San Francisco

Editor’s Notes

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› tredmond@sfbg.com

Everybody knows the Democratic Party’s superdelegate problem: if Barack Obama wins the popular vote, as he probably will, and wins the highest number of elected delegates, as he almost certainly will, and the party leaders turn to Hillary Clinton instead, there will be a revolution in the rank and file that could damage the party for years to come.

But in San Francisco, that happens all the time.

The local Democratic Party is run by the Democratic County Central Committee, and 24 of the members are elected, democratically. But every Democrat who holds an elected office representing San Francisco, and every Democratic nominee for office, automatically gets a seat on the committee, too — so you’ve got another eight or so (it varies) people on the panel who are the local equivalent of superdelegates. US Sen. Dianne Feinstein is on the county committee. So is Board of Equalization member Betty Yee and state senator Leland Yee. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a seat. Rep. Tom Lantos was on the committee until he died; his replacement, almost certainly Jackie Speier, will take over his slot this week.

Of course, none of those high-powered types ever show up for committee meetings. They send proxies, either trusted advisors or staffers from their local offices. And often — all too often — those superdelegate proxies are the deciding votes on local issues.

See, the committee may not be the highest profile office in the land, but it has a fair amount of local clout. The central committee decides what position the Democratic Party takes on local issues — and that means both influence and money. The party endorsement on ballot measures can be influential, particularly when it comes with a place on the official party slate card.

These days the committee has a majority of elected progressives. But it’s not an overwhelming majority — since half the seats are apportioned by Assembly districts, half the grassroots members are from the west side of town and tend to be more moderate. And not all of the eastsiders are progressives.

So on key endorsements this year — for San Francisco supervisor, for example — the majority of the elected delegates will probably vote for the progressives. But a minority will support the slate backed by Mayor Gavin Newsom — and the superdelegates will mostly go along.

So the Newsom slate at the very least will block the progressives from getting the endorsements. In fact, for a progressive candidate or ballot measure to get the party nod in a contested race requires an almost impossible majority of the elected members.

It can be infuriating.

Supervisors Chris Daly and Aaron Peskin, who often don’t get along, are working together to get a solid progressive slate elected to the DCCC this June. It’s a good idea, and there’s a good chance many of the 24 slate members will win. But the will of the voters won’t matter if the superdelegates can still weigh in and screw up any real reform.

I suppose it’s possible to change to rules to kick the superdelegates off the committee, but that would be a brutal battle. And there’s a much easier solution:

The committee needs to eliminate proxy votes.

Feinstein can’t use a proxy to vote on the Senate floor. Pelosi can’t send a proxy to vote in the House of Representatives. Proxies aren’t allowed in the state Legislature. Why should the DCCC be any different?

If Dianne Feinstein really cares about Gavin Newsom’s slate of supervisorial candidates this fall, then she can show up at the committee meeting and vote. Otherwise the grassroots, elected delegates get to decide. Seems fair to me.

After Home Depot

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EDITORIAL The proposal to build a Home Depot store on Bayshore Boulevard was a textbook example of terrible city planning. The community never asked for a big-box chain store; no city plans ever discussed how big-box retail would help the local economy. Instead, about eight years ago the giant Atlanta-based corporation decided it wanted a store in San Francisco, hired Jack Davis, a political consultant close to then-Mayor Willie Brown, and, after a brutal and unpleasant battle, got permission to build a giant suburban-style outlet of more than 100,000 square feet with a massive parking garage in a city where transit and pedestrian access are considered primary land-use values.

And now that Home Depot has decided, based on its business projections, that the whole thing was a bad idea and is backing out, San Francisco has a chance to turn the big empty lot on Bayshore into something that serves the community. There’s a chance to make this a model for city planning, an example of how to do economic development right for a change. The mayor, city planners, and the supervisors need to insist on a credible process.

From the start, the fight over Home Depot was toxic, pitting small business owners, who feared that the discount chain would destroy local merchants, and Bernal Heights residents, who feared the traffic, noise, and pollution a car-dependent outlet would bring to the area, against Bayview-Hunters Point residents who desperately needed jobs. Home Depot lobbyists did their best to push the divide, arguing that employment opportunities at the store would help spur economic development in one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Lost in the rhetoric was the fact that the chain promised only about 200 new jobs, and would offer only a "good-faith effort" to hire half of those people from the neighborhood. In other words, at best, an eight-acre project — one of the biggest retail developments in the city — would lead to 100 new jobs for Bayview residents. That was, to put it mildly, an abysmal deal.

An environmental impact report on the project essentially dismissed all of the neighborhood concerns, even arguing that air-quality impacts from increased car exhaust wouldn’t count as an impact. The report tossed aside the fate of small businesses, particularly hardware stores, by saying that the store owners could simply start selling something else. Still, the supervisors voted to approve the project.

But now, after all that bitterness and expense, Home Depot is walking away, citing a sluggish market for home-improvement products. Mayor Gavin Newsom is begging the company not to abandon the plans altogether; he’s urging Home Depot executives to put the project on hold until the economy improves. That’s tantamount to saying that the Bayshore site should stay vacant for a few more years — which does no good for anybody. Instead of whining and begging a big corporation to bestow its blessings on poor San Francisco, Newsom ought to look at this as an opportunity.

Sup. Tom Ammiano, whose district borders on the site and who led the opposition to Home Depot, is calling for a community planning process that would bring the key stakeholders to the table to talk about how that land should be used. Sup. Sophie Maxwell, a Home Depot supporter whose district includes the site, ought to join with him. The goal ought to be a planning process that starts with the right questions: What sort of development does the community want? What use would create the most jobs that best fit the local labor pool and the employment needs of the area? What would benefit the city’s economy without damaging small business? Should part of the site be used for affordable housing?

There are all sorts of possibilities, but given Newsom’s pledge to be a "green mayor" and the value of new green-collar jobs, one obvious idea might be turning the place into a solar-energy center. Proper zoning, incentives, and public encouragement might attract solar manufacturing, solar installation services, and a solar hardware store with do-it-yourself kits for homeowners.

The city obviously can’t dictate what sorts of businesses would want to move to Bayshore, but planners can set criteria to steer development. That process ought to begin now, openly, with every interested party involved — and it should have a bottom line: no more suburban chain stores in San Francisco.

Lit: A Nowtopian Q&A with Chris Carlsson

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By Erick Lyle

Chris Carlsson, one of the founders of Critical Mass, has long been one of San Francisco’s most notable utopian tinkerers. Through projects like his magazine Processed World and his radical archive Shaping San Francisco, he has devoted much unpaid labor to investigating lost people’s history and to imagine possibilities for a better world. In 2004, he turned his attention to the future with After the Deluge, a speculative fiction novel about a post-economic San Francisco of 2157 where compulsory work has nearly been abolished and the Financial District has been submerged in rising floodwaters caused by global warming.

Carlsson’s brand-new book, Nowtopia (AK Press, 288 pages, $18.95), looks, instead, for seeds of that money-free utopia in the present, with chapters focusing on subjects as diverse as vacant-lot gardeners, the growing bio-fuels movement, the rise of Bike Kitchens across the nation, and Burning Man. Carlsson shows that as our economy, civic institutions, and faith in the system continue to break down, there are people all over the world organizing autonomously to “build the new world in the shell of the old.”

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SFBG: In Nowtopia, you highlight groups of people who are doing very diverse things. How do you perceive that, say, the open source software movement, the San Francisco Bike Kitchen, and people who farm empty lots in West Oakland are related?
CHRIS CARLSSON: I tried to reduce those things to the common thread that they are all forms of self-expressive behavior that people are doing outside of work and outside of what they consider to be political. People are coming together to try to add to their depth of experience, or to make their lives worth living. All of the activities in the book also represent people who have a creative engagement with technology.

Torch Songs: A report from the ground

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Ed Note: I was on my way from a press conference at the federal building at around 1:30 today when I saw the anti-Torch demonstrators, at least a couple hundred of them, surge out of Civic Center Plaza, across the street, and up the steps of City Hall. It was a pretty dramatic moment, with all their brightly colored flags whipping in the stiff wind and their chants echoing against the marble facade.

I stuck around for a few minutes, flanking a phalanx of bored media types and a line of motorcycle cops contendedly contemplating the overtime they were racking up, to see if anything else went down. I listened to more chanting and and watched more flag waving until a cameraman from one of the networks leaned over and said, “Maybe something will happen when Richard Gere speaks later.”

Guardian Intern Emma Lierley had a lot more stamina than I did. She followed the proceedings all day and filed the following report. – JB Powell

With the Beijing Olympic torch set to be received Wednesday, pro-Tibetan protestors ran their own torch through the streets of San Francisco Tuesday. The rally was held in multiple locations, including the UN Plaza, the steps of City Hall, and the section of Geary Street that boarders the Chinese Consulate. Hundreds of participants loudly denounced the “genocide torch” and called for a free Tibet.

The protest began Tuesday morning in the UN Plaza, as Tibetan flags snapped in the wind and a group of monks from the Gyuto Vajrayana Center in San Jose chanted a blessing over the crowd. The Buddhist monk Thupten Donyo, manager of the Gyuto Vajrayana Center, was very excited about the day’s events, and told the Guardian that never before had Tibet been given such a chance to speak to the world.

“We lost our country fifty years ago,” he said, “and we are struggling to keep our culture alive.”

Protesting the torch

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You have to wonder what Beijing and the International Olympic Committee were thinking.

A country with real human rights problems, involving not only the horrors in Darfur but the immensely popular, mediagenic Dalai Lama and Tibet, hosts the Olympics. The torch goes through several countries where political protests are common and there’s a large population ready to scream about China’s repressive regime. Then it stops in San Francisco, where there’s a large Chinese population and an equally large population of political activists ….

What, you didn’t think there’d be protests?

Now the IOC is actually talking about scrapping the rest of the torch tour, which would be silly. There will still be protests around the Olympics — and there should be.

If China wants the PR boost of hosting the Olympics, it will have to deal with the fact that the news media will also focus on human rights and other issues Bejing would rather ignore. The Olympics are too much of a spectacle these days; there will be too many reporters looking for stories, and protesters around the world ready to offer them.

The protests have been immensely successful so far. They’ve done exactly what they’re designed to do: Focus press attention on China, Tibet and Darfur. Nobody needs to disrupt the Olympic torch in San Francisco; in fact, it’s great that the torch is here. The torch brings media, and the more the better. Mayor Newsom needs to make public the final route in plenty of time for the activists to show up; the protesters need to be peaceful — and visible, and loud.

I love this. It’s the best tradition of this city.

SPORTS: Bring back Barry

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BY A.J. Hayes

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Less blah.

Enough already, we get it. Go ahead, put the cap back on the Sharpie, and step away from the bus.

That’s right, you, the graffitist/frustrated Giants fan who’s been going around town doctoring the Giants advertisements on the back of Muni coaches- making the ad copy that initially read: “All Out. All Season,” say instead: “All Outs. All Season.”

Very funny. Ha, ha. ha. Ho, ho, ho and a bottle of rum. Actually we’ll need a bottle of rum to numb the pain if the Giants get pinned with one more ugly 7-0 shutout.

It’s been only a week, but we’ve seen enough. The Giants lineup is not working. What makes it scarier is that the 1985 Giants, the club that posted the worst record in San Francisco history – 62-100 – had a lineup (featuring Chili Davis, Jeffery Leonard, Bob Brenly) that was considerably better than the current team.

This year, Giants ads have promised a grittier club that hangs together win or lose.

And while, yes, the Giants have two potential pitching aces in Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum and a couple of exciting position players, including the daring and eminently watchable Eugenio Velez, will that be enough to keep an easily distracted fan base from hanging in there?

It won’t do the Giants any good to work out any mid-season trades – who would they deal?

But it might not be a bad idea for the Giants to plant a scout in Hollywood.

That’s where they might catch a glimpse of the banished Barry Bonds eating breakfast with Larry King or taking in a Tyler Perry movie premiere. Despite batting .276, with 28 homers and 66 RBI last season, no team wanted Bonds this spring.

Bonds is ready, willing and certainly able to play another season – and it should be with San Francisco. What better way for the club to celebrate its 50th Anniversary in San Francisco than by having one of the club’s all-time greatest players knocking balls into the bay?

We say bring back San Francisco’s favorite surly slugger.

McGoldrick wants Solar funds for low-income housing

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Sup. Jake McGoldrick just had an epiphany: install solar panels on affordable, low-income housing projects, citywide.

That way the City can green San Francisco, create local jobs and business opportunities—and eventually reduce to zero the utility bills of low-income folks.

McGoldrick’s moment of clarity came in face of increasing pressure from local solar businesses and work creation programs to support Mayor Gavin Newsom’s recently announced Solar Energy Incentive Program.

McGoldrick says he supports going green and hiring locally, but he balked at the lack of public discussion about the mayor’s program, which uses tax payer dollars to subsidize solar installation on private property.

Pitched as a pilot project, Newsom’s solar energy incentive program proposes to allocate $3 million between now and the end of June, and $3-5 million in subsequent fiscal years. That adds up to more than $50 million by 2018.

McGoldrick believes these monies would be better used subsidizing installations on public housing and non-profit-owned, low-income projects.

Supporters of Newsom’s proposed Solar Incentive program argue that could better leverage a portion of the SFPUC’s Mayor’s Energy Conservation Account, and get more out of Hetch Hetchy dollars spent in energy efficiency and solar.

But as McGoldrick observes, the Mayor’s current plan fails to address public ownership concerns.

‘That’s why I’m going to try and give these MECA funds to affordable housing projects,” McGoldrick said.. “That way, people get jobs, solar companies come here, the city goes green–and we do power purchase agreements.”

San Francisco only has a 30 percent home ownership rate. But since a portion of that percentage are absentee landlords, the City could only target an ever smaller fraction of the city’s roof tops for solar installation, under theMayor’s current Solar Energy Incentive Program.

‘Tenants can’t jump in and spend $25,000 to replace their roof, and you can’t have the question of jobs be the tail wagging the dog,” McGoldrick said.

Bureaucrats blow $375k reading Matier & Ross

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Employees working for the city and county of San Francisco have squandered $375,000 in salaried work hours over the last 12 months reading San Francisco Chronicle columnists Matier & Ross, time that could have been spent finding cheaper ways to provide a police presence at political demonstrations and repaint parking garages located at far-flung BART stations, according to a new report by Controller Ed Harrington.

“Our analysis shows that City Hall staffers spent precious work time reading about how wasteful they are when they could have been figuring out how to make the board’s chambers ADA compliant for less money or more quickly dispatch frivolous and costly lawsuits against the city,” Harrington said.

The report shows that overpaid City Hall staffers in particular devoted seemingly endless salaried hours reading about how they and their colleagues have burdened San Francisco’s already bloated $338 million budget deficit and how Jerry Brown’s recent office redo in Sacramento cost a whole lot of taxpayer money.

“Dude, I’m totally expensive,” said one City Hall insider after reading about how much it cost for him to have a big title but few actual tasks. “And holy shit, did Don Perata’s new taxpayer-subsidized car really cost that much? No wonder we’re laying off teachers.”

Torched?

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How is Mayor Gavin Newsom going to maneuver his way through the controversial Beijing Olympic Torch relay in San Francisco on Wednesday?

Before he read the political writing on the wall, (or listened to the protesters that gathered beneath his window at City Hall each day to chant “Mayor Newsom don’t accept China’s Bloody Torch,) Newsom tried to get Sup. Carmen Chu, his most recent appointee on the Board, to squash Sup. Chris Daly’s recommendation that San Francisco’s top official (Newsom, presumably) accept the torch “with alarm and protest.”

When that attempt backfired–and the Mayor’s Office saw Sup. Chris Daly, not Newsom, swarmed by cameras, the Mayor realized which way the political winds were blowing—and decided to met with some Tibetans.

At that point, US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (Newsom’s aunt by marriage) had already been speaking out against China’s human rights abuses and thoroughly pissed off the Chinese authorities by visiting the Dalai Lama.

And now London has protested, Paris has snuffed the torch, protesters are scaling the Golden Gate Bridge, and Hillary Clinton, who Newsom is stomping for, is calling for Bush to boycott the opening of the Beijing games.

“These events underscore why I believe the Bush administration has been wrong to downplay human rights in its policy towards China,” Clinton said.

So, will Newsom accept the torch “with alarm and protest,” after all? Or hand the job off to a surrogate and head out on vacation? Either way, sounds like Newsom is gonna need a whole lot of extra hair gel to wiggle his way through this one.

Newsom’s Sunshineless Solar

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Mayor Gavin Newsom wants to be known as the Green Mayor. But he could go down in history as the mayor who secretly diverted public money from large municipally owned solar installations to subsidize privately owned solar panels.

Since January, Newsom has tried to kick start two questionably financed solar programs.

The first plan involved raiding $50 million from a seismic safety loan fund. That idea got shelved in the New Year, when the Board of Supervisors asked why these funds couldn’t be used to seismically retrofit affordable housing units, rather than subsidize private solar installations?

The second plan is involved diverting $3 million from the Mayor’s Energy Conservation Account, which was set up in 2001 to increase energy efficiency and reduce cost of energy use.

Since then, $39 million has been allocated to MECA with $10 million allocated in the current fiscal year, 2007-2008.
These monies come from the General Fund and are under the purview of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

Deputy Controller Monique Zmuda says so far all projects funded by MECA have benefited city facilities and PUC facilities.

“These funds have not been used to my knowledge to subsidize or loan funds to privately owned energy conservation projects,” Zmuda told the Guardian.

MECA funded projects include solar panels at Moscone, the replacement of refrigerators at the San Francisco Housing Authority, solar projects at MUNI, a new heating system at the central plant of San Francisco General Hospital, Solar projects at San Francisco Airport, a Solar project at North Point, and Port Energy Efficiency.

But under the Mayor’s Solar Energy Incentive Program, these public monies would be used to help subsidize the installation of solar panels on privately owned buildings and homes.The program places a $10,000 cap on the subsidizing of solar on private property.

METAL: Rockin’ more Walken

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By Duncan Scott Davidson

Here’s more an interview with San Francisco’s Walken. Read the original piece here.

Shane Bergman: A 14-year-old with a gun is the last thing I want to see around here.

SFBG: When did you guys form?

Sean Kohler: Actually, we came up with the name Walken in 1999.

SFBG: Pre-“More Cowbell.”

SB: Yeah, I think so. It was right at the beginning of the Christopher Walken joke obsession, with all the new movies and all that. I think we were caught up in the beginnings of that, doing Walken impressions and such. At the time it was just me and Andrew, who was the original drummer. I think we all collectively think of Walken forming again in different phases, ‘cause it’s changed so much. Present lineup: two years, basically.

Sweet, sweet Ruby Suns shine a light tonight

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Birthed in New Zealand and suckled on Cali pop, Maori folk, and assorted indie-rock eclectic undefinables, the Ruby Suns plucked the title for their new sophomore album, Sea Lion (Sub Pop), from our very shores: the critters basking off Highway 1. I exchanged e-mails with Ruby Suns’ king Ryan McPhun, who appears with his band tonight, April 4, at Bottom of the Hill.

SFBG: So why title your new album after the sea lions who live near San Francisco? What sort of experiences have you had with them?

Ryan McPhun: I guess my explanation is not too complicated. My girlfriend and i were driving down the coast on Highway 1 and came across this colony. We sat and watched these animals for about an hour. We were really close. They were making some amazing noises. It was a great time, so that’s why. It was an inspiring trip.

The finest in female-fronted indie? Finest Dearest celebrates a new disc

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By Alex Felsinger

What happened to women in indie rock? The rocking influence of PJ Harvey and Sleater-Kinney seems to have all but vanished in the hands of indie-pop darlings like Au Revoir Simone or Camera Obscura. These and many other successful female-fronted indie bands in recent years follow the same formula of cute, poppy songs. A Belle and Sebastian influence permeates, while the Pixies inspiration is played down. Indie was once edgy, but now it’s mostly serene.

But San Francisco has a hold-out: Finest Dearest has essentially ignored the current indie scene. Their new self-titled album on Bloodtown Records could easily fit among discs by the powerful women of ’90s indie rock.

Formed in 2004, the band has never been afraid of the drums-guitar-bass formula, and for the most part, their music is nicely streamlined. The group initially included an electric cello player, but on their new full-length, the instrument is used sparingly on a only few tracks.

Is Newsom hosting a dictator?

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You don’t hear as much about El Salvador these days as you once did in the Bay Area, but the Coalition in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador is still very active, and the issues in thyat impoverished country, run by the right-wing equivalent of a dictator, are very real.

And now CISPES is furious that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is, according to Salvadoran press reports, planning to meet with Salvadoran president Antonio Saca. “Newsom is set to declare April 4 as the Day of Antonio Saca,” a CISPES statement says. This “has outraged the Salvadoran community of the Bay Area and allies because of ongoing human rights violations and state repression in El Salvador.“

I can’t get the mayor’s press office to confirm this, despite two emails and a phone call. In fact, I was told that only Nathan Ballard, the chief of the press office, could talk about this, and although I asked for a response by Thursday night, and emailed him directly as well, I have heard nothing. So possibly the Salvadoran press is wrong — and possibly Newsom doesn’t want to get a lot of press on the visit.

But CISPES is mobilizing to send a message that President Saca is not welcome in San Francisco and that the City should not honor him, and the group plans a press conference and demonstration Friday at 12 noon outside City Hall.

If Newsom is indeed meeting with Saca, it will put him in league with Dianne Feinstein, who used to love to meet with dictators. In the course of just one year, she hosted Ferdinand Marcos, Jose Napoleon Duarte and Muhammed Zia Ul-Haq.

At the time I called it her “third-world dictators hat trick.”

Newsom ought to know better.

Adopt 8-pound Tatiana the cat

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We like to check the San Francisco SPCA’s Web site from time to time, because, well, we really, really like kittehs. We’d posted more images of cats looking for homes on the blog, but we’re afraid our colleagues might ridicule us for liking kittehs so much. Well screw them. We’ve long embraced the politics of kittehs, and if you’ve ever reported on animal welfare and animal rights, you know there’s no shortage of politics surrounding kittehs.

Anyway, someone at the SPCA has a sense of humor. The shelter’s site won’t let us save the image of Tatiana the cat for some reason, so you’ll have to go here to actually see her.

Meet the other Tatiana:
TATIANA – ID#A066862
I am a spayed female, brown tabby Domestic Shorthair.
The shelter staff think I am about 10 years old.
I weigh approximately 4 kgs (8 lbs).
I have been at the shelter since Mar 15, 2008.

Shelter Staff made the following comments about this animal:
“Tatiana is a tabby but a tender tiger at heart. This shy and delicate little girl will need some extra time getting to know you and your home. She will benefit from a patient adopter willing to spend the time necessary to make her comfortable in her new surroundings.”

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Indie silkscreen revelations

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By Vanessa Carr

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Independent music and DIY culture can come like flashes of hope through the dark days of teenage dorkdom. For me, it was Bikini Kill’s first album on tape.

The revelation: something better is out there. And better yet, one can actually have a role in creating it.

Once a small-town kid growing up in Neenah, Wisconsin, graphic designer and poster artist Jason Munn tapped into a similar sense of inspired possibility. As a skateboarder with a crew of like-minded friends, he was influenced early on by skateboard graphics and the album art of bands like the Promise Ring and Boys Life.

Munn, 32, now lives in Oakland, where he has been running The Small Stakes design studio since 2003. He continues to draw stylistic and psychic inspiration from punk’s handmade aesthetic and DIY ethos.

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Munn’s stunningly precise silkscreen show posters for artists, ranging from Battles and LCD Soundsystem to Sufjan Stevens and Modest Mouse, have made him a minor celebrity among design nerds and indie rockers alike. Not that you’d ever know it: in person he is soft-spoken and humble, certainly not the kind of guy who goes around telling people, for instance, that his work is part of the San Francisco MoMA’s permanent collection, or that it’s regularly featured in PRINT Magazine and Communication Arts.

This Friday night (4/4), Munn will be selling limited edition art prints and gig posters at Bloom Screen Printing in Oakland. Munn’s prints will be on sale for $5-$25. Bloom Screen Printing posters will also be for sale.

SFBG: When did you start making music-related posters?

Jason Munn: I started in [art] school. A lot of my projects were music-related even when they weren’t supposed to be, because that was what I was interested in. I was working in another design studio at the time – after school – and at night a lot I was doing these kind of things just to do what I wanted to do and also to build up a portfolio of the kind of work that I really wanted to show people, which was not necessarily the stuff I was doing at my day job.

I moved out here in 2002, again with no plans at all. About a month after I moved out here, two people I met were booking shows in Berkeley at a place they called the Ramp. It was in the basement of this church in Berkeley, and they were doing one show a month – really great shows, a lot of local bands, and a lot of bands that will play the Fillmore when they come through now: Animal Collective, Deerhoof, Why? – a lot of local things, but also touring acts. But again, it was only one show a month, and it was only open for a year. It was essentially when I started doing posters. They asked me to do a poster for each show. I wanted to silkscreen, but I didn’t know how. I had done a little bit of silkscreening in school, so I had a real basic knowledge of it. The first job I had out here I was actually temping at a silkscreen shop – I printed the t-shirts. So basically they would burn the screens for me and I would print from home. I made a huge mess and it was a huge learning process.

I probably did six or seven posters, and then I met a guy in Oakland who was printing another job for me that I did the design work for. His name is Nat and he runs a screenprinting shop in Oakland called Bloom Screen Printing. It’s a small shop, and he basically taught me a ton about printing. I started printing my stuff there, and he was showing me lots of tricks, random things that I was having trouble with. He was looking at the stuff I was doing at home and was like, “This is what you’re doing wrong.” It was really cool. I still print there – he also prints larger jobs for me, although he is a pretty in-demand printer.

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SFBG: How do you make it work financially?

Does the climate need more PR?

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Al Gore is spending $300 million on ads to tell us some more about climate change and what we can do. It’s called “we.” Doesn’t that sound like fun?

Actually, does anyone else find this a little insulting and/or disturbing? Who hasn’t gotten the message? Wasn’t An Inconvenient Truth a big, giant ad for how fucked we are?

We get it! Why spend three years and $300 million to tell us some more about global warming? The mainstream media appears to have stopped calling the climate change nay-sayers. Global warming is now an acceptable dinner party topic, not something your partner rants at you for ranting about in public. It’s even transcended traditional party lines, but Al Gore’s group, Alliance for Climate Protection, is still pulling together a huge chunk of change to inundate us with advertising.

Three hundred million bucks could buy solar panels for 3,000 buildings the size of the Guardian’s, or 15,000 average homes. For $300 million Al Gore could identify the 13,200 longest commuters in the country and buy them all Honda Civic hybrids. He could set up a microloan-style fund for lower and middle-income people who really want to change their ways but just can’t afford it. They could apply for financing for solar panels, better insulation for their homes, new cars, more efficient water heaters, whatever it is they’ve identified in their lives that they could change if they could just friggin’ afford it.

The Washington Post runs down more details of the program, which seems aimed at riling the masses and asking them to harass their elected officials. According to the Post: “This climate crisis is so interwoven with habits and patterns that are so entrenched, the elected officials in both parties are going to be timid about enacting the bold changes that are needed until there is a change in the public’s sense of urgency in addressing this crisis,” Gore said. “I’ve tried everything else I know to try. The way to solve this crisis is to change the way the public thinks about it.”

BTW, for anyone who can’t wait for the ads, or hasn’t seen the movie it’s screening at the San Francisco Public Library as part of their Environmental Film Festival.

The deets:

Thursday, April 24, Noon
An Inconvenient Truth (2006, 96 min.)
Koret Auditorium, Lower Level
Main Library, 100 Larkin Street (at Grove)

All films are shown with captions when possible to assist our deaf
and hard of hearing.
All programs at the Library are free.

Chevron slapped with highest eco-fine ever

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Chevron may have to pay as much as $16 billion in damages for polluting parts of Ecuador, according to a report released today as part of a 15-year lawsuit against the San Ramon-based petroleum company. The report estimated $7 billion as the lower pricetag, for clean-up, soil remediation, and compensation to locals for health care costs and ecosystem loss.

For years, residents of Lago Agrio, Ecuador have contended that oil extraction and refining activities by Texaco (now owned by Chevron) were poisoning groundwater, food supplies, and people. Pablo Fajardo, a native of the small village, put himself through law school to take the role as lead litigator on the case. Last year, he and other Lago Agrians visited San Francisco to appeal to Chevron’s board members to do the right think, clean up their act, and make reparations.

Justicia Now, a film about Fajardo and the environmental crisis, produced by Oakland-based MoFilms, will be screening at the Roxie on April 17.

According to the press release, “by contrast, the total damages Exxon has paid in the Valdez disaster, the largest oil spill in U.S. history, is roughly $3 billion (an additional $2.5 billion is still under litigation). The plaintiffs in Ecuador have long asserted that the Chevron-created disaster in Ecuador, in terms of the amount of crude dumped, is 30 times larger than the Valdez spill.”

Yikes. And just yesterday Chevron officials were making excuses for their record profits at a Congressional hearing. Oh, times are tough.

Migden: in for the long haul

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An update to my earlier post on Migden’s court win yesterday:

I just got off the line with a source at the Eastern District courthouse. He told me the soonest Migden’s case could be heard would be 6 weeks from now. That would be mid-May, only 2-3 weeks from the election. Any sooner than that, he said, would be “extremely unlikely.” He wouldn’t go on the record with a guess as to when it would be litigated, but from what I gathered, it could be as far down the road as three months from now.

In other words, Migden’s going to have money in the bank for the foreseeable future. That means everyone hoping she would drop out to assure the District 3 seat stays in San Francisco hands shouldn’t hold their breath; it looks like it’s going to be a three horse race for the duration.

Score one for Migden and her lawyers – and also for Joe Nation, who will probably benefit almost as much as Migden herself from the decision handed down yesterday …

More on Home Depot pulling up stakes

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As Tim Redmond blogged yesterday, Home Depot has notified the city that it will not be opening a store on Bayshore Blvd. – ten years after the land entitlement process began. Guardian intern Michael Leonard spoke with several people involved in the process:

Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, whose District 10 would have hosted the outlet expressed regret at the giant retailer’s decision, “People were certainly looking forward to the jobs and the convenience…and the sales tax dollars,” Maxwell said. “Now, it’s back to the drawing board.”

Not everyone in Maxwell’s district, however, or the city at large, was eager to have a mammoth chain store located in a vital neighborhood.

“Actually, there was not a lot of community support. There were people with money who tried to override real community voice,” Marie Harrison, a community organizer for GreenAction, told the Guardian.

According to Harrison, community opposition centered around two factors: the extra traffic and resulting pollution in the already industrialized area; small, local businesses being forced to close by a large, national chain.

It remains unknown what will become of the land plot. Mayor Newsom has requested that Home Depot hold off on pulling out of the deal. Maxwell stated that the some in the community had suggested a Target store or a movie complex during talks in past years.

As for Home Depot, the behemoth home improvement firm says it is not giving up on San Francisco. Spokeswoman Kathryn Gallagher told us, “We want to reiterate our thanks to the many customers, city officials, and partners that expressed support of us…We hope to be part of the community someday.”

Harrison had some words of advice for Gallagher and other company officials should the firm opt to show up in town again. Noting that their proposed job numbers constantly fluctuated and that the estimated economic benefits of the proposed location never added up, she stated, “Don’t make promises that you can’t keep.”

METAL: High time for Hightower

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hightower sml.bmp

What’s up with San Francisco skate-metal-punk contenders Hightower?

Well, they’re kind of on hiatus, according to bassist Dave Fallis, taking a break from his SF picture-framing business to talk despite his bandmates’ absence – “We can’t form the Voltron,” he warned. Hightower has made the rounds, touring every summer for the last six years, so this time, they’ve decided to just “concentrate on getting their lives back together” before writing songs and recording – once they raise enough funds.

“We’re, like, the least marketable band out there,” Fallis explained matter-of-factly. “We’re not quite a metal band and not a, quote-unquote, punk rock band. It just seems like when we’re at punk rock show, we’re the regular dudes in jeans and T-shirts, and when we go to a metal show, we’re the same way.” Still, the band that met each other skateboarding around their SF neighborhood continues to find their way with the help of kindred skaters. “If we didn’t skate we wouldn’t know each other,” Fallis said, “and as far as touring and getting shows, we’ll contact people we know through skateboarding, and we’ll decide which town to go to according to which ones have a great skateboarding spot or swimming hole.”

HIGHTOWER’S TOP FIVE SPOTS TO SKATE OR SWIM WHILE ON THE ROAD

– Montreal, the Big O or the Olympic Stadium
– Chattanooga, Tenn., Suck Creek (“A great spot in the Smoky Mountains.”)
– “Late-night skinny-dipping in Lawrence, Kansas.”
– Maine’s cliff jumps
– Assorted skateparks in Louisville, Ky.

HIGHTOWER
With Walken, Three Weeks Clean, and Soulbroker
May 1, 9 p.m., $8
Cafe Du Nord
2170 Market, SF
(415) 861-5016

SEIU skullduggery

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>jesse@sfbg.com

As an internal power struggle wracks the giant Service Employees International Union, emails obtained by the Guardian suggest that SEIU officials may have violated union rules by working to influence an important San Francisco delegate election last month.

Delegates selected by Local 1021, based in SF, will attend the union’s international convention in June and will vote on a series of democratic reforms put forward by dissident labor leader Sal Rosselli. In recent weeks, Rosselli has clashed publicly with SEIU’s international president Andy Stern over Stern’s increasing consolidation of the 1.9 million-member labor organization.

And the emails appear to show a concerted effort by Stern’s senior staff and local loyalists to ensure that the dissidents don’t dominate the convention delegation.

Referring to themselves in the emails as the “Salsa Team,” SEIU staffers discussed strategy and coordinated campaign activity for the delegate election with high-ranking union officials like Damita Davis-Howard, the president of Local 1021, and Josie Mooney, a special assistant to Stern, the emails show.

Critics charge that these activities violated Local 1021’s Election Rules and Procedures – specifically Rule 18, which states, “While in the performance of their duties, union staff shall remain uninvolved and neutral in relation to candidate endorsements and all election activities.”

While Rule 18 does not specifically spell out when union staff can advocate for candidates, other than proscribing such activities “while in performance of their duties,” the emails in our possession are date and time stamped and several of them were sent during business hours.

Furthermore, the Guardian has obtained an internal memo from Local 1021 official Patti Tamura in which she warned union staffers that the phrase “‘performance of their duties’ goes beyond [Monday through Friday] and 9-5p.”

One Local 1021 official who asked not to be identified told us that Tamura’s memo appeared to be a clear message that staff should stay completely out of the election. “They made it perfectly clear to the lower staff that your employment doesn’t stop [after hours], you’re still staff. That means, you don’t get involved. But now it turns out they themselves were doing it. That’s a double standard … it’s certainly not right.”

The messages between Salsa Team members show them actively working to recruit potential delegates sympathetic to Stern’s vision for the SEIU and to aid Davis-Howard in her bid to represent the union at the June convention. One missive, dated February 18, which appears to come from the personal email account of Local 1021 employee Jano Oscherwitz and was sent to what appear to be the personal accounts of Tamura and Mooney, requests that a “message for Damita” be drafted.

According to the time stamp on the message, Oscherwitz sent it at 12:03 PM. Feb. 18 was a Monday. [Update: February 18th was the President’s Day holiday. However an email stamped 4:26 PM on the following day, Tuesday the 19th, shows Salsa Team members continuing to confer about Davis-Howard’s campaigning, as well as the recruitment of potential delegates.]

A forwarded email stamped 3:18 PM on that same day, from Oscherwitz to what appear to be personal email accounts for Tamura, fellow 1021 staffer Gilda Valdez, and “Damita” includes a “Draft Message” with bulleted talking points, apparently for Davis-Howard to use as she “Collect[s] Signatures on Commitment Cards.”

“Commitment cards” refers to pledges from union members to support certain delegates.

At the convention, scheduled for June 1 through 4 in Puerto Rico, delegates will weigh in on a series of reforms backed by Roselli, chief of the United Health Care Workers West. These reforms include eliminating the current delegate system for electing union leaders, giving local unions more authority in bargaining for their own contracts, and granting locals more say in proposed mergers.

Stern opposes Rosselli’s reforms. A March 5 Salsa Team message includes an attached document with several talking points critical of Rosselli. In the body of the email, SEIU staffer Gilda Valdez advises Davis-Howard, Mooney, 1021 chief of staff Marion Steeg, and others to “Memorize the points in talking to folks.” Valdez goes on to say in the email that she “will be calling … about your assignments.”

Reached for comment, Davis-Howard confirmed that the AOL email account listed as “Damita” was hers. But she claimed no knowledge of the Salsa Team or the messages sent to her. “If you’re saying those emails went to my home computer, who knows if I ever even got them?”

Despite her unwillingness to acknowledge whether she had received the messages, Davis-Howard bristled at the suggestion that the Salsa Team’s activities violated union rules. “Are you trying to tell me that I can never campaign? Does it [Rule 18] say that I have to be neutral and uninvolved 24 hours a day?”

Calls to Mooney, Oscherwitz, Valdez, and Tamura were not returned.

But some union members think there’s a serious problem here. In a written statement, Roxanne Sanchez, who was the president of the San Francisco local before it was merged with other Northern California locals to create 1021, accused Davis-Howard and the Salsa Team of “rigging the outcome” of the delegate election.

“This type of breach in ethical conduct – at such a high level – threatens the foundation of trust and confidence in our Union and in President Damita Davis-Howard’s ability to hold fair elections,” she said.

Sanchez informed us by phone that a formal complaint will be filed with the union’s election committee by Friday.

Metal maidens

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› kimberly@sfbg.com

SONIC REDUCER How are we driving — in terms of womanly representation in the Bay Area metal scene? The verdict: we’re pretty bitchin’, but we could do better.

Anyone who’s gotten an eyeful of hoary ole hair-band imagery, courtesy of Headbanger’s Balls of yore, is all-too-familiar with the form’s sexism — excused by such critics as Chuck Klosterman and Robert Walser in Fargo Rock City (Scribner, 2001) and Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Wesleyan, 1993), respectively, with claims that it’s beside the point to even critique the genre and that the music was simply "shaped by patriarchy." Nonetheless, when I wondered where all the girl groups had gone, following the demise of Sleater-Kinney, Destiny’s Child, and le Tigre (see "Band of Sisters, 07/18/06), I might have found solace in the fact that the Bay Area’s headbanging underground is fairly bangin’ for ladies: women can be found onstage in heavy bands ranging from Hammers of Misfortune, Ludicra, and Totimoshi to Bottom, Embers, and Laudanum.

The New Jersey–raised Leila Rauf is in a position to know as the guitarist-vocalist of the four-year-old Saros: female metal musicians are still "rare," she said, "having lived in other cities where that was the case. I think a lot of it has to do with the political climate in the Bay Area. Maybe there’s more women just not participating in traditional gender roles and you find women doing lots of things that women normally don’t do in more conservative parts of the country — being in a metal band being one of them."

Her San Francisco group is just completing their new untitled album, which they’re in the midst of mixing with producer Billy Anderson (High on Fire, the Melvins, Neurosis). Over the phone on her way to meet her Amber Asylum/Frozen in Amber bandmate Kris Force, Rauf described the recording as "still metal, but there’s more going on — a lot more singing, a lot more harmonic, and a lot more acoustic." It’s part of the evolution she and cowriter-guitarist Ben Aguilar have undergone since their five-track release, Five Pointed Tongue (Hungry Eye, 2006). "We’re just getting bored playing the same thing, loud all the time, technical all the time. We’re trying to get more negative space into the songs."

Still, even an accomplished, intelligent figure such as Rauf — who was working on a PhD in speech pathology at Purdue when she dropped out to pursue her muse — has had to wash out the nasty taste of Neanderthal behavior, even in the relatively forward-thinking Bay metal scene. In a later e-mail she recalled multiple instances of violent passes at San Francisco metal shows, including an time when "a really big dude grabbed me and tried to stick his tongue in my mouth. Eww." All of which pales next to other moments of intense sexism, she added: "I have been denied band auditions before — later finding out that it was due to my gender — but being told to my face it was because they didn’t think I had the chops. I even read an ad on Craigslist recently for a metal band looking for members that made it a point to exclude women. To believe this is happening in 2008 … "

One is loathe to think that the local metal resurgence is linked to a kindred revival in gender stereotypes. Are they still so charged, now that the music and its imagery seems to have moved toward less-biased turf? While there are still bastions of all-boy metal exclusivity — thrash, Rauf noted, is one of them, which parallels the general absence of women in chart-topping hard rock — area players should be quietly (or loudly) proud of its estrogen-friendly underground. It will only make for more unique work — and a new generation of girls who aren’t afraid to kick out the jams. *

AMBER ASYLUM

With Graycion and Embers

April 19, 9 p.m., $8

El Rio

3158 Mission, SF

www.elriosf.com

SAROS

With Black Cobra and Mendozza

April 24, 9 p.m., $7

Annie’s Social Club

917 Folsom, SF

(415) 974-1585

www.anniessocialclub.com

HAIGHT’S NEW METAL HQ

Something wicked heavy — and ambitious — this way comes with the opening of the Shaxul Records storefront at 1816 Haight. Scheduled to throw open its dark doors on April 1, the shop takes over the narrow, shoebox-like spot across the street from Amoeba Music, where Reverb Records once purveyed dance 12-inches — after much delay, said co-owner Stone Shaxul, a.k.a. DJ Shaxul of Rampage Radio on KUSF 90.3 FM. There are reasons why this will likely be the only metal store in the Bay, he wrote in an e-mail, citing the high cost of San Francisco retail space and the Haight in particular as prohibitive to most metalheads as he madly prepped the operation, which carries vinyl, CDs, and 7-inches focusing on Bay Area underground metal scene and the label’s releases (including the vinyl version of Above the Ashes by lost ’80s local thrash unit Ulysses Siren), as well as T-shirts, books, patches, and other "blasphemous goods."

"We want Shaxul Records to be a place where real metalheads can come and be proud and where new metalheads can learn what the real stuff is about. We also want to give all the metalheads from around the world who visit a place to go that acknowledges our great metal tradition when they visit," Shaxul offered. Does he have any misgivings considering the struggles of music retail? "Not many people," he philosophized, "get a chance to live their dream."

Metal Mania: Just keep Walken

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› duncan@sfbg.com

How would you feel? Your band has been together since 1999, struggling through lineup changes, two US tours, hundreds of shows, an album and two EPs, without so much as a write-up in the local weekly. Finally, after dropping your most recent CD last year — an untitled, self-released disc of skull-crushing riffs — you get a review in the bible of modern metal, Metal Maniacs, and the photo that runs with it is of another band.

In the case of the San Francisco four-piece Walken, it was a photo of a three-piece party-rock outfit from Sioux City, Iowa, whose MySpace "sounds like" reads: "Rush meets Metallica meets Blink 182 meets Nickelback meets Matchbox 20 meets Live meets Red Hot Chili Peppers." With all due respect to Neil Peart and pre-Load era Metallica — seriously?

"They’re total dicks," Shane Bergman, 25, vocalist and bassist for the Original Walken — otherwise known as Vintage Walken or Walken Classic — says during an interview at the Western Addition Victorian he shares with roommate and guitar player Sean Kohler, 27. It’s the crack of noon and the guys are posted up on the couch, drinking coffee, and eating toast and jam in their finest sweatpants. "I’d written the guy a long time ago," he continues. "’Hey, this isn’t cool. We’ve had this name for seven or eight years. We’ve actually put out stuff and toured the US. It’s not cool.’ And they were like, ‘Oh, it doesn’t really matter — we’re in different states.’ I just let it slide. And then I pick up that" — he points to the magazine — "and I’m, like, ‘Well, now it’s gone too far.’ You look through and see a picture of those tools … "

There have been more Walkens, including a band from Melbourne that played weddings and broke up in 2004. The reason for the popularity, most likely, is Christopher Walken’s 2000 "more cowbell" skit on Saturday Night Live. While this settles the name game with pretenders enamored with the sketch, it raises the question: if not for "more cowbell," then why "Walken"?

Like the actor, dancer, and celebrity beer-can-chicken chef, Walken is hard to pin down. When walking in on Walken’s live set and hearing the crushing, dual-guitar assault "Bitch Wizard," from their untitled, self-released 2007 EP, all pummeling drums and clean backing vocals contrasting with deathly, oven-throat howls, it’s difficult to characterize the group — which includes guitarist Max Doyle, 26, and drummer Zack Farwell, 29 — as anything but metal. Perhaps "fuckin’ metal" might be more apt. But it hasn’t always been so clear-cut. "Our Unstoppable record, it was just a weird record," Kohler says of the self-released 2004 full-length. "We thought we were being all revolutionary having these funny rock songs, with funk songs and blues songs … "

"And math rock," Bergman interjects. Unstoppable was Walken’s version, to steal a phrase from Lou Reed, of ‘growing up in public.’"

"Most people sit in their garage when they’re coming up with their sound, but we were actually out there playing it, trying to figure it out in front of people," Bergman says. The band’s music has coalesced into a pointed metal attack. It couldn’t have happened at a more opportune time. While the bottom has fallen out of the housing market, and spending $3 trillion bucks on blowing up Iraqis has wreaked havoc on the economy, stock in metal is clearly on the rise.

"That’s one thing that’s changed about metal," Kohler says. "All of the sudden it’s getting cool again. You can be big and be in a metal band, with Mastodon and High on Fire and bands like that." I’m sworn to (semi-)secrecy, but there’s something on the horizon for Walken, something that Kohler demanded I euphemistically term a "great opportunity," which will put the days of touring cross-country with Hightower on their own dime, playing a couple dozen shows, and coming home dog-dick broke, behind them.

But are the vanguard of 21st-century metal warriors and their burgeoning audience really anything new? While it’s no doubt refreshing to see metal — true metal, not the Hollywood hair-farmer crap that lined record company coffers in a pre-Nirvana world — crawl out from the underground, it seems that it’s still largely aimed at the dudes in black hoodies. Which leads us to simultaneously discuss two major concerns about the future of heavy music: is anything really new, truly revolutionary, or is it all just a remix of old ideas? And just what will it take to woo a crop of hot new metal women away from the evils of floppy-haired emo boys in so-called chick pants?

Thankfully, Kohler’s got some insight: "Everything that’s new is just a reinvention of something else. The only way that I really believe that there can be a new beginning is after most of the human population is annihilated. And then it starts over, just as creative expression is part of life. It slowly becomes a community thing. It starts organically, that’s the point."

"So basically, you blow up the world, and more chicks will come to metal shows," Bergman quips.

Walken is already well into writing a new full-length, but I’ve got to advise them: scrap those songs and work on the concept album. Imagine this: the year is the year is 3052. Global warming and perpetual war have taken their toll. The ice caps have melted and a tribe of mutant metal warrior women of Amazonian stature have arisen from the rubble, repurposing military technology found in underground bunkers into hybrid instrument-weapons, with which they can both rock out and kill you. They rock you to death. Everything metal is new again.

WALKEN

With Hightower, Three Weeks Clean, and Soulbroker

May 1, 9 p.m., $8

Cafe Du Nord

2170 Market, SF

(415) 861-5016

www.cafedunord.com

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