’s the question of whom we’re funding. According to a former Middle East CIA operative, one beneficiary, the Baluchis, a Sunni Muslim group in the majority Shiite country, are "fundamentalists … you can also describe … as Al Qaeda." Another, Mujahideen-e-Khalq, has been on the State Department terrorist list for more than 10 years.

That the Bush White House would resort to arming known enemies in its frantic effort to create new ones is bad. Democrats signing off on it is even worse. But the fact that a representative from San Francisco, a city that has time and again demonstrated its opposition to these sorts of policies, might approve them is about as gross a distortion of the public will as you’re likely to find.

Hersh quotes an aide to one of the four Democrats notified of the Finding predictably arguing that it was "just that — notification, and not a sign-off on activities." But he accurately points out that Congress "has the power to withhold funding for any government operation," but chose not to.

The burden of persuading Nancy Pelosi that the Democratic Party should not approve such policies may lie primarily with her House colleagues. But if she, or they, think that this is what the Speaker needs to do, then she needs to leave that job behind — because funding a covert war in Iran simply does not represent the interests or the will of California’s 8th Congressional District.

Tom Gallagher

Tom Gallagher is a former Massachusetts state legislator who lives in San Francisco.

Clean Energy Act makes ballot

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY The San Francisco Clean Energy Act isn’t the only charter amendment on the November ballot, but it’s already shaping up to be the political lightning rod of this fall’s election.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. sent out mailers opposing the measure even before the Board of Supervisors voted 7-4 on July 22 to place it on the Nov. 4 ballot. Mayor Gavin Newsom also announced his opposition to the act moments after Assemblymember Mark Leno, former San Francisco Public Utilities Commission General Manager Susan Leal, and a cadre of progressive supervisors announced their support for it on the steps of City Hall.

Authored by Sups. Ross Mirkarimi and Aaron Peskin, the Clean Energy Act requires San Francisco to fulfill 51 percent of its electricity needs through renewable sources by 2017. That requirement rises to 75 percent by 2030, and to 100 percent, “or the greatest amount technologically feasible or practicable,” by 2040.

The SF Clean Energy Act also mandates that a feasibility study be undertaken to look at the best way to provide clean, green energy, which could lead to PG&E losing its stranglehold on energy if the study finds public power to be the best option.

Explaining the importance of mandating a feasibility study, Mirkarimi said, “Otherwise PG&E has a monopoly here until the planet dies.”

Supporters say it is important for San Francisco to set up a model that others can follow. “As goes San Francisco, so goes the state of California, and so goes the nation,” Peskin said at the July 22 rally, just before the Board voted to place the act on the ballot. “This is a time when people can change the destiny of the planet.”

Moments after that rally ended, Mayor Newsom took a minute to explain his opposition.

“We have other things we should be focusing on,” Newsom told reporters at a press conference at the War Memorial Building to announce housing bonds for veterans. “Let’s call it what it is. It’s a power takeover of PG&E,” he said.

But the elected officials and myriad organizations who showed up at City Hall to support the Clean Energy Act say that public vs. private power is not the main issue.

“The public power considerations have been drafted in a thoughtful and reasonable way,” Leno told the crowd. “It would involve study after study after study, and testimony from experts.”

Leno noted that 42 million Americans have public power, and if San Francisco did turn to public power, it would be embracing something as American as mom and apple pie. “Unlike their private power company counterparts, public power systems serve only one constituency: their customers,” Leno said.

Sup. Gerardo Sandoval opined that government is better able to assume renewable energy risks. “The private industry is not going to take that risk,” Sandoval said. “It’s always going to take the cheap way out, which is fossil fuels.

Others warned the audience not to be swayed by PG&E’s anti–Clean Energy campaign, which Newsom’s chief political consultant Eric Jaye is working on.

“This is not some crazy takeover scheme,” Leal said. “It’s about protecting the environment and the rights of San Franciscans and their rate payers.”

The Clean Energy Act has been endorsed by the Sierra Club, San Francisco Tomorrow, ACORN, the San Francisco Green Party, the League of Young Voters, Green Action for Health and Environmental Justice, the San Francisco Green Party, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.

Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education and a supervisorial candidate in District 9, described showing “An Inconvenient Truth” to the eighth-grade science class he teaches. “What can I say to my kids — we don’t have the policies in place to mitigate the damage they see?”

The Sierra Club’s John Rizzo noted, “This act insures that San Francisco is at the center of this economy. Not in Japan, China, or Germany. It will be here.”

Aliza Wasserman of the League of Young Voters stated that “PG&E is not investing $1 in renewable energy beyond state mandates, and they lobby against measures to raise those mandates.”

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

It’s not an easy time to be celebrating. The Bush administration has driven the economy into the toilet. After more than five years, the nation is still fighting a foolish, unnecessary war in Iraq. Unemployment is rising, and so is the cost of living.

But it’s also been a banner year for grassroots democracy. Barack Obama, the antiwar candidate, the upstart, took on and defeated the vaunted Clinton operation, and did it in large part with little pieces. He raised millions from small donors and mobilized activists on the ground in a way we haven’t seen in too many years.

And that energy is alive and well in San Francisco. The city that defied Washington and forced the legalization of same-sex marriage, the city that remains the heart of the antiwar movement, will be leading the way toward a more sustainable energy policy this fall. District supervisorial campaigns are well underway, with the mobilizations and energy coming not from big campaign donors and powerful interests but from ordinary people who live here and care about their community.

That’s the spirit we celebrate in this Best of the Bay issue.

There’s a lot more democracy in our selections this year — more selections and ideas from our readers, more input from our community. Our cover art and the illustrations inside reflect the activist traditions and inspirations of this city.

It’s bleak out there in America, but hope lives in places like San Francisco. And that’s a great reason to be proud of all that is the Best of the Bay.

Going green requires cooperation

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EDITORIAL There are some clear and compelling things San Francisco needs to be doing to protect the environment and reduce its carbon footprint, such as converting to renewable electricity sources and promoting alternatives to the automobile. But as the past couple of weeks at City Hall have demonstrated, city officials are letting petty politics interfere with working together to do the right thing.

Obviously, the most important step toward combating climate change is to convert the power portfolio of city residents to renewable energy sources. Nobel laureate Al Gore challenged the entire country to move toward 100 percent renewable power sources within 10 years during a landmark speech July 17.

But days later, when Gore appeared at the Netroots Nation convention in Austin, Texas, to repeat the challenge to the assembled bloggers, fellow guest speaker Mayor Gavin Newsom came out against the San Francisco Clean Energy Act, which would set even more modest goals for conversion to green power sources.

Newsom’s reason, as Sarah Phelan and Janna Brancolini explain in this week’s Green City column, is fear of provisions in the legislation that call for studying — just studying — public power options for achieving these goals. Considering Newsom has repeatedly told the Guardian that he supports public power, it’s disgraceful that he’s so beholden to Pacific Gas and Electric and so mindlessly adversarial toward the Board of Supervisors that he would oppose setting high green power standards.

But Newsom isn’t the only one playing this game. Board president Aaron Peskin is trying to scuttle Sunday Streets, which would temporarily close six miles of roadway to cars as part of an international trend to promote carfree spaces, simply because it was Newsom who proposed it (see "Pedal power," 7/23/08).

True, Newsom is a newcomer to the carfree movement — having spent years blocking proposed street closures in Golden Gate Park — but his conversion was warmly embraced by progressive groups such as Livable City and the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and should have been supported by Peskin and other supervisors.

Meanwhile, the city is doing little to fight the ongoing court injunction against bicycle projects even as required environmental work on the Bicycle Plan falls behind schedule. In connection with a July 21 hearing on that delay, both Planning Director John Rahaim and City Attorney Dennis Herrera have called for reform to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and for changes in how the city interprets traffic impacts under the act.

"It’s truly ironic that an activity that is inherently environmentally friendly is being challenged under an environmental law," Rahaim said of bicycling as he testified before the Land Use Committee. He’s right. City officials should aggressively move forward with the local reforms under consideration and push the bureaucracy to keep the Bike Plan on the fast track.

Meanwhile, our state legislators should work to amend CEQA to exempt pedestrian and bicycle improvements from costly and time-consuming environmental impact reports and our federal representatives should start laying the groundwork now to ensure next year’s big transportation bill reauthorization promotes alternatives to the automobile.

As a gesture of cooperation and goodwill, Newsom should come out and support Sup. Chris Daly’s latest proposal to close Market Street to automobiles, which would greatly speed up public transit, improve pedestrian safety, and create an attractive bicycle boulevard in the heart of the city.

The idea was first pitched by former mayor Willie Brown and has already been studied and vetted by the city bureaucracy. This could be the first big cooperative project between the board and the Mayor’s Office, a team effort against the forces of the status quo. And if it is successful, just imagine what they could take on after that.

Shootin’ your mouth off at the Arms

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By Phil Eil

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The Jackson Arms Shooting Range in South San Francisco has plenty of promotions. Mondays are Ladies Night (half-priced lane for ladies), Tuesdays are N.R.A. Night (half-priced lane for cardholders), Wednesdays are Law Enforcement Night (second shooter is free with a law enforcement I.D.), and Thursdays are Group Night (third shooter is free, free handgun rental). But while the perks for cops, ladies, groups, and gunsters are nice, the real reason to go to Jackson Arms isn’t their marketing scheme. It’s the noise. It’s loud in there — terrifyingly, front-row-at-a-Van-Halen-concert loud. It’s so loud that when you step up to shoot, there’s no way anyone can hear what you’re saying.

Why does this matter?

PG&E’s PUC appointee

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The Rules Committee of the Board of Supervisors voted Monday to forward the appointment of Nora Vargas to the SF Public Utilities Commission, without recommendation. The three supervisors on the committee (Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, and Bevan Dufty) all expressed concern that Vargas’ lack of experience with local politics and public utilities issues might be a setback should she fill the seat.

Vargas is director of Latino Issues Forum, a statewide nonprofit advocacy group, with offices in Fresno, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. LIF works on healthcare reform, educational issues, and consumer rights for immigrants and Latino populations. Vargas would fill the ratepayer advocate seat on the PUC.

Vargas, when questioned by the Rules Committee, said she felt confident of her ability to act independently of her appointing authority, Mayor Gavin Newsom, and that she would put ratepayers and consumers first. When asked if she’d be able to push back against powerful entities like Pacific Gas and Electric, which takes an active interest in many things the SFPUC control, Vargas cited her experience advocating on behalf of ratepayers at the California Public Utilities Commission.

We know PG&E likes to spread their money and influence throughout the city. In this case, between 2004 and 2006, PG&E has given $150,000 to Latino Issues Forum, as part of their community grantmaking.

This is the same kind of giving that would presumably end should San Francisco voters approve the Clean Energy Act this November. “We no longer will be contributing to San Francisco’s non-profits and service organizations,” PG&E’s Brandon Hernandez told a June 27 meeting of the Rule Committee, at which they voted to put the Clean Energy Act on the November ballot. The measure calls for San Francisco to move toward 100 percent clean and renewable energy, possibly through public construction and ownership, thus putting PG&E out of business in this city.

Additionally, Guillermo Rodriguez, Jr., former public relations flak for PG&E, is on the board of Latino Issues Forum (along with two other private utility executives.) Rodriguez left PG&E to head the A. Philip Randolph Institute, which also receives lots and lots of PG&E’s money on a regular basis.

Vargas’ appointment to the SFPUC is up for approval by the full Board of Supervisors at today’s meeting, along with Newsom’s four other appointments – Ann Moller Caen, FX Crowley, Francesca Vietor, and Dick Sklar. Sklar, at the last PUC meeting, withdrew his candidacy for the seat.

Ultimate Kink Surrender (NSFW)

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The wrestlers in action.

I ride my bicycle past the Armory just about everyday and I’ve always wanted to get inside for a tour, particularly since this magnificent, historically significant building was purchased by fetish porn purveyor Kink.com. So when the company invited me to attend Friday night’s taping of its Ultimate Surrender erotic wrestling matches, I couldn’t resist.

It might have been the weirdest event I’ve ever covered, except for the fact that it seemed so, well, normal. Only in super freaky San Francisco do we take in stride hardcore, kinky porn being made in a building once used as the staging ground for soldiers headed to war and National Guard troops suppressing local labor and social justice movement actions.

Attendees (mostly invited journalists and Kink subscribers) were treated to an open bar and got a chance to mix and mingle with the four young women who participated in this three-round tag team wrestling match, all porn actresses with an athletic side, all very sweet and charming and fairly matter-of-fact about the spectacle in which they starred.

Local Artist of the Week: Michelle Blade

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LOCAL ARTIST Michelle Blade
TITLE Untitled (Celebration)
THE STORY Using Dura-lar as her primary work surface, Blade paints in gestural and restrained styles, highlighting the extreme variances between her subjects. Bringing to mind Romantic sublimity, she accentuates nature’s vastness while expressing a harmonious human connection with it.
BIO Blade was born in Los Angeles and received an MFA from California College of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Park Life, and Electric Works. She has also shown in Philadelphia and Copenhagen.
SHOW “The Elliptical Good-Kind,” through Aug. 8. Tues.–Sat., 11 a.m.–6 p.m. Jack Hanley Gallery, 395 Valencia, SF. (415) 522-1623, www.jackhanley.com
WEB SITE www.michelleblade.com

New appointees coming to a PUC near you

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Mayor Gavin Newsom has made his recommendations for the five seats on the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, up for grabs after voters passed Prop E in June. His choices reflect a little out with the old, in with the new, but he’s also passed up a commissioner he appointed just a year ago and selected a veteran member who barely squeaked through the last approval process.

So, who has Newsom picked?

SF Flood Watch

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Yeah, we know. It hasn’t rained in months and fires, not floods, are on your mind.

But we couldn’t help noticing that 16 months after the Guardian broke the news that San Francisco is the only city in the Bay Area that does not have a flood map, (even though its surrounded by water on three sides, and sea level is on the rise, thanks to climate change), the Board of Supervisors is deciding whether to authorize enrollment in the National Flood Insurance Program and establish a floodplain management program.

The way things stand, the City has a map of “subsidence areas,” but not much else.

Right now, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing a Flood Insurance Rate Map for the City and County of SF.

That map, which should be published in early 2009, will provide flood risk information for insurance and floodplain management purposes.

It could also affect development in SF.

As the ordinance that Sup. Sean Elsbernd authored notes, “FEMA’s publication of a final FIRM for San Francisco may affect new development in San Francisco, especially renovation and reuse of finger piers.”
Elsbernd’s legislation “urges the Port of San Francisco and FEMA to develop, before that final map gets published, long-term floodplain management controls that both address any flooding hazard risks and allow the City to implement the Waterfront Land Use Plan and the Capital Plan…and achieve the goals of that Plan, including the preservation of historic piers.”

Peskin wins DCCC chair

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Before the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee voted tonight on its new chair, Chris Daly told me the vote was going to be 18-16 in favor of Aaron Peskin, the progressives’ pick. I didn’t doubt him. The play was going to be to elect Peskin temporary chair as the first order of business, before the public comment or chair election agenda items, and make it clear from the get-go where the votes were.

There was a mild and brief parliamentary scrum before the names of Peskin and Scott Wiener, last term’s chair and the pick of the moderates, were put up for vote. Peskin won on a 18-16 vote.

“You have my word that I’m going to work my butt off and I’m going to do it with Scott,” Peskin said during his acceptance speech before Wiener supporters reminded him he was only temporary chair and the real vote was still coming up. But I didn’t doubt it was over.

I listened to the first speaker during public comment, Senator-to-be Mark Leno, sound conciliatory notes and praise the soon-to-be vanquished candidate he supported. And then I left as the speakers lined up at the microphone to make the case for their respective candidates, telling Daly to call me if the official vote wasn’t 18-16.

Summing up SF’s historic rally for clean energy

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By Bruce B. Brugmann and Janna Brancolini (Scroll down for Jean Dibble’s photo essay of the rally and comments by the speakers)

It was a historic rally Tuesday on the City Hall steps to kick off the third initiative aimed at bringing clean energy and public power to San Francisco.

As our photo essay shows, there was a formidable and diverse array of politicians and environmental and social justice organizations lined up with their signs and speeches to support the measure.

Five supervisors, including the board president, spoke at the rally (Ross Mirkarimi, Aaron Peskin, Tom Ammiano, Bevin Dufty, and Gerardo Sandoval) and then went into a board meeting in City Hall and hours later voted with two other colleagues (Sophie Maxwell and Chris Daly) to put the pioneering initiative on the November 2008 ballot. The vote was 7-4, with Sups. Sean Elsbernd, Michaela Alioto-Pier, Carmen Chu, and Jake McGoldrick voting against. The rally and the vote were cannon shots heard round the city, the state, and the nation.

Susan Leal, former general manager of the SF Public Utilities Commission, made her first public appearance since her dismissal by Mayor Newsom, at the urging of PG&E, for her moves toward public power. The Sierra Club, which fought the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park a century ago and still wants to tear the dam down, was standing tall with the group (John Rizzo).

All in all, it was one of the most impressive starts to a tough initiative campaign that i have seen in 42 years of covering City Hall for the Guardian. More: having covered the clean energy/public power beat since l969 and our first expose of the PG&E/Raker Act scandal, I think this initiative and this emerging campaign has an excellent chance of winning in November. Remember: when the public power movement revved up in the late l990s, it faced a PG&E-friendly mayor (Willie Brown), a PG&E friendly City Attorney (Louise Renne, whose husband worked for a downtown law firm getting big PG&E money) and a PG&E-friendly Board of Supervisors (only Tom Ammiano and the late Sue Bierman were pro-public power) and had to go around City Hall by going the route of a Municipal Utility District (MUD) ala the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (MUD). This time around, the board turned against PG&E and the city attorney’s office drafted the initiative for the board president and an emerging mayoral candidate.

The November ballot is filled with the juicy issues that bring out the voters: Obama, seven supervisorial races, and a raft of good initiatives aimed at dealing with major city problems (an affordable housing plan, two new tax plans focused on bringing in revenue from the wealthy, a big bond act to rebuild San Francisco General hospital, and the green energy and public power plan.) This time around, clean energy and public power are in the news and the media carried the story widely. PG&E is more worried than ever before and is already launched an early carpet bombing campaign and setting up astroturf and greenwashing operations allegro furioso. And their operatives are out and about and lurking everywhere. On guard!

The Jean Dibble photo essay

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Julian Davis, campaign chair, leads off the event and introduces the speakers.
The group stretching across the steps from left to right: representatives from the SF Green Party, the Green Guerrillas Against Greenwash Network, the Sierra Club, Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, Julian Davis of San Francisco Tomorrow, John Rizzo of the Sierra Club (speaking), Mirkarimi,
Sierra Club, Green Action, Green Guerrillas Against Greenwash, League of Young/Pissed Off Voters, more Sierra Club, Global Exchange, Power Vote, and League of Young Voters. (Not pictured in this photo were some l5 people from ACORN.

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Another overview of the group with Davis at the microphone.

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Assemblyman Mark Leno: “Jimmy Carter predicted 30 years ago that by 2000 we could be down from 40 per cent dependence on foreign oil to 20 per cent dependence. We didn’t listen. Instead we were up to 60 per cent by 2000 and now we’re pushing 70 per cent…This measure will take our fate out of PG&E’s hands and put it into the hands of our communities, who have a profound stake in providing clean, sustainable, reliable, and reasononably priced electric services.”

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Former PUC General Manager Susan Leal: “This initiative is about protecting the environment and the rights of San Franciscans and their ratepayers…It’s 167 miles (from San Francisco) to Hetch Hetchy (valley.). The first 140 miles of movement is cheaper than the last 27 miles because PG&E controls it. There’s an economic piece and an environmental piece. We have the technology–geothermal and solar trough. How are you going to move that power? We aren’t going to be able to make it (financially) because PG&E jacks up the rates on the last 27 miles. In 20l5 they’re jacking them up again…this is taking back what is ours.”

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Sup. Ross Mikarimi, co-author of the initiative: “This is not a ‘hostile’ take over,”he said. This is a “meaured way to make the city l00 per cent green and clean in 20 years. This act mandates a feasibility study on how we can provide green and clean energy…otherwise PG&E has a monopoly here until the planet dies.”

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Sup. Aaron Peskin, board president and co-author of the measure: “It’s a very profound thought. This is a time when people (and San Francisco) can change the destiny of the planet…As goes San Francisco, so goes California. As goes California, so goes the nation.”

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Sup. Tom Ammiano, author of two previous public power initiatives: “This issue has a sordid history….500 missing ballots (in the first election), where did they go? …It involves environmental justice. Some have called the (green movement) the Queenhouse effect.” He then said PG&E is avaricious, immoral, and takes homophobic measures. “It wants to shoot the messenger.” He concluded, “This is our time. We’re going to win. We’ll keep the lights on for years.”

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Sup. Bevin Dufty: PG&E’s utility undergrounding system is “an example of PG&E mismanaging things.” He said people in his district were without electricity for 24-48 hours. “This is a referendum for change.”

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Sup. Gerardo Sandoval: “As we’re leaving office, a lot of us want this to be our crown jewel. ..Government works. Government works well because government is better able to assume risk. There is still a lot of risk in renewwable energy, investments, and so on. The private industry is not going to take that risk. It’s always going to take the cheap way out, which is fossil fuels.”

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Mark Sanchez, president of the San Francisco Board of Education, said that children in our schools were affected by the ramifications of PG&E’s monopoly.

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John Rizzo of the Sierra Club: “(Al) Gore said the future of civilization is at stake. Gore’s challenge is a moral one–one that we’ve embraced in San Francisco.” He said that “renewable energy and the green movement will change the world’s economy. Not in Japan, China, or Germany. It will be here.”

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Another overview photo.

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Aliza Wasserman of the League of Young/Pissed Off Voters: She warned of PG&Es propaganda campaign claiming to be green. “Take a step back and think about where they’re investing. PG&E is not investing one dollar in renewable energy beyond state mandates and they lobby against measures to raise those mandates.
PG&E is one per cent solar, one per cent wind, and 98 per cent hot air.”

Nicholas Perez, my l4-year-old grandson from Santa Barbara, attended the rally with his dog Charlie.
Early on, as the speakers warmed up on PG&E, Charley summed up PG&E’s position eloquently. He made a timely deposit on the sidewalk in front of the rally. (Nicholas cleaned it up quickly.) Much more to come,

B3, still watching the fumes from the Potrero Hill power plant from my office window at the bottom of Potrero Hill, courtesy of PG&E and Mayor Gavin Newsom

P.S. Incidental question: how can Newsom pretend to be the “green” mayor and be the “green” candidate for governor when he buckles under to PG&E so ignominously? He’s buckled twice to PG&E, first by flip flopping on the Potrero Hill peakers, then on coming out so strong and so quickly against the Clean Energy Act initiative.
Brugmann’s Law: you can’t be a “green” mayor or a “green” anything if you knuckle under to PG&E on the big green issues.

P.S.: A tip of the Potrero Hill martini glass to the seven supervisors who defied PG&E and voted for clean energy: Aaron Peskin, Ross Mirkarimi, Bevin Dufty, Tom Ammiano, Gerardo Sandoval. Sophie Maxwell, and Chris Daly.
The opposition four will be known from now on as the PG&E Four (Sean Elsbernd, Carmine Chu, Michaela Alioto-Pier, and (gulp) Jack McGoldrick). Jake? Jake? What happened to you? Can you please explain? It’s not too late to change your position.

I’ll see your Embarcadero and raise you Market Street

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Scene from last month’s ciclovia in Portland, Photo by Steven T. Jones

Sunday Streets, a proposal to bring to San Francisco’s Embarcadero the carfree ciclovias that have caught on in major cities around the world, became mired in the dysfunctional relations between Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors after Fisherman’s Wharf merchants freaked out.

But even before the full board yesterday considered the resolution by Sups. Aaron Peskin, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Sean Elsbernd demanding the Aug. 31 and Sept. 14 events be postponed until a detailed economic impact analysis can be done, the Mayor’s Office had already announced the events would proceed as scheduled, critics be damned.

“The mayor’s position on Sunday Streets will not change. We will go ahead as scheduled,” Mike Farrah, head of the Office of Neighborhood Services and a longtime Newsom loyalist, told the Guardian on Monday.

In the face of that stand, and with Farrah and other event proponents promising to work with business community critics to massage the plan, Peskin opted to delayed consideration of his resolution until the Aug. 5 meeting. Yet Sup. Chris Daly (who supports Sunday Streets even though he calls it a Newsom publicity stunt) also decided to up the ante yesterday by introducing legislation to permanently ban cars from Market Street.

Between two worlds and then some

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There have been books, documentaries, feature films, and more than one play about Ishi, the last "wild" California Indian who emerged from the hills of northern California in 1911 and became friend and subject of renowned Berkeley anthropologist Alfred Kroeber and his colleagues. Purportedly the sole surviving member of the Yahi tribe — just one of many indigenous groups decimated by white settlers’ diseases as well as the state-sanctioned genocidal violence against California’s native populations in the late 19th century — Ishi succumbed after five years in San Francisco to the white man’s disease of tuberculosis, only to rise again years later (thanks in part to a famous biography written by Kroeber’s second wife, Theodora) as a symbol of new age spiritualism and the elevation of naturalism as ennobling.

Ishi has been the subject of many stories, then, though none necessarily entirely or even remotely his own. Ishi: The Last of the Yahi — Bay Area playwright and Theatre Rhinoceros artistic director John Fisher’s own foray into the history, legend, and meaning of Ishi — takes the idea of the native Californian’s true story as its supple (if somewhat overworked) premise, boldly mixing fact and fiction as well as contemporary and early 20th-century mores to tell a tale of deeply rooted systemic violence that, among other things, links the production of scientific knowledge and the construction of difference (especially racial and sexual difference) to the all-out homicidal impulses of a colonial system of conquest.

This bracing scope, however, is only fitfully fulfilled by the play’s uneven characterization and somewhat tortuous plot, which attempts to ground the play’s more abstract and polemical aspects in a set of human relationships that reverberate across the cultural gulf separating Ishi from his white hosts. Bounding across roughly 150 years, three cities, and two continents, Ishi throws up promising ideas throughout, but ends by being too disjointed and dramatically hit-and-miss to adequately sustain them.

The play brackets the principal action, set between 1911 and 1916, with an academic job talk and a university undergraduate course dealing with the history and implications of Ishi’s story, interspersed with loud and violent scenes of bounty hunters running down Ishi’s relatives. Alfred Kroeber (Kevin Clarke), and colleagues Thomas Waterman (Aaron Martinsen) and Dr. Saxton Pope (Matt Weimer), meanwhile, move effortlessly between the early 20th century and the contemporary setting, in which terms like "postcolonial multiculturalism" are confidently bandied about.

Our first glimpse of Kroeber is of a highly ambitious man courting the favor of a rich benefactress — Phoebe Apperson Hearst (Kathryn Wood) — to secure the necessary funds for a world-class anthropology museum. He is also a loving husband whose wife, Henrietta (Jeanette Harrison), is slowly dying of TB. Here, Henrietta is supposedly the daughter of Kroeber’s renowned former teacher, Franz Boas, a problematic father figure Kroeber has broken with. These connections will find echoes in the relationships in Ishi’s own family. The deal brokered between Kroeber and Hearst, meanwhile, ends up turning on Kroeber’s success in extracting the personal history of the last Yahi, who has just been discovered half-starved and rummaging for scraps in Oroville.

Played with an air of abiding confidence, subdued sorrow, and quiet humor by Michael Vega, Fisher’s Ishi must negotiate a world in which everyone wants a figurative or literal piece of him but where human sympathy and the growing bonds of friendship have their own pull, bidding him to reveal more of himself. Solidly crafted performances from Clarke and Harrison help anchor the drama in the complexity and heartache of the death-shrouded Kroeber marriage. Martinsen is a persuasive and sympathetic Waterman, while Wood’s turn as a jocular and surprisingly ribald Hearst lends further pluck to an otherwise uneven cast. But at more than three hours, including back-to-back addresses from three characters driving home a moral-laden and convoluted conclusion, there is a leaner play waiting to come out here.

ISHI: THE LAST OF THE YAHI

Wed/23–Sat/26, 8 p.m.; Sun/27, 3 p.m., $15–$35

Theatre Rhinoceros

2926 16th St., SF

(415) 861-5079, www.therhino.org

Testimonies

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Italy seldom figures much in Holocaust studies, as its Jewish population was relatively small (just under 50,000) and only about one-fifth failed to survive the war — even after far more anti-Semitic German occupiers and policies wrested power from Benito Mussolini in 1943.

But statistically limited evil is still evil. Italian (even papal) complicity in crimes against Jewry has weighed more heavily on the national conscience lately, if a recent spate of meditations on the subject in various media is any indication. This year’s San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, the 28th, includes a program of films devoted to the subject. Titled "Italian Jews During Fascism," it presents a mix of documentary, historical drama, and contemporary fiction.

As elsewhere, the history of Jews in Italy has run a gamut from bad to worse to tolerable and back again. Propelled by basic racism as well as that "Christ-killer" concept favored by early Biblical-text revisionists and Mel Gibson, sacred and secular powers-that-were targeted Italian Jews (among others) during the Crusades and the Inquisition, then literally walled up their Roman populace in a ghetto for 300 years. By the time the extreme ghettoization was abolished, in the mid-19th century, Italian Jews (at least outside Rome) were fairly well integrated into society. They certainly were by 1938, when Mussolini announced a slew of anti-Semitic laws after years of appearing indifferent to Hitler’s particular racial obsession. ("Il Duce" hadn’t been impressed with the Nazis until his own empire-building ambitions required an alliance.)

Italian Jews were abruptly barred from serving in the military, and from attending or working at schools and universities. Thousands lost their jobs due to knee-jerk reactions from employers anxious to toe the repressive party line. These hard times got much worse when the weakened nation ceded primary control to the Nazis, and "Il Duce" became a mere figurehead for the "Republic of Salo." Mussolini rubber-stamped the mass arrest of Jews, mostly in the occupied north. Nearly 7,000 were shipped off to concentration camps. The question of what ordinary Italians — let alone the Vatican — did to oppose this murderous sweep remains a blot on the country’s 20th-century history.

The Jewish Film Festival’s quartet of related features offer various perspectives on these events. Most direct is Mimmo Calopresti’s 2006 documentary Volevo Solo Vivere (I only wanted to live), a compilation of latter-day testimonies assembled from interviews recorded for Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation. Focusing on survivors (mostly female) of Auschwitz who were between the ages of four and 30 at the time, it provides first-person stories that range from poignant to hair-raising. Meeting a life love on the train en route to the camp, enduring Mengele’s "medical experiments," being forced to walk one’s father to the gas chamber. These precise recollections are illustrated not just by brutally familiar footage of starved prisoners and piled corpses, but also by earlier photo-album glimpses of family life.

Dubbed "the Italian Schindler" when his deeds first won recognition, Giorgio Perlasca was a Paduan former soldier and disillusioned ex-Fascist working abroad to procure supplies for the Hungarian army in Axis-occupied 1944 Hungary. Posing as a Spanish diplomat, he bullied and bluffed his way into rescuing and hiding thousands of Budapest Jews despite a Nazi policy of deportation and extermination. This extraordinary tale is dramatized in Perlasca: An Italian Hero. With an Ennio Morricone score and Luca Zingaretti in the title role, Alberto Negrin’s 2001 made-for-TV film is compelling. Yet it’s also overworked, painting Perlasca as a one-dimensional superhero — albeit a balding and pudgy one. The result lands somewhere between the harshness of Schindler’s List (1993), the hysterical melodrama of Black Book (2006), and the maudlin treacle of Life Is Beautiful (1997).

A fascinating footnote, the 2007 hour-long documentary Tulip Time: The Rise and Fall of the Trio Lescano tells the story of three Dutch sisters who became enormously popular in Italy as harmonizing swing vocalists. Mussolini was a fan, though even that couldn’t save them from abrupt career termination and poverty once their Jewish background was discovered. The 2003 novelistic drama Facing Windows, which had a theatrical release, finds Turkish Italian director Ferzan Ozpetek departing somewhat from his usual gay themes. Giovanna Mezzogiorno stars as an unhappy working-class Roman woman whose husband brings home a disoriented older man (the late Massimo Girotti, a screen veteran since 1940) who turns out to have concentration camp numbers on his arm. *

SAN FRANCISCO JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL

The 28th San Francisco Jewish Film Festival runs July 24–Aug. 11 at the Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF; Roda Theatre, 2025 Addison, Berk.; CineArts @ Palo Alto Square, 3000 El Camino Real, bldg 6, Palo Alto; and the Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 Fourth St., San Rafael. Tickets (most shows $12) and additional information are available at www.sfjff.org

Manufacturing Frida

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REVIEW Though overshadowed during her lifetime by her famous muralist husband Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo is one of many examples of driven artists who achieved their icon status posthumously. And, like other historical figures with life stories loaded with tragedy, Kahlo underwent her share of suffering, which makes for great book sales and dramatic film plots. But as anyone who knows a bit of her story beyond her groundbreaking art can attest, she handled the physical and emotional pain with flair: she was a modern, intelligent Mexican woman who, from the 1930s through early ’50s, chose to flamboyantly dress herself in celebration of her cultural ancestry. She was exotic — even among her circles of culture vultures and political activists — and strikingly beautiful, so it’s no wonder that nearly half of her paintings are self-portraits. One thinks she might have wowed herself. Nonetheless, the well-known photographers who caught her on film left more telling documents than her paintings — of someone who radiated charisma and soul.

Before we dismiss a round of would-be Fridamania as an attempt to generate even more profits from Kahlo reproductions on bags and T-shirts, we should remember why she was plucked from history. Currently on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is the first major American exhibition of Kahlo’s works in nearly 15 years. Last year, for the centennial of Kahlo’s birth, the Palacio De Bellas Artes in Mexico City held a comprehensive show of her artistic accomplishments, along with personal photos and documents. Visitors to SFMOMA’s "Frida Kahlo" — which was organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis — will get a similar experience to the Mexican exhibition: beyond almost 50 Kahlo paintings, there is a trove of documents and photographs. Don’t expect to see just the greatest hits, though those are present.

Strange still-lifes — like the pile of bodylike root vegetables in Still Life: Pitahayas (1938) — are displayed alongside bizarre folkloric conglomerations of Aztec mythology, Mexican jungle life, and political figures merged with events from Kahlo’s life. Her portrayals of other people are as mesmerizing as her self-portraits. Portrait of Luther Burbank (1931) presents the odd scene of the elder Burbank sprouting from the soil of a browned landscape. The area where his feet should be is a mass of roots growing into a decaying corpse. He holds a leafy tropical plant — a reference to his horticultural focus. Another compelling work rarely viewed outside of Japan’s Nagoya City Art Museum is Girl with Death Mask, (1938) in which a skull-masked child in a pink dress stands on a barren, sky-dominated expanse with a mask of a tongue-wagging monster at her feet.

When we enter the last rooms of the show, we are greeted with walls and display cases of family photographs, many with Kahlo’s handwritten notes. Two photos of Rivera, from 1929 and 1940, have her lipstick kiss prints on the back, and several other images are marked with pencil or ballpoint doodles. These funny, poignant bits of reality were not meant for public consumption, and the fan is given a deeper view into the real person. Add the early color photos of Kahlo and a home movie of Kahlo and Rivera fawning over and goofing around with each other, and you could begin to think that you actually know her.

So when one views the photos of Kahlo in traction, her strained face attempting to smile, or the pre-tragic pregnancy photos, subjects explored repeatedly in her art suddenly become even more clearly felt. Icons rarely get to be real after their ascension: we don’t want them to be mortal, perish, and take their magnetism away. When Kahlo died in 1954 at 47, a final diary entry read, "I hope the exit is joyful, and I hope to never return." Yet no one wants her to go.

FRIDA KAHLO

Through Sept. 28

Mon.–Tues. and Fri., 10 a.m.–5:45 p.m.; Thurs. 10 a.m.–9:45 p.m.; Sat.–Sun., 10 a.m.–7:45 p.m.

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

151 Third St., SF

www.sfmoma.org

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