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Guardian vs. SF Weekly
It’s extraordinary how the SF Weekly can take a clear legal defeat and try to turn it into a victory.
On Jan. 17 the judge in the Guardian‘s lawsuit against the SF Weekly and its parent corporation refused to bar the Guardian‘s key expert witness from testifying. The ruling was a clear victory for the Guardian — the Weekly had tried desperately to keep accountant and economic expert Clifford Kupperberg from taking the stand to present evidence of how much the Weekly‘s predatory pricing has damaged the Guardian.
And yet the Weekly‘s Snitch blog trumpets the ruling as "The SF Bay Guardian‘s Shakedown Hits a Snag," arguing that Kupperberg had somehow repudiated his own testimony.
The Guardian is suing the SF Weekly and Village Voice Media, formerly known as New Times, for predatory pricing in violation of California business law. The suit charges that the Weekly, with cash support from the 16-paper chain, sold ads below cost for many years in an effort to harm the locally owned competitor.
The trial got under way last week with early motions on the evidence. Here’s what actually happened in Superior Court Judge Marla Miller’s courtroom Jan. 16 and 17:
Kupperberg, following well-established standards, had developed two scenarios to explain how much the Guardian has lost due to the Weekly‘s practice of selling ads below cost. One of the scenarios uses data from members of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, information that the papers share with one another once a year to establish industry financial benchmarks.
The SF Weekly‘s lawyers argued that part of the data — the material from the AAN — wasn’t reliable, so Kupperberg agreed to use his other standard (including New Times’ own figures in 17 different markets) instead. He also added data from two other Bay Area alternative papers and from local retail sales statistics to buttress his conclusions. His data suggest damages of $5 million to $10 million.
After the SF Weekly lawyers argued for hours that Kupperberg be disqualified, Judge Miller ruled clearly and unequivocally against them. Kupperberg will be able to testify, and his damage estimates will be admissible.
That’s a big victory for the Guardian.
And while the Weekly lawyers demanded extra time and sought to delay once again a case that’s been in the works for more than three years, Miller moved forward and started the jury selection process Jan. 17.
If this is how the SF Weekly and the VVM folks from Phoenix are going to cover the trial, we’re going to have to spend a lot of time correcting the record, although we’d prefer to simply let the case speak for itself.
Car trouble
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A lawsuit alleging that seven major rental car companies have been illegally colluding to fix prices has become a campaign issue in the State Senate race between incumbent Carole Migden and Assemblymember Mark Leno.
The suit was filed by the University of San Diego School of Law’s Center for Public Interest Law and alleges that Hertz, Avis, Dollar, National, Thrifty, Alamo, and Enterprise took advantage of Assembly Bill 2592, sponsored by Leno, to charge consumers more and essentially blame the increase on the state.
The bill was created in the final days of the 2006 legislative session at the request of the rental car companies and the California Travel and Tourism Commission. It allowed the companies to list for consumers the 9 percent concession fee paid to airports (which they had been required to bundle into their listed rates) in exchange for paying $24 million annually, or about 2.5 percent of revenues, to the commission, replacing the state’s $6.7 million contribution to the organization that promotes tourism to the state.
But the lawsuit alleges the companies simply increased their rates by that 11.5 percent, pocketing the profits while indicating to customers that the money was going to the commission and to the airports. And the fact that they all did so is, the lawsuit charges, evidence of illegal collusion.
So this month Migden offered her own legislation to undo the change, highlighting the lawsuit and Leno’s legislation in the process. Senate Bill 1057 would also require rental car companies to provide a certified audit specifying how much extra money consumers were charged since AB 2592 went into effect.
"This law needs to be fixed before more consumers lose their hard-earned money to overcharging by unethical car rental firms," Migden said in a press release.
For his part, Leno notes that Migden and most legislators supported his bill, which he vetted through the Consumers Union, a group that was ultimately neutral on it. He said the bill provides greater transparency to consumers, so much so that it makes the apparent collusion obvious. "If [rental car companies] want to collude, they should do it without the 2592 on them," Leno said, adding, "If there’s any funny business going on, let’s crack the whip."
As for Midgen’s role in cleaning up the situation, Leno said, "If I weren’t running for the senate, this would be of no interest to her whatsoever. This is pure politics."
Leno concedes that it was representatives of some of the rental car companies, along with someone from the commission, who brought him the legislation, which he inserted into another bill at the end of the legislative session. According to Cal-Access, an online resource that documents campaign finances, Hertz Corp. contributed $3,000 each to Leno’s 2004 and 2006 campaigns. The Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group also made a contribution of $3,300 to Leno’s 2006 campaign.
But Leno said of his legislation, "It enhances the information that consumers receive when they rent a car…. I thought this was a win-win situation that would not have consumer opposition, that would generate $50 million [a figure that includes the ripple effect of tourism] to promote California and create hundreds of thousands of jobs."
In addition to helping boost tourism in the state, the Leno legislation requires rental car companies to disclose their total out-the-door prices on the phone or the Internet and requires all components of the total charge to be clearly itemized for consumers.
Robert Fellmeth, executive director of the Center for Public Interest Law, told us the alleged price fixing wasn’t surprising, given that the seven companies dominate the market and share a lobbyist and a trade association. But he said, "The more serious charge is that they went to a legislator and agreed to horizontal price colluding."
None of the companies returned Guardian calls or offered comments.
Megan Ma contributed to this report.
Endorsements — Alameda County
Measures A and B (Children’s Hospital bond)
NO
The history of this pair of ballot measures speaks to the reasons to oppose them: Children’s Hospital, a private outfit, hired signature gatherers and put Measure B — a special tax to fund a $300 million bond to help rebuild the hospital, which needs a seismic upgrade — on the ballot without even consulting the county supervisors. The supervisors then came back with a compromise plan, Measure A, which Children’s is now supporting — but none of the supervisors have endorsed.
We’re not big on using public bonds and tax money to rebuild a private hospital (especially when the county’s public health system has so many needs of its own). And none of this was very well thought out. Vote no; if there’s a good reason to rebuild Children’s Hospital, there needs to be a much better public process to fund it.
Measure E (Albany pool bonds)
YES
Measure E would authorize $10 million in bonds to rebuild the public pool at Albany High School. It also includes money for new classrooms. The Alameda Green Party thinks the pool should have solar heat and use alternatives to chlorine, and we agree — but that’s not reason enough to block a modest measure to improve a widely used facility. Vote yes.
Measure G (Oakland school tax)
YES
This is a parcel tax that would charge property owners in Oakland $195 per year, with the money going to the public schools. Yes, the Oakland schools are still controlled by a state administrator, who can ultimately decide where the money will go, and yes, parcel taxes aren’t perfect, but with school funding in the state as dire as it is, we support almost any sort of tax that helps education. And while parcel taxes allow big commercial landlords to pay the same rate as small homeowners, there is a low-income-resident exemption. Vote yes. 2
For national, state, and San Francisco endorsements, click here.
Delete key
› sarah@sfbg.com
San Francisco’s recent move to a new, privatized electronic campaign finance database will make it more difficult to track amendments to reports on political spending, a change that has caused a conflict between top-level staffers at the Ethics Commission.
In a Jan. 10 memo sent to all of the appointed members of the Ethics Commission, fines collection officer Oliver Luby wrote, "The transition to a NetFile-created database will result in large amounts of deletion of campaign data from the Commission’s database, both in the future and retroactively.
"This data deletion will destroy the ability of the Commission and the public to systematically perform computerized reviews of finance changes made via amendment," Luby wrote, adding, "Coincidentally, the biggest beneficiary of this lack of disclosure will be the clients of NetFile."
Many large campaigns use NetFile to electronically file their finance statements, and last year the Ethics Commission decided to have the company take over the city database, which officials with the Department of Technology and Information Services say is failing.
To illustrate his concerns, Luby sent a report to commissioners and staff Jan. 2 identifying more than $2 million in transactions that political committees, including the 2003 campaigns Gavin Newsom for Mayor and Kamala Harris for District Attorney, reported between 1997 and 2007 by using post-filing-deadline amendments, sometimes in violation of the law.
"If there is any way for the Commission to convince NetFile to provide a database and filing system that will not delete data, I recommend pursuing it," Luby concluded. "Otherwise, this problem is an indicator that the cost savings obtained by using NetFile, instead of SF DTIS, were inflated."
But Ethics executive director John St. Croix didn’t appreciate Luby’s input and defended the choice of NetFile.
"DTIS determined that it would be very expensive and unrealistic for them to create a new system since they didn’t have the man power or the time. And to buy it elsewhere, like from the city of Los Angeles, would have been expensive, so we looked at the private vendors," he told the Guardian.
St. Croix signed a three-year, $90,000 per year contract with NetFile on Oct. 31, 2007, and told us, "If we don’t go with NetFile, we won’t have anything,"
David Tristan, deputy director of Los Angeles’ Ethics Commission confirmed that his city’s in-house system, which costs $30,000 per year, is not a turnkey operation: "It was built as a filing, audit, enforcement, and compliance tool, and it’s a good system, but we encourage that you have a systems person."
St. Croix claimed Ethics auditors are not losing any tracking capability. "The way the old system works, a global assessment is no longer available," St. Croix told the Guardian.
Acknowledging that his staff will have to take more steps to do a comprehensive "global search," St. Croix said Luby "is negating the fact that we will be able to display lobbyist reports, statements of economic interests, and all our scanned filings."
If a modification to the NetFile contract is required, St. Croix said, "We’ll try to get the city to pay for it." But, he claimed, "there is no basis for the idea that there is a sinister relationship between the filers and NetFile."
NetFile founder David Montgomery confirmed that NetFile, which accounts for 50 percent of the state’s electronic filings, provides services to filers, such as political committees supporting candidates and measures, and governmental agencies.
"But the data filed belongs to NetFile’s customers. We’re just providing a management service," Montgomery told the Guardian, dismissing conflict-of-interest concerns. "That’s like saying that because Joe Smith cheated on his income tax, we need to sue TurboTax."
Noting that amendment-tracking capabilities are on NetFile’s long-term wish list, Montgomery said, "We want to make sure everyone is happy with the transition, but some people don’t like change."
Joe Lynn, who was campaign finance project for the Ethics Commission when San Francisco went online, believes NetFile represents a degradation of Ethics audit capacity. "The biggest fine issued by the SF Ethics Commission, and the biggest in California, involved this principle, the auditing of an amendment," he said, referring to the $100,000 fine that a Pacific Gas and Electric Co.–funded committee incurred from the city (plus $140,000 from the state) when its amended filings showed it failed to disclose $800,000 in last-minute donations from the utility to help defeat a 2002 public power measure. Ethics auditors caught one of PG&E’s violations, while the media, using Ethics’ amendment review tools, caught the other.
"But thanks to the way NetFile’s system is set up, it doesn’t have the capacity to display amendments the way we do," Lynn said. "This demonstrates the dangers of privatization."
Lynn said NetFile’s less sophisticated ability to track amendments stems from the fact that it was set up in 1998 to help committees fill out campaign finance reports, "and not from what makes sense for public disclosure.
"It’s unfortunate, but not necessarily negligent, that this fell through the cracks," added Lynn, who suggests the Ethics Commission should work to resuscitate its amendment-tracking ability by requiring that committees filing amendments fill out a form stating just how filings have been amended.
"We need to have ordinance," Lynn said. He doesn’t buy the argument that NetFile’s system is adequate just because it’s used by San Jose, Santa Clara, and San Bernardino.
"San Francisco should have a first-class system," Lynn said. "This is another mechanism by which a committee can skirt the law."
Robert Stern at the LA Center for Governmental Studies worries that by signing on with NetFile, San Francisco will lose "the ability to find electronically information on what was changed and to see whether voters had this amended information before an election and what they were learning through amendments afterwards."
Luby also worries that because Ethics’ old database won’t have technical support, it could irreparably break down in the future and that even if it remains functional, "auditors will have to look in two places to see every local contribution Chevron made."
Luby e-mailed his concerns to management Dec. 7, 2007, then provided them with his detailed analysis Jan. 2 — submissions that raised St. Croix’s ire.
"I cannot attest to the accuracy of the information in this report," St. Croix wrote in a Jan. 11 memo to the commission. "I believe that many of its conclusions are inaccurate and many are spurious. Further, the information appears to be based on false assumptions and the language implies dishonest motives that are quite simply non-existent."
But St. Croix’s reply earned a swift rebuke from Luby’s union, Service Employees International Union Local 1021. "We believe the report was written in accord with Mr. Luby’s previously recognized duties," SEIU work-site organizer Cristal Java wrote Jan. 15.
Claiming St. Croix implied that Luby’s report was a "misuse of City resources," Java added, "While Mr. Luby’s act of forwarding his report may not satisfy the technical requirements of filing a complaint, we believe that Mr. Luby’s bringing of a report about work-related problems to your attention was whistleblowing."
Luby said St. Croix "is attempting to discredit his amendment review report because its results reflect that Ethics staff dropped the ball when the new database’s minimum system requirements were provided to NetFile. Mr. St. Croix doesn’t want to own up to the mistake."
Money for nothing
› news@sfbg.com
Nedir Bey, a close confidant of the late Your Black Muslim Bakery founder Yusuf Bey, received public funds for his anemic 2002 run for the Oakland City Council but faced little scrutiny from election officials for suspect political contributions and spending.
The discovery appears to be one more example of the Bey empire’s alleged scams and schemes uncovered by the Chauncey Bailey Project since the eponymous journalist’s August 2007 murder, which law enforcement sources have linked to the bakery.
For five years the Fair Political Practices Commission in Sacramento sat on a request to investigate alleged campaign finance irregularities committed by Nedir Bey — who owes the city of Oakland $1.5 million in another matter — then dropped the probe because too much time had elapsed.
Bey ran for the Oakland City Council’s District 4 seat in March 2002 but got only 268 votes. He received $14,178 in public matching funds for his campaign despite questions raised by the head of Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission about the sources of the candidate’s contributions.
In August 2007, however, the FPPC sent a letter to Bey announcing it would not be taking any action against him, “given the age of this case and our current enforcement priorities.” Bey refused to comment on any of the main points in this article.
FPPC spokesperson Roman Porter said he could not say why the investigation lagged as long as it did, other than to say that a former enforcement official refrained from pursuing the case. Porter said the official closed a large number of cases to decrease a backlog, but Bey’s wasn’t one of them.
A new chairman and enforcement team came on board last year, but by that time the statute of limitations had already expired on two of the matters contained in Oakland’s complaint and there wasn’t enough time left to investigate the third matter before the statute of limitations ran out, Porter said.
Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission executive director, Dan Purnell, passed the case to Sacramento instead of completing the investigation locally. City law gives the Public Ethics Commission the sole authority for civil enforcement of the Limited Public Financing Act, which contains regulations for disbursing matching funds.
Purnell suspected irregularities in Bey’s campaign expenditures as early as January 2002, 10 months before he asked the state FPPC to initiate an investigation.
The March 2002 election was the first in Oakland to offer public financing to candidates who agreed to abide by voluntary spending limits. Candidates in the election could qualify for up to $14,700 in matching public funds from a special account established by the city to help defray the cost of running for office.
Matched contributions had to be $100 or less. The Committee to Elect Nedir Bey reported it had raised a total of $14,517, of which $14,178 was eligible for matching funds. The campaign reported it spent a total of $39,741 on the election.
Documents obtained from the FPPC through a public records request show that of 145 contributions, 123 were made with $99 money orders with sequential numbers, all apparently purchased from the same location over a four-day period between Jan. 14 and 18, 2002. Only 22 donations to Bey’s campaign were written on personal checks.
Purnell asked Bey prior to disbursing the matching funds if the money orders were purchased at the same time in bundles and if anyone other than the donor had purchased them. Bey declined to comment for this story, but he explained to Purnell at the time that the donors were transported to the store en masse to buy the money orders, and he promised no one else had obtained them for the donors.
Bey also assured Purnell that the listed contributors were adults who gave their own money, as required by law, although 26 donors listed their addresses as either 5832 or 5836 San Pablo, locations used at that time by Your Black Muslim Bakery.
Once Bey got the money, he stopped filing required campaign finance statements with the city. When he eventually filed them in September 2002, the forms offered no detailed accounting of the $39,741 worth of expenditures. Nor did Bey explain the gap between the amount spent on his campaign and the contributions received, which came to $28,695, including the public matching funds.
Often the bulk of election costs come from fees paid to consultants, printed campaign materials, fundraising events, and office rental. Bey’s committee paid all but $500 to a person by the name of Vaughan Foster, who provided no address or further identification. Foster reportedly received $27,000 for salary, $11,000 for circuutf8g petitions, $241 for voter registration, and $1,000 for phone banking.
Bey’s birth name is Victor Foster.
The Public Ethics Commission received a complaint and ultimately voted in August 2002 to forward the matter to the state FPPC after a stormy hearing during which Bey told the commissioners he was “not a professional politician,” as the Contra Costa Times reported. He also told the commission he “would not bow down to [them].”
In an Oct. 10, 2002, letter to state authorities, Purnell wrote, “The commission believes this matter is important because the commission relies on the content and accuracy of campaign statements to help administer its matching fund program.”
The FPPC has moved to subpoena bank records and other materials during the intervening years. But in August 2007, nearly five years after Purnell’s initial request and four years after he forwarded hundreds of pages of documentation from the campaign to Dan Schek, an FPPC investigator, Bey received a letter declaring the case closed.
Jean Quan, the District 4 incumbent who ran against Bey in 2002, said she didn’t recall him stumping widely or knocking on doors in the area’s neighborhoods. She was surprised he raised $15,000 from private donors to begin with and said he didn’t appear to spend much of it on campaign signs.
“I ran into a few fliers of his,” she said, “but nothing that would cost $30,000.”
According to the city’s municipal code governing elections, the Public Ethics Commission is supposed to “promptly advise” the city attorney in writing, as well as the “appropriate prosecuting enforcement agency,” of any evidence of criminal violations.
The law states, “any person who knowingly or willfully misrepresents his or her eligibility for matching funds … is guilty of a misdemeanor.”
The law also gives the local commission broad latitude to recover the funds, including penalties and fines not to exceed $1,000 per violation, and authorizes the commission to sue the candidate.
But none of that was done in Bey’s case, Purnell said. The matter was referred to the state because the Ethics Commission does not have the authority to enforce state elections laws, which at that time appeared to be Bey’s most obvious violation, Purnell said.
“To make a criminal complaint we have to prove intent,” Purnell said.
He said he was never pressured by anyone to refer the matter to the state instead of local authorities. Back then he had no idea who Bey was, that he was connected to Your Black Muslim Bakery, or that he had defaulted on a $1.1 million economic revitalization loan from the city of Oakland just a few years before running for the Oakland City Council, Purnell said.
“I didn’t know Nedir Bey from Adam,” Purnell said, adding that he later learned of Bey’s background from a November 2002 article in the East Bay Express.
“What I recall him telling me was that it was a big grassroots effort on his part, that many of his contributors were poor and lived in a complex and he organized them to go down there [to buy the money orders],” Purnell said. “It sounded plausible.”
The city’s original public financing ordinance was less restrictive regarding matching contributions than it is now, partly because of the Bey case. Contributions made by money order are no longer eligible for matching funds and now must be made on two-party checks drawn on the bank account of the contributors.
In the past, Bey has represented himself as a “spiritual adviser” to the late Antar Bey, who was briefly head of Your Black Muslim Bakery. Other bakery associates face numerous criminal charges in Alameda County, including torture, kidnapping, real estate fraud, and the Aug. 2, 2007, killing of Oakland journalist Bailey, who was working on stories about the Bey empire.
Most recently Nedir Bey served as president of the school site council for Fruitvale Elementary School.
Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, said the understaffed FPPC couldn’t investigate every small-time municipal election.
But, he said, “when the ethics commission realized the FPPC wasn’t acting on the case quickly, then Oakland really should have begun looking at it.”
Cecily Burt is a staff writer for MediaNews, one of the Guardian‘s partners in the Chauncey Bailey Project. For more information and to read past stories, go to www.sfbg.com/news/chaunceybailey.
Daily Journal: Trial to start in Bay Guardian’s suit over rival’s ad costs
SAN FRANCISCO – For the 30th anniversary edition of The San Francisco Bay Guardian, founders Bruce B. Brugmann and Jean Dibble, his wife, posed for a cover shot in front of their home.
Dibble wore an apron and an overall-clad Brugmann held a pitchfork, recreating one of this country’s most famous paintings, Grant Wood’s 1930 “American Gothic.”
The photo was a nod to the couple’s Midwestern roots. Wood’s portrait depicted an Iowa dentist and his sister; Brugmann and Dibble came to San Francisco from Rock Rapids, Iowa, to start the Guardian in 1966.
But it wasn’t a pitchfork that got the unapologetically left-leaning newspaper going. It was a lawsuit.
In 1970, Brugmann sued the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, which operated the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner under a joint operating agreement. Brugmann’s complaint asserted that the agreement constituted a monopoly.
The case settled for $500,000, and Brugmann used the money to increase the frequency of his publication.
Forty years later, Brugmann is back in court with another anti-competitive lawsuit.
This one, against SF Weekly and its parent chain, New Times Newspapers, asserts that the Weekly sold its advertisements below what it cost to produce them in an effort to push the Guardian out of business. Bay Guardian Co. v. New Times Media, 435585 (S.F. Super. Ct., filed Oct. 19, 2004).
Jury selection is set to begin Thursday in San Francisco County Superior Court, Judge Marla J. Miller’s courtroom.
Brugmann’s suit also claims below-cost ad sales or “predatory pricing” by the East Bay Express, which New Times bought in 2001 but sold last year. New Times merged with and became Village Voice Media in 2006. Its 17 publications make it the largest chain of alternative newsweeklies in the United States.
New Times executives and its attorneys deny that either the East Bay Express or SF Weekly sold ads below cost in an effort to rid the market of the Guardian.
Experts say predatory-pricing cases are interesting because of the inherently economic and somewhat theoretical aspect of the claims. What is cost, and how should it be determined? And, perhaps more important, does the plaintiff need to prove that the defendant would be successful post-predatory pricing?
In California, at least, the latter may be debatable.
SF Weekly launched in 1989. When New Times bought the Weekly in 1995, the Bay Area became one of three places New Times had a direct competitor in the market. In the second and third places, Cleveland and Los Angeles, New Times competed with rival Village Voice Media papers. In 2002, a “market-swap” deal between the chains eliminated head-to-head competition in those cities but caught the attention of the Justice Department. In January 2003, both companies signed a consent decree agreeing to aid competition by selling the rights to their former paper names. Neither admitted wrongdoing.
Brugmann points to that incident as evidence that New Times has a history of eliminating competition, but a pretrial motion from New Times barred any reference to the deal at trial.
The Weekly and the Guardian are both distributed free and depend largely on advertising revenues.
Although generally more politically moderate – and far less likely to take on such constant Brugmann targets as Pacific Gas and Electric Co. – the Weekly closely parallels the Guardian’s other qualities, including ubiquitous advertising for medical-marijuana clubs, “escort” services and bars and restaurants.
San Francisco Kerr & Wagstaffe attorneys H. Sinclair Kerr, James M. Wagstaffe and Ivo Labar represent New Times.
Labar said Brugmann is using the Weekly as a “scapegoat” for his own problems in dealing with new challenges in print media.
Michael Lacey, executive editor of the new Village Voice chain, agreed.
“[A lawsuit] is how Bruce got into the business, and now, in the twilight of his years, it’s how he’s hoping to maintain his business in a really tough media market,” Lacey said.
But Brugmann denies that’s the case.
“Of course that’s their story,” he said. “But from our point of view, the fact that the economy is not good and there are other problems in this business only makes this problem more acute.”
The problem Brugmann refers to began after New Times’ purchase of the Weekly.
According to Brugmann, his advertising staff started coming to him saying they were having problems making sales.
An exhibit in the Guardian’s court documents shows a list of dozens of advertisers, with Guardian employee notations alongside them: “Couldn’t match SFW,” “Great Deal with EBE [East Bay Express],” “Ludicrous deal from SFW,” “SFW giving away free ads,” “Will come back if match SFW,” “Match SFW or we’ll pull ads.”
Brugmann said he tried warning the Weekly about its practice. But when the ad rates didn’t go up, he sued.
“We had to sue them to get an even playing field,” he said.
Brugmann’s complaint asserts that the Weekly is using its parent company’s resources to lose money in San Francisco until the Guardian folds – like a broadsheet.
“This is a situation where a chain has decided that it could take over the market and either run a small family-owned company out of business or at least cripple them so they wouldn’t be an effective competitor,” said Ralph C. Alldredge, a San Francisco attorney who represents the Guardian.
E. Craig Moody and Richard P. Hill of San Francisco’s Moody & Hill also represent the Guardian.
In opposition to the Weekly’s motion for summary judgment (which was denied by San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Richard A. Kramer in October), the Guardian points out that Weekly executives knew their paper could make money in the Bay Area market if they raised their advertising rates.
The Guardian’s papers also cite evidence of wrongful intent. One piece of evidence is that, in a meeting with Weekly staff shortly after New Times bought the paper, Lacey told his employees he wanted the Weekly to be “the only game in town.”
Lacey points out that statement was made well before the period covered by Brugmann’s lawsuit and that he was speaking about editorial content, not advertising.
“I write for a living, and I edit for a living,” he said. “I have nothing to do with advertising. I never have.”
According to Lacey and attorney Labar, the Weekly would be no better off with the Guardian out of the picture.
“That doesn’t change our business profile here,” Lacey said. “I guarantee you, like mushrooms cropping up, there will be publications cropping up. Everybody takes a piece of the same sorts of actions.”
Labar agreed.
“This isn’t a city with two newspapers,” he said. “It’s a city with unlimited means to advertise.”
In papers, the Weekly point to several other newspapers or online advertising outlets that clutter the Bay Area market: a weekly supplement in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chronicle itself, The Onion and craigslist, among others.
But the Guardian’s papers assert that New Times executives called the Bay Area advertising market a “zero sum game” with the Guardian and kept track of the number of advertising inches purchased by each Bay Guardian customer in a weekly “Guardian Report.”
Experts say predatory-pricing cases face very different odds depending on where they are filed. Attorneys say California superior courts generally are seen as more friendly to plaintiffs.
That’s largely because federal courts have been swayed by decades-old economic theory that is skeptical of the plausibility of predatory-pricing claims, some say.
“[The theory] was highly critical of the idea that predation could ever work,” said Daniel A. Crane, an antitrust professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law. “For one, it’s extremely expensive. Then, you not only have to prevail, you have to recoup [recover your losses]. If another firm comes into the market, you don’t get to recoup. It’s almost a suicidal way of doing business.”
Crane, who has written about predatory-pricing cases, said economic theory also has developed in support of predatory-pricing claims. But in his view, the theories often don’t stand up in the real world.
Don T. Hibner, an antitrust attorney with Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton in Los Angeles, agreed.
“With enough ifs, we could put Paris in a bottle,” Hibner said, paraphrasing a French proverb. “We want to use economic theory to buttress facts and common sense. If we’re going out on a limb and all we have is economic theory, God help us.”
To protect competitors from purely theoretical claims, Hibner said federal courts have adopted tougher standards for plaintiffs in predatory-pricing cases. First, they’ve adopted a method of calcuutf8g cost that takes into account only variable costs.
California uses a method called “fully allocated costs,” which factors in all costs, both fixed and variable. That method generally yields a higher cost, making it easier for a plaintiff to show that any sale was below cost.
Second, federal courts require the plaintiff to prove that the defendant would in fact be able to recover or recoup its losses after the plaintiff was pushed out of the market. California courts have not directly addressed the issue of recoupment, making the recoupment prong debatable, attorneys say.
Cost and recoupment are the “two horns on which you can be hooked” in federal courts, according to Maxwell M. Blecher, of Blecher & Collins in Los Angeles. Blecher most often represents plaintiffs in predatory-pricing cases.
Hibner said the California statutes dealing with sales below cost “seem to mean what they say,” he said.
The primary statute at issue, Business and Professions Code 17043, reads, “It is unlawful for any person engaged in business within this state to sell any article or product at less than the cost thereof to such vendor, or to give away any article or product, for the purpose of injuring competitors or destroying competition.”
Hibner said literal readings of the statute sometimes can shift the protection of antitrust laws from consumers to “inefficient competitors.”
But according to Alldredge, the language makes the Guardian’s case simple.
“All you do is take all of their costs and divide that by the number of inches of advertising space they sold,” he said. “That tells you how much the cost is per inch. Whenever they sell below that cost, under California law, they’ve committed a violation.”
And, he added, under California’s Unfair Practices Act, with even one below-cost sale, a defendant’s negative intent is presumed.
That places the burden on the defense to show that they had another reason for selling below cost.
“Why were we selling below cost on certain advertisements?” Labar asked. “We couldn’t get a higher price.”
Labar said the triable issue of fact is intent.
“They’re trying to say a handful of documents and a couple of statements indicate we were trying to run them out of business,” he said. “We say, ‘No, they indicate we were trying to compete.'”
Copyright 2008 Daily Journal Corp. Reprinted with permission. This file cannot be downloaded from this page. the Daily journal’s definition of reprint and posting permission does not include the downloading, copying by third parties or other any other type of transmission of any posted articles.
The zoo at City Hall
› news@sfbg.com
City Hall looked like feeding time at a popular new zoo exhibit on the morning of Jan. 11. Hundreds of people spilled from a cramped fourth-floor hearing room. The aisles bristled with television cameras and microphones. But the only animals on display were officials of the privately managed San Francisco Zoo.
A little more than two weeks after a Siberian tiger escaped her undersized enclosure before killing a young man and badly injuring two of his companions, the Recreation and Park Commission and the Joint Zoo Committee summoned Zoo management to discuss the tragedy. But after hours of staff presentations and public testimony, many in attendance doubted whether the same public officials and private managers who failed to prevent the grisly Christmas Day mauling should be trusted to point the correct way forward.
"To have Rec and Park and the Joint Zoo Committee hold the hearing is inappropriate at best," animal welfare activist Deniz Bolbol told the Guardian after the meeting adjourned. "This is the same committee that has basically rubber-stamped every management arrangement at the Zoo for the last 14, 15 years."
In 1993 the city handed over control of the Zoo to the private San Francisco Zoological Society but retained ownership of the property and the animals housed there. The makeup of the Joint Zoo Committee, which is charged with overseeing the society’s management, reflects this hybridized public-private arrangement. Three members of the city’s Recreation and Park Commission sit on the body, as do three members of the Zoological Society’s board of directors. According to Bolbol and other critics, the committee gives the private Zoo managers too long a leash.
"It’s a joke," Bolbol charged, "because basically, you’re asking them to self-regulate. You go to their meetings and there’s never one dissenting voice. Anytime anyone in the public says anything critical, they just sweep it under the rug."
The main argument for Zoo privatization was a lack of city money for needed improvements. And without a doubt, the Zoological Society has raised lots of cash since it took over. In addition to the $4 million dollars per year it receives from city taxpayers, the society waged a successful ballot campaign in 1997 for nearly $50 million in public bond money and has raised almost that much in private donations. But controversy surrounds how these windfalls have been spent and how the Zoo’s private management has decided to operate the facility.
Past Guardian investigations turned up disturbing cases of animal suffering and lax safety standards (see "The Zoo Blues," 5/19/99, and "The Zoo’s Losers," 5/7/2003) on the society’s watch. Many animals have died of diseases associated with unclean living conditions and cramped quarters. The same Siberian tiger that escaped her outdoor grotto enclosure and killed the young man Christmas Day mangled a keeper’s arm in late 2006. And last week’s cover story, "Tiger Tales," uncovered accounts of past tiger escapes from the same grotto.
Nick Podell, chair of the society’s board of directors, makes no apologies for his organization’s focus on the bottom line. "The primary function of the board is the raising of capital," he told us at the Friday hearing, adding, "We rely heavily on professional management for day-to-day operations."
When we asked Podell whether Zoo manager Manuel Mollinedo, who reportedly makes more than $330,000 per year, conducted a review of the outdoor grotto enclosure in the wake of the 2006 attack, Podell fiercely defended Mollinedo but declined to comment directly, citing "active litigation." Shortly after the Christmas Day incident, Mollinedo acknowledged publicly that the grotto’s walls were more than four feet lower than national standards. Nonetheless, Podell told us he believes the director "is being railroaded and lynched."
But critics of the privatization deal have renewed calls for greater scrutiny. "I’ve always been skeptical of this public-private arrangement," Sup. Tom Ammiano told the Guardian by phone. "[Zoological Society leaders] look at what makes a profit first. In itself, that’s not bad, but what are you sacrificing with that?"
City taxpayers will most likely sacrifice plenty in lawsuit awards and legal bills. Within a week of the Christmas Day debacle, the surviving victims hired celebrity lawyer Mark Geragos. City Attorney Dennis Herrera and his staff have already spent numerous billable hours jousting with Geragos in a high-profile spate over potential evidence. During the public hearing, Herrera and Geragos were down the street in Superior Court arguing over whether the city can search the victims’ car and their cell phones. As Ammiano put it, "This whole thing is probably going to be in lawyer land for a good while to come."
In the end, the privatization of the Zoo — hailed by advocates as the best way to bring needed funds to the facility — could very well cost taxpayers even more than expected. Indemnification clauses in the Zoo contract ostensibly absolve San Francisco of any legal jeopardy, but a separate clause clearly states that the city is liable for any "preexisting conditions." The grotto breached by the tiger on Christmas Day is almost 70 years old.
Officials won’t speak on the record about potential city liability, but they privately say they won’t be surprised if there are legal battles between the society and San Francisco over who has to pay the victims. Further blurring the line between the public and the private sector, the society has retained the services of former city attorney Louise Renne — the very person who negotiated the original lease agreement on behalf of the city. At the hearing, she told us she did not expect any problems between her former boss, the city, and her new client, the Zoo. "But to tell you the truth," she added with a smile, "I haven’t even looked at [the agreement] in years."
Sup. Sean Elsbernd, whose district includes the Zoo, voiced support for keeping the facility in private hands. But he did pledge that "if it comes down to a question of whether the city will pay for anything [the Zoological Society] did negligently, we will not…. They will pay for their negligence if negligence is found." Elsbernd has scheduled a hearing on the Zoo’s woes for Jan. 28 before the Government and Oversight Committee, which he chairs, while Sup. Ross Mirkarimi has called for a hearing by the Budget Committee.
Ammiano told us, "The history of the Zoo has been controversial, especially since [privatization], and we just need to be brutally honest about everything."
Showdown at 55 Laguna
› sarah@sfbg.com
Time is running out on attempts by Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, State Sen. Carole Migden, and Assemblymember Mark Leno to secure greater affordable-housing levels from the University of California, which wants to build private residential units on its UC Berkeley Extension campus at 55 Laguna in San Francisco.
Since the school site closed more than three years ago, critics have questioned how the UC’s plan for the campus, which served a public use for more than 150 years, will benefit the community, while preservationists succeeded in getting the campus awarded historic landmark status.
But with the UC claiming "unrestricted power to take and hold real and personal property for the benefit of the university" in a public statement, the city’s regulatory power is limited. The San Francisco Planning Commission is scheduled to consider the project Jan. 17, including the demolition of Middle Hall Gymnasium, the oldest building on the campus, and Richardson Hall Annex. But local and state legislative officials are focused on trying to get more affordable housing at the site.
Although negotiations were still ongoing at Guardian press time, the UC’s plan was to demolish the two historically landmarked buildings on the 5.8-acre Hayes Valley campus and build 450 new housing units, 16 percent of them to be offered below market rates, about the minimum number under the city’s inclusionary-housing law.
"But we’re pushing hard at the bottom line," said Mirkarimi, who, along with Migden, Leno, the city’s Planning Department, the Mayor’s Office of Housing, and affordable-housing activists, has been meeting with developer A.F. Evans and Openhouse, a local nonprofit that intends to build an 80-unit, market-rate, LGBT-friendly, senior residential community on the site.
"And we are trying at a separate venue to appeal to the UC Regents to be more sensitive and cooperative in what their bottom line profitability level is," Mirkarimi, whose District 5 includes Hayes Valley, told the Guardian.
Mirkarimi said he’s in favor of preserving all five buildings at the site but that both the Planning Commission’s Landmark Advisory Committee and the Board of Supervisors have voted to preserve only three. "We are trying to be pragmatic yet clear as to what our objectives are in trying to make a complex deal that’s triangulated by UC Berkeley, A.F. Evans, and Openhouse, with UC as the big daddy in the room.
"UC can do almost what UC wants. But the city’s leverage comes from UC asking for housing to be built and requesting a zoning change at a site that has become a magnet for grime and crime," Mirkarimi said. "It would also be negligent for UC to let this site remain in its current condition.
Under state law, the UC is exempt from city and county zoning and building codes if it builds educational facilities or projects that are deemed to be in the public interest. But according to officials with the City Attorney’s Office, the UC is not exempt from such codes if it turns over its land for private development.
And then there’s the city’s claim that it never conveyed the title to Waller Street, which lies between Buchanan and Laguna streets and is essential to the project, giving opponents some leverage. The UC disputes the city’s claim, but Mirkarimi maintains that the Board of Supervisors’ control of the street "provides a contingency plan if we are not making progress. And either way, UC is going to have to pay for the right to Waller."
The UC’s 55 Laguna project manager Kevin Hufferd confirmed that he is having "ongoing discussions with state and city officials" but declined to comment further.
"Frustrating" is how queer affordable-housing activist Tommi Avicolli Mecca described the last-minute discussions about the 55 Laguna development plan. "A.F. Evans claims it won’t be making any money and that they can’t do any more," Mecca told the Guardian. He attended a Jan. 11 meeting with the company at which, he claims, the developers offered to increase affordability levels to 19.5 percent but Mirkarimi pushed for more.
"To his credit, Sup. Ross Mirkarimi keeps saying this is unacceptable," Avicolli Mecca said, also lauding the Mayor’s Office of Housing for trying to make Openhouse’s project "100 percent affordable."
Currently, Openhouse’s development includes no below-market-rate units, a situation Avicolli Mecca claims the MOH hopes to change "through bringing in subsidies."
"Obviously, we are not against queer senior housing," Avicolli Mecca said. "The issue is that this is a lousy deal. What are we getting? Nothing, but UC gains a lot of money. There’s a crazy need for affordable housing and no way to justify this plan."
Filmmaker Eliza Hemingway, whose documentary Uncommon Knowledge records how the UC shuttered 55 Laguna with no input from — and little concern for — staff, students, and the surrounding community, believes that people have lost sight of the public use issue.
"They are worn down by the struggle, by trying to find a compromise because the space is empty, but the question remains: why is a public campus being privately developed?" Hemingway told us. She mourns the loss of educational programs and spaces that benefited the community and the lack of transparency that has marred the UC’s plans.
"For there to have been such huge barriers to the public process over what is a huge amount of public land is unfortunate," Hemingway said.
Cynthia Servetnick of the Save the UC Berkeley Extension Laguna Street Campus told us her group is prepared to file a lawsuit under the California Environmental Quality Act if the project as currently proposed is approved.
"We’d rather see a project that has 40 percent affordable housing at 50 percent [area median income] than a lawsuit, but $38,000 a year [which would be the annual income requirement for seniors, the disabled, and people with AIDS to be able to afford one of Openhouse’s units] is too high," she said, noting that the proposed units are small but could go for $4,000 a month, rising to $7,000 monthly for those who need more services and staff.
Claiming that recognition of the campus as a historic landmark assists project sponsors in accessing preservation incentives, including federal tax credits, Servetnick said, "A.F. Evans has its [environmental impact report] complete and is clearing the way for 450 units, but they could do that and save all the historic buildings, thus having the same profitability but more affordability. It’s now or never. This is a new term for the mayor, we have a new city planning director, John Rahaim, and officials open to negotiating a win-win."
Migden was even more blunt. "Poor old queers need a place to retire too," she said. "Either Evans and the UC up the affordability level to 40 or 50 percent and guarantee that some of the senior LGBT units are subsidized, or the project dies."
As of press time, A.F. Evans, Openhouse, the SF Planning Department, and UC representatives had not returned the Guardian‘s calls.
Deferring to Mirkarimi to make an official announcement, Leno said, "I know that the meetings have been ongoing and that the issue of affordability is a priority, and I’m hopeful that we will have an agreement among all stakeholders shortly."
The great escape
› gwschulz@sfbg.com
There are some dark clouds hovering over City College of San Francisco. The District Attorney’s Office is investigating political corruption allegations, a long-awaited audit of half a billion dollars in bond spending is just months from completion, and several infrastructure projects are running tens of millions of dollars over budget.
But Chancellor Phil Day won’t be around to clean up those messes. He’s leaving City College for a new job on the East Coast at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators as early as March 1.
Day’s announcement came just weeks before the school’s Board of Trustees Jan. 10 unveiling of the results of an internal investigation into who knew what about City College money from taxpayers being diverted to an election campaign committee that should have operated entirely independently of the school.
The investigation concludes that there was no evidence that contractors made donations to a campaign committee formed by the school’s leadership in exchange for favorable business arrangements.
But the report does confirm that two lower-level bureaucrats, Stephen Herman and James Blomquist, instructed business tenants who used school facilities — the coffer vendor Bean Scene and Bay Area Motorcycle Training — to sign rent checks over to the committee instead of to the school. Neither tenant appeared to have any intention of contributing to the committee.
The timing of the checks is also questionable. The school returned the Bean Scene’s $20,000 rent check shortly after recognizing a potential violation of the state’s Education Code, which prohibits using school funds for electioneering purposes. But officials then violated the same provision when a $10,000 rent check from the motorcycle-training outfit wasn’t returned to public coffers until a year and a half later, when the San Francisco Chronicle‘s Lance Williams began snooping around.
"The fact that an apparent misuse of public funds could be discovered, corrected, and then occur again after such a short period reveals a glaring lack of oversight of the College’s involvement in fundraising from College contractors, literally from start to finish during the campaign," the report states.
City College’s trustees and school administrators created the Committee to Support Our City College in 2005 as a campaign vehicle for convincing voters to authorize $246 million in bond projects, the third such bond election for City College in a decade.
The report’s executive summary in part downplays the significance of the Chron stories from last April that inspired the probe in the first place. Rather, it implies that the fund diversions had more to do with a poor accounting system and an 11th-hour decision to rush the bond election to voters with minimum preparation.
It’s not clear how the report will impact a DA’s investigation of the campaign committee related to the same allegations. The Guardian revealed last summer (see "Day’s Dilemma," 8/8/07) that just days before the November 2005 election, Kamala Harris’s office also requested documents stemming from the college’s $8.7 million purchase of land in Chinatown that the county determined was worth only $1.7 million for tax purposes.
We also reported that City College’s half a billion dollars in infrastructure improvements are running approximately $225 million over budget and as a result, the school has gutted projects promised to voters and reallocated about $130 million in order to sustain others (see "The City College Shell Game," 7/4/07). An expansive management audit of the school’s bond spending is due in June.
In a prepared statement, Day insists the fund diversions were an accident, and he complains that if the San Francisco Ethics Commission had notified it of the mistake sooner, the school would have corrected it. The Guardian reported that the Ethics Commission had known the Bay Area Motorcycle Training check was illegally used by the committee but waited for more than a year to notify the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission of a possible elections law violation (see "At the Crossroads," 7/18/07).
"As the chancellor and CEO of this college, I take responsibility for these mistakes," Day’s statement reads. "However, it is important to understand that these mistakes occurred innocently and inadvertently, and as soon as we learned of them, we took immediate action to rectify them."
An exasperated Day, who became City College’s chancellor in 1998, said in a phone interview that he didn’t believe the school’s troubles would make it difficult for his successor to return to the ballot and get voters to approve bond projects they’ve already partially paid for, including a stem-cell technology training center.
"I don’t feel like I’m leaving someone with disarray," Day told us. "It’s the people in the institution that sometimes make mistakes, not the institution itself."
Day’s departure also comes as a building inspector hired by the school in 2003 alleges in a federal lawsuit that he was wrongfully terminated last summer for blowing the whistle on illegal building code violations and for making safety complaints during facility renovations. The suit was filed Dec. 24, 2007.
Plaintiff Lawrence Lauser contends that he’d repeatedly informed his bosses at City College that building codes were being violated during construction work, but there was no willingness to fix them.
Instead of being outright fired, Lauser alleges, he was told the work had run out. "That was a complete sham," his attorney, Frank Sarro, said. "There wasn’t a lack of work at all." Lauser is also suing his union, the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners Local 22, for refusing to request arbitration with the school on his behalf.
"He just had a strong feeling that things should be done by the book," Sarro said of Lauser. "And his bosses didn’t want to hear it."
Rebel women
LA GARRUCHA CHIAPAS (Jan. 8th) – Dozens of Zapatista companeras, many of them Tzeltal Maya from the Chiapas lowlands decked out in rainbow-hued ribbons and ruffles, their dark eyes framed by pasamontanas and paliacates that masked their personas, emerged from the rustic auditorium to the applause of hundreds of international feminists gathered outside at the conclusion of the opening session of an all-women’s Encuentro hosted by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) here at year’s end.
The Tzeltaleras’ line of march, which resembled a colorful if bizarre fashion parade, seemed an auspicious start to the rebels’ third “encounter” this year between “the peoples of the world” and the Zapatista communities and comandantes – an anti-globalization conclave last December and an Encuentro in defense of indigenous land this summer preceded the womens’ gathering.
Although the call for the event was issued under the pen of the EZLN’s quixotic spokesperson Subcomandante Marcos, the author of a recently published erotic coffee table book in which his penis plays the role of a masked guerrillero, the impetus for the women’s Encuentro sprung from the loins of the Zapatista companeras.
Last July, at the conclusion of a meeting with farmers from a dozen counties in the hamlet with the haunting name of La Realidad (“The Reality”), a young rebel from that community, “Evarilda,” apparently without clearing the invitation with the EZLN’s General Command, called for the all-womens’ encounter, explaining that men were invited to help with the logistics but would be asked to stay home and mind the children and the farm animals while the women plotted against capitalism.
True to Evarilda’s word, at the December 29th-31st gathering, which drew 300-500 non-Mexican mostly women activists to this village, officially the autonomous municipality of Francisco Gomez, and which honored the memory of the late Comandanta Ramona (d. January 2006), men took a decidedly secondary role. Signs posted around the Caracol called “Resistance Until the New Dawn,” a sort of Zapatista cultural/political center, advised the companeros that they could not act as “spokespersons, translators, or representatives in the plenary sessions.” Instead, their activities should be confined “to preparing and serving food, washing dishes, sweeping, cleaning out the latrines, fetching firewood, and minding the children.”
Indeed, some young Zapatista men donned aprons imprinted with legends like “tomato” and “EZLN” to work in the kitchens. Meanwhile, older men sat quietly on wooden benches outside of the auditorium, sometimes signaling amongst themselves when a companera made a strong point or smiling in pride after a daughter or wife or sister or mother spoke their histories to the assembly.
The role of women within the Zapatista structure has been crucial since the rebellion’s gestation. When the founders of the EZLN, radicals from northern Mexican cities, first arrived in the Tzeltal-Tojolabal lowlands or Canadas of southeastern Chiapas, women were still being sold by their families as chattel in marriage. Often, they were kept monolingual by the husbands as a means of control, turned into baby factories, and had little standing in the community. Those from the outside offered independence and invited the young women to the training camps in the mountain where they would learn to wield a weapon and use a smattering of Spanish and become a part of the EZLN’s fighting force. Fourteen years ago, on January 1st 1994, when the Zapatistas seized the cities of San Cristobal and Ocosingo and five other county seats, women comprised a third of the rebel army. Women fighters were martyred in the bloody battle for Ocosingo.
Key to bringing the companeras to the rebel cause was “The Revolutionary Law of Women,” officially promulgated that first January 1st from the balcony of the San Cristobal city hall, which decreed that women should have control over their own lives and their bodies. The law, which had been carried into the Indian communities by Comandantas Susana and Ramona, often meeting with hostility from the companeros, was “our toughest battle” Marcos would later note.
Integrating women into the military structure, which was not tied to local community, proved easier than cultivating participation in the civil structure, which was rooted in the life of the villages. Although women occupied five seats on the 19-member Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee (CCRI), the EZLN’s General Command, their numbers fell far shorter in 29 autonomous municipal councils and the five Juntas de Buen Gobierno (“Good Government Committees”) which administrate Zapatista regional autonomy.
But as the Zapatista social infrastructure grew, women became health and education promoters and leaders in the commissions that planned these campaigns and their profile has improved in the JBGs and autonomias.
Women’s Lib a la Zapatista has been boosted by the rebels’ prohibitions against the consumption of alcohol in their communities. Whereas many inland Maya towns like San Juan Chamula are saturated in alcohol, with soaring rates of spousal and child abuse, the Zapatista zone has the lowest abuse indicators in the state, according to numbers offered by the womens’ commission of the Chiapas state congress. As a state, Chiapas has one of the highest numbers of feminicides in the Mexican union – 1456 women were murdered here between 1993 and 2004, more than doubling Chihuahua (604) in which the notorious muertas of Ciudad Juarez are recorded. The low incidence of violence against women in the zone of Zapatista influence is more remarkable because much of the lowland rebel territory straddles the Guatemalan border, a country where 500 women are murdered each year.
With the men tending the kids and cleaning latrines, the women told their stories in the plenaries. Many of the younger companeras like Evarilda had grown up in the rebellion – which is now in its 24th year (14 on public display) – and spoke of learning to read and write in rebel schools and of their work as social promoters or as teachers or as farmers and mothers. Zapatista grandmothers told of the first years of the rebellion and veteran comandantas like Susana, who spoke movingly of her longtime companera Ramona, “the smallest of the small,” recalled how in the war, the men and the women learned to share housekeeping tasks like cooking and washing clothes.
“Many of the companeros still do not want to understand our demands,” Comandanta Sandra admonished, “but we cannot struggle against the mal gobierno without them.”
The Zapatista companeras’ struggle for inclusion and parity with their male counterparts grates against separatist politics that some militant first-world feminists who journeyed to the jungle espouse. Lesbian couples and collectives seemed a substantial faction in the first-world feminist delegations. Although no Zapatista women has publicly come out, the EZLN has been zealous in its inclusion of lesbians and gays and incorporate their struggles in the rainbow of marginalized constitutuencies with whose cause they align themselves.
Sadly, the Encuentro of the Women of the World with the Zapatista Women did not provoke much formal interchange between the rebel companeras and first-world feminists – who were limited to five-minute presentations on the final day of the event. Nonetheless, a surprise Zapatista womens’ theater piece did imply a critique: in the skit, a planeload of first-world feminists with funny hair (played by the companeras) lands in the jungle to deliver the poor Indian women from oppression.
Among international delegations in attendance were women representatives from agrarian movements as far removed from Chiapas as Brazil and Senegal, organized by Via Campesina, an alliance that represents millions of poor farmers in the third world, and a group of militant women from Venice, Italy who have been battling expansion of a U.S. military base in that historic city. Political prisoners were represented by Trinidad Ramirez, partner of imprisoned Ignacio del Valle (who is serving a 67-year sentence), leader of the farmers of Atenco. A message from “Colonel Aurora” (Gloria Arenas), a jailed leader of the Popular Army of the Insurgent People (ERPI), who now supports the EZLN, was read. Although he reputedly lives only a few villages away, Subcomandante Marcos (or his penis) did not put in an appearance at the women’s gathering.
Ladling out chicken soup at her makeshift food stand, Dona Laura told La Jornada chronicler Hermann Bellinghausen that once the womens Encuentro had concluded, everything would return to normal – “only normal would be different now.”
Although the Encounter amply demonstrated the increasing empowerment of the Zapatista companeras, how much of what was said actually rubbed off on those who came from the outside is open to question. “I didn’t really get a lot of it,” confided one young non-Spanish-speaking activist on her way home to northern California to report back on the women’s gathering to her Zapatista solidarity group.
Be that as it may, the EZLN is going to need all the women – and men – it can muster in the months to come. 2008 looms as a difficult year for the rebels with the mal gobierno threatening to distribute lands the Zapatistas recovered in 1994 to rival Indian farmer organizations and paramilitary activity on the uptick.
As has always been the case since this unique rebellion germinated, the Zapatistas turn the corner into another year in struggle.
Portrait of the artist as an old cop
› gwschulz@sfbg.com
Imagine Gary Delagnes, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, pondering the impact of abstract expressionism on the American zeitgeist with a far-off gaze. Or picture him dressed in fashionably tight jeans, walking his fixed-gear bike to the San Francisco Academy of Art University with a leather portfolio tucked under his skinny arm.
Does that seem incongruous to you? It does to us as well. After all, Delagnes is the very antithesis of an art school student. So why are the POA and Delagnes, a brutish former narcotics officer, lobbying the San Francisco Planning Commission on behalf of the Academy of Art?
The academy, which has been rapidly snapping up properties around town to accommodate its ambitious expansion plans, has become an entity of increasing concern in San Francisco’s dicey world of land-use politics.
The for-profit school, which costs students around $16,500 per year to attend, today owns or controls more than 30 properties across the city, half of which are used to house its students, and expects to take over nearly a dozen more to accommodate approximately 14,500 students by 2017.
In the meantime, the school is facing several enforcement actions initiated by the Planning Department for brazenly making building conversions without bothering to obtain proper permits.
Delagnes was nonetheless first in line at a September 2007 commission meeting held to address the academy’s pending enforcement cases and praised the school as a tremendous asset to the academic community.
"I think that their reputation in San Francisco is unquestioned as some of the finest, true San Franciscans that I know," Delagnes said of the wealthy Stephens family, which owns the Academy of Art. "They are heavily involved and invested in the city of San Francisco and care deeply about its future."
Delagnes’s lobbying on behalf of the academy surprised and appalled at least one commissioner, Hisashi Sugaya, who told the POA president that he was "really offended" someone representing law enforcement was carrying water for a private art school that had flouted the law by racking up alleged planning and building code violations.
Responding in the union’s newsletter, POA vice president Kevin Martin reached a dizzyingly patriotic pitch in denouncing Sugaya as a liberal and demanding he apologize not just to Delagnes but also to the entire union for "demeaning our president" and "censuring his freedom of speech."
Delagnes admitted to the Guardian that his testimony was essentially a "quid pro quo." The academy has supported the POA, even offering special summer apprenticeships to the children of its members. "I’m sure that they were thinking, ‘You know what? The POA is a pretty powerful organization. It wouldn’t hurt to get close to them,’<0x2009>" Delagnes said. "Here came this problem with the Planning Commission. They called me and said, ‘Hey, would you mind going up there and basically saying that we’re a good organization? We’re good people.’<0x2009>"
During the meeting, school president Elisa Stephens, who did not return calls, portrayed the academy as a simple mom-and-pop business ignorant of planning politics and intending to fully cooperate with the city.
"My grandfather was an artist…. We’re an integral part of this community," Stephens told the commissioners. "I live in this community. We’ve been here since the late 1800s. We’re dedicated to this city…. I apologize for not being involved in city politics. I’m involved in education."
But city staffers implied there’s more to the academy’s troubles than a few honest mistakes. In March 2007, the school was hit with a litany of alleged code violations, including 14 properties converted without conditional-use permits and seven made into group housing or modified for other school uses without building permits, Planning Department records show.
Before last year the academy had never submitted an institutional master plan to the city, even though San Francisco’s Planning Code has required them from universities since the 1970s, particularly for a scattered campus that’s in a position to dramatically alter the face of downtown, where the school is primarily located and its private transit buses are ubiquitous.
The academy finally turned one over in 2007 after city planners issued a citation in summer 2006. Afterward the department visited all of the school’s properties and discovered multiple problems with use permits, plus an additional property the academy had recently acquired but didn’t include in its plan.
Code enforcers tried to negotiate with the school, planning staffer Scott Sanchez told the commission. But after department personnel outlined the March 2007 violations for the academy, it simply continued onward, converting 601 Brannan for its own use without any building permits and doing the same at the Star Motel on Lombard, this time without a conditional-use application.
As the department worked to keep up, the academy purchased four new buildings and put its eye on another, all between spring and fall 2007.
"All of our information about their new facilities came from members of the public…. It wasn’t actually through the academy, with whom we thought we had a dialogue about their institutional master plan," Sanchez told the Guardian. "We had something ongoing with them, yet they were not informing us of their new acquisitions, and they weren’t obtaining proper permits for them."
The school, in fact, is accelerating plans to convert 575 Sixth St., known as the San Francisco Flower Mart, into studio space, despite opposition from the Mayor’s Office, the Planning Commission, and the Board of Supervisors. The 30 floral business tenants that currently inhabit the building received eviction notices dated Christmas Eve 2007.
A future academy gymnasium is slated for 620 Sutter, but building it would result in the eviction of the Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, a 25-year-old institution specializing in African American stage performances. The academy already converted part of the building to group housing without a permit.
So what else is the POA getting for its support of the arts? For one, the Academy of Art was a $5,000 putf8um sponsor of the POA’s 2007 charity golf tournament at the StoneTree Golf Club in Novato, beating out dozens of other donors for the top of the list. The exclusive title was used for only three other contributors.
The union’s November 2007 newsletter, which appeared just after Delagnes voiced his support for the school, announced that academy president Stephens had also given POA members working at the police department’s Southern Station in SoMa 15 free underground parking spots on Bluxome, just a short walk from the Hall of Justice and the union’s headquarters.
And that’s the art of politics in San Francisco.
Careers & Ed: Get schooled
With the holidays over, it’s back-to-school time — and not just for kids and college students. Adult education classes also are starting up after their winter hiatus, so take that money you’d promised to spend on a gym membership (like you’d use it anyway) and put it toward learning that skill you’ve always wished you had. Here’s a list of some of our favorite upcoming courses, all perfect for beginners.
DUCT TAPE DRESS FORMS
The idea of this course is to teach you to make customized dress forms so you can mend and create outfits that exactly fit your body. And even if you aren’t a budding designer … what room’s decor wouldn’t benefit from the addition of a duct tape mannequin?
Jan. 19, 11 a.m.–3:30 p.m. $75
Stitch Lounge, 182 Gough, SF. (415) 431-3739, www.stitchlounge.com
URBAN COMPOSTING
This hands-on workshop teaches the basic methods of both backyard and worm composting.
Jan. 19, 10 a.m.–noon. Free
Garden for the Environment, Seventh Ave., SF. (415) 731-5627, www.gardenfortheenvironment.org
YOGA 101
A good place to start for the would-be yogi who doesn’t want to jump in blind, this Sunday workshop explores basic postures, breathing, and meditation for the beginner.
Jan. 27, 1:30–3:30 p.m. $35 (includes one free week of yoga)
Yoga Tree, 519 Hayes, SF. (415) 626-9707, www.yogatreesf.com
CURIOUS SOUL: THE VISUAL JOURNAL
Instructor Suzanne Merritt helps you discover eight universal patterns of beauty and translate your experience into visual form. Includes collage, tearing, layering, image transfers, and mixed media.
Jan. 28–29, 10 a.m.–5 p.m. $190 plus $20 materials fee
San Francisco Center for the Book, 300 De Haro, SF. (415) 565-0545, sfcb.org
PAPER LANTERNS
Learn to construct a wooden reed skeleton frame before covering it with handmade paper — and leave with a finished paper lantern, complete with bulb and 12-foot wire with on-off switch.
Jan. 31, 6:30–9:30 p.m. $65 (includes $15 materials fee)
Craft Gym, 1452 Bush, SF. (415) 441-6223, www.craftgym.com
WOMEN’S BLACKSMITHING
A special workshop for women offered by women who teach the fundamental skills needed to forge steel, including tapering, upsetting, flattening, and twisting.
Feb. 2–3, 10 a.m.–6 p.m. $345
Crucible, 1260 Seventh St., Oakl. (510) 444-0919, www.thecrucible.org
MOROCCAN FLAVORS
A relaxed, comfortable cooking class that shows how to use seasonal, organic, unrefined, and local ingredients to make Moroccan delights beyond the standard couscous.
Feb. 4, 6:30–9:30 p.m. $60
Sage Table, Oakl. Call for address. (510) 914-1142, www.thesagetable.com
IMAGE AND THE BOOK
Explore contemporary art-making practices in this six-session series covering alternative approaches to painting, drawing, collage, sewing, image transfer, binding, narrative development, and subject investigation.
Feb. 13–March 13, Wednesdays, 7:15–10 p.m. $180 plus $10 materials fee
California College of the Arts, 5212 Broadway, Oakl. (510) 594-3771, www.cca.edu/academics/extended
2-DAY FILM SCHOOL
Why waste money on an expensive film school when you can learn all you need to know over one weekend? This crash course is taught by Dov S-S Simens of the Hollywood Film Institute.
March 15–16, 9 a.m.–6 p.m. $389
Call for location. (310) 659-5668, www.mediabistro.com
WINE TASTING: BASICS FOR BEGINNERS
Learn to taste the way the pros do, then apply your new knowledge to 20 wines in this continuing education class provided by City College of San Francisco.
April 26, 1–3 p.m. $50
Fort Mason, bldg. B, room 106, Marina at Laguna, SF. (415) 561-1860, www.ccsf.edu
Careers & Ed: The Roots of teaching
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The last day of class before Christmas break presents a challenge for any educator, in any class, at any school. It’s usually considered completely devoid of teachable moments, a phenomenon that’s chalked up (pun intended) to prevacation excitement: PlayStation daydreams, visions of sugarplum romance, and the promise of two and a half weeks of sleeping in don’t exactly encourage industrious behavior.
So the popular course of action among teachers remains the party approach — some snacks, some games, a dose of holiday frivolity. Why swim against the prevailing yuletide, hopelessly and in vain, when you can just float home on a mess of soggy pizza boxes lashed to some two-liter pontoons?
When I visited Claire Keefer’s class Dec. 14, she seemed to be taking this approach. Sure enough, she’d brought a bag of her favorite Christmas candies, a little soda, and some healthier-looking crackers. And she informed her students they’d be playing a game for the better part of the period. But before giving in to the swell of a winter recess so near at hand, during the second-to-last period of the calendar year Kiefer gave her students an honest-to-goodness assignment. She asked them to pull out their journals and respond to a writing prompt she’d posted on the board. And they did, after a collective, semipolite grumble.
And before they knew it — before I knew it — Kiefer’s prompt became a complex sociopolitical discourse on the visual representation of traditional Christmas characters like your boys Jesus, Santa, those creepy little white-guy elves (hee-hee), et al.
Being the literate, postfeminist, righteously liberal San Franciscan that I am, it wasn’t difficult for me to see the purpose of Kiefer’s holiday exercise: to allow her students to problematize the whiteness that so often masquerades as normalcy by paying special attention to holiday symbols.
Looking back on my high school experience, I can say for certain that they, those nefarious they, never stretched my cultural IQ like that. Kiefer’s kids have access to these kinds of ideas. I listened as her students commented on race, power, religion, and misnormalized iconography with intelligence, all quite comfortable in the task. Dare I say, what an important challenge? (I’ll admit I didn’t know Jesus was brown skinned until well into my second year of college.) And what a show of teaching chops it was, to take the least teachable moment of the least teachable day of 2007 and pull some learning out of it.
Quite unlike the stereotype of the emergency-credentialed twentysomething pushover left to rattle all alone in an urban trial by fire, at 26, Kiefer cuts a most confident, no doubt pedagogic figure. Her intelligence, craft, and experience have made her transition from jail to prison to Balboa High School a seamless one.
Jail? Let me explain. Kiefer teaches Roots, a classroom-based initiative that serves children affected by incarceration, which falls under the umbrella of a California nonprofit called Community Works. To clarify: Kiefer works for Community Works at Balboa High School, where she teaches the Roots elective. At a glance, one might conjecture a circumstance of triangulated, bureaucratic-type tension, considering she basically has two bosses, Principal Patricia Gray at Balboa and Ruth Morgan of Community Works. Yet both not only hold Kiefer in the highest regard but also seem equally keen on giving her all the support she needs. And as to the question of distance between Kiefer and the rest of the faculty at Balboa, there is none, plain and simple. Everybody knows her, and everybody knows she puts her students first.
One of the great advantages of teaching Roots is that Kiefer gets to develop and implement the curriculum as she sees fit, in a manageable, supportive classroom environment. Small class size really helps, as does the freedom to design a program that encourages students to respond to their feelings by communicating creatively.
"We always go back to incarceration, sharing personal stories, learning empathy, meeting it head-on." Some of her kids have been incarcerated themselves; most attend her Roots class because their parents have recently been or are currently incarcerated. Control of her curriculum means Kiefer can account for the academic and emotional complexities of her classroom and adjust, midstream if necessary, to the needs of a group of 9th to 12th graders of varied ages, from diverse backgrounds, and with different personalities. Kiefer tailors her lessons to make room for all types of learners.
Curriculum design, creative writing, learning and teaching empathy — these happen to be Kiefer’s experiential strengths. "I’ve never not designed my own curriculum," she says. How many teachers, at 26, can claim such autonomy? How many teachers, at 26, have already worked for years inside correctional facilities? The public school system has placed Kiefer perfectly, in exactly the right circumstances, with kids who respond to her sense of responsibility, her gift of honesty, and her desire to challenge them.
In fact, there is something of a university feel to her classroom dynamic, and she is well aware that her MFA qualifies her to be a college-level instructor. However, neither tweedy aspirations nor hubris figure into Kiefer’s seeming raison d’être. Instead, it has everything to with finding those places where "the need is so transparent," she said. Kiefer’s life path seems so clearly marked as to appear predestined.
At the age of 20, during summer break from Tulane University and entirely of her own volition, Kiefer contacted the Cobb County Jail in Marietta, Ga., asking to be let inside to teach. When someone at the jail returned her call, offering her an administrative position at the facility, she politely insisted, "I already have a job. I just want to teach creative writing." She took the $8 per hour position then offered to her and started showing up about eight hours per week, as much as she could.
She spent her senior year of college editing the school’s literary magazine, the Tulane Review, while volunteering with adult literacy programs in New Orleans. She graduated with a double major in religious studies and English in 2003 and immediately afterward embarked on a yearlong Josephine Louise Newcomb Fellowship.
With the acceptance of her proposal, a plan involving a three-month stint teaching inside three institutions, Kiefer found herself first at San Quentin, then at Noriega, a federal institution in Miami, and finally at the Dale Women’s Facility in Vermont, implementing her curricula, sharing her love of the written word, and saddling her students with rigorously academic assignments. She always stresses the importance of word economy and limitation and is notorious for teaching entire sections around somewhat esoteric poetic forms — e.g., the villanelle and the sestina. "Society doesn’t expect much from [prisoners]. I sure as hell was going to," she said.
The same uncompromising, formal approach has helped Kiefer earn a reputation at Balboa for sticking to her guns, but her firmness comes with the deepest, most genuine regard for those around her. Thinking back on her first semester-long class at San Quentin, which she titled Art in Response to Gang Violence, Kiefer recalled, "A lot of these guys needed this creative outlet, or channel, and I needed to find a community."
Her attachment to the place was so profound that she returned to San Quentin in 2005, a year after her fellowship had ended, to teach one night per week while running down an MFA at San Francisco State University — all while holding a full-time position at Saint Vincent’s in Marin, where, she said, she learned how to handle emotional turbulence in young people after being threatened, groped, and cussed at, seeing desks and chairs fly, and watching a BBQ grill crash to the ground from a second-story window. Trying times at St. Vincent’s taught her how to be available at an authoritative distance.
Kiefer took the Roots job at Balboa High School just last year, the final one of her MFA program at SF State. Some attribute her teaching skill to her lifelong study of the written word, as students do make the best teachers. However, while acknowledging her diligence, she noted that fate, more than any other factor, has landed her right where she needs to be. Ask her if educating kids who’ve been affected by incarceration is something of a calling, and without hesitation she’ll tell you, "Totally."
"Prison education has been proven to prevent recidivism, and it injects humanity into the reality of being incarcerated…. Our society has it so wrong: we’re doing nothing to rehabilitate," Kiefer said with obvious sincerity. Her urgency is born of six years’ hands-on experience, and it still has her visiting prisoners and their families on her own time and acting as an advocate.
Notwithstanding her clarity of vision, though, she says she can be very wrong now and again. For example, I asked if she’d ever failed at anything. "I have a terrible sense of direction," she said. Well, Ms. Kiefer, I beg to differ. Your inner compass seems perfectly calibrated.
Careers & Ed: Paid by Pandora
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Before Tim Westergren founded the Music Genome Project and Pandora, an online radio station–music recommendation site that’s developed a cultlike following, he had no idea what he was going to do for a living. After all, how do you prepare for a job that doesn’t exist yet?
He wasn’t like the scores of people who go through school with specific goals in mind — for instance, major in computer science or business administration, get an entry-level position, start climbing the corporate ladder to become an engineer or manager, and acquire a 401(k).
No, for the venture capitalist, for the entrepreneur, life is more abstract. Westergren’s career path was blazed on a hunch and an intense passion for music, which he’d loved ever since learning to play piano in the suburbs of Paris as a child.
"It’s more, kind of, personal instinct," Westergren said when asked how he found his niche. "Looking around thinking, ‘OK, the problem that I have and that all my friends and everyone I know has is that they love music but they have a hard time finding new stuff.’ That’s the problem that just about every single adult faces. I also knew, as a musician, that there was an awful lot of really great music around that nobody was hearing because it was all buried. And so I figured, ‘Gosh, there’s got to be an opportunity in there of connecting those two.’<0x2009>"
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
If you don’t happen to be one of the many people who have already pledged their allegiance to Pandora’s wide selection of music and uncanny ability to predict what other artists you might like, let me explain.
At its simplest, Pandora is Internet radio with a brain. Signing up is free and surprisingly quick. Then you choose an artist or song as your "station," and music begins to play. Each successive song is chosen by Pandora, creating a customized streaming playlist based on the attributes of the songs you’ve chosen (and on whether or not you like the songs the site chooses for you). If you like Manu Chao, Pandora might play Los Cafres next. If you start a station around Weezer, Pandora might recommend a song by Jimmy Eat World. If you like Prince, you’ll probably soon be jamming to the Time. And if your Nine Inch Nails station is playing too much hard, dark Marilyn Manson, you can give feedback that’ll lead the station toward a more melodic NIN relative, like Tool.
It’s this system — the combination of radio station and the Music Genome Project, which offers carefully crafted music recommendations based on your tastes — that sets Pandora’s suggestions apart from those of other music sites.
"We’ve created a taxonomy of musical attributes that kind of collectively describe a song," Westergren said, sitting in the main room of Pandora’s headquarters, which looks like a computer lab crossed with a record store thanks to rows of computer stations backdropped by stacks of CDs. He showed me an example, clicking on a tune by Chet Baker at one of the stations. A form popped up on the flat screen, filled with about 40 drop-down menu fields rating musical characteristics. One, for example, says "Fixed to Improvised" and lets the user rate a song from 1 to 10 on that scale. A graphic at the bottom of the screen shows that this is the first of seven pages.
"An analyst goes through and scores each one of these, one by one," Westergren said. Around him the stations were speckled with sleepy-eyed musicians clutching Monday-morning coffee cups, while downtown Oakland glistened through large windows. "So in the end, they have a collection of about 400 individual pieces of musical information about the song. Everything about melody and harmony, rhythm and instrumentation, etc. And it’s this sort of musical DNA that connects songs on Pandora. So when you type a song in, it’s using this information to create playlists."
The criteria for these selections, much like Westergren’s qualifications for steering this funky music boat across the World Wide Web, have been gathered from scratch.
MUSIC BUSINESS
Born in Minneapolis, Westergren moved to France with his family when he was six years old. He went to high school in England, where he sang in a choir and learned a smattering of instruments: clarinet, bassoon, drums, and the recorder. But school in Europe was too tracked for his tastes, and by age 16 he knew he wanted to return to the United States. In college he majored in political science but kept finding himself drawn further into music.
"I tried a bunch of things out. The last couple of years, though, I really got deep into music and recording technology," Westergren said. With his tousled hair and green sweater, the 41-year-old has the clean-cut but cool appearance you’d expect of an Internet executive. "I went to Stanford as an undergrad, and there’s a place there called the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics. It’s a place where science and music come together. There’s a lot of study of sound and sound creation and sound recording, and I [practically] lived there my senior year."
After graduating in ’88 and working as a nanny for several years, he began practicing piano eight hours a day, studying with jazz pianist Mark Levine in Berkeley, and performing at the Palo Alto Holiday Inn. But he always played in rock bands, which he says aren’t that different from start-up companies, and moved to San Francisco to be closer to the nightlife. He began writing jingles for radio ads; it was a short step from there to composing soundtracks for student films.
"The idea for the Music Genome Project, the whole sort of foundation for Pandora, actually was really hatched when I was a film composer. Because when you’re a film composer your job is to figure out someone else’s taste. So you’ll sit down with a film director with a stack of CDs and play stuff for them and try and learn what they like about music," Westergren said. "Then, as a composer, you’ve got to go back to your recording studio and write a piece of music they’ll like. So what you’re doing is, you’re transutf8g that feedback into musicological information."
But this was all just pointing in the right direction. There was still no road map, no clear way of making a musical-taste machine profitable. About this time, Westergren read an article about Aimee Mann, the singer-songwriter you may remember for sacrificing her toe in The Big Lebowski or for covering Harry Nilsson’s "One" for Magnolia. Mann had a decent fan base from her success with the band ‘Til Tuesday, but her record company had shelved her because it didn’t think she could sell enough records.
"It was really that article that prompted me to think, ‘Wow, if there was a way to let people who like her kind of music know that she had a new album coming out, then maybe she’d release her albums, because you could find the fan base.’ That was the original idea: to help connect artists with their audience," Westergren said.
In 1999 he started developing that idea. He sought the business advice of Jon Kraft, a friend from college. Kraft tapped Will Glaser for his computer expertise, and the trio began moving forward with the Music Genome Project, forming Savage Beast Technologies, the name still emblazoned on Pandora’s software today.
"We weren’t originally a radio station. In the beginning we were actually a recommendation tool," Westergren said. "You know how Amazon has ‘If you buy this book, you should also read these books?’ We thought we were going to be that kind of a recommendation tool used on other sites to help people find stuff."
The company got its first push in January 2000, when a few angel investors, or wealthy individuals, loaned it enough money to start developing software. It was on its way, but there was still no clear moneymaking mechanism, and for years the company ran on faith and credit cards. After a while cofounders Glaser and Kraft decided they had to move on. Westergren stuck with the project and kept looking for investors.
"I had been pitching venture funds for a couple of years. I had pitched over 300 times to different venture firms. I didn’t get a yes until 2004," Westergren said.
That was when Pandora.com was created, the Music Genome Project was plugged into personalized radio stations, ad space started selling, and revenue began to flow. It’s also when Westergren’s idea was paired with the shift the Internet has taken toward interactive marketing. Today Pandora has offices in Oakland, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York and sells ads connected to sounds that consumers like — and therefore products to consumers. The field of interactive marketing is booming, and Westergren says anyone looking to break into Internet radio should first look into a background in advertising.
Then again, you could just follow his example: use your instincts and see what develops.
Tim Westergren is traveling the country promoting Pandora with town hall meetings. See blog.pandora.com/pandora for information.
Careers & Ed: Assembling a career
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Susan Gould is helping me sew up the sides of my Converse sneakers with black surgical suture thread. We’re drinking very strong coffee and sitting in her workroom, which is lined with small plastic bins and boxes filled with hundreds of glass, metal, and paper objects she uses for her assemblage art pieces. The whole experience is surreal — mending the holes in my shoes with a woman I met only an hour before, surrounded by old packaging and papers, buttons, and small objects from warehouses and thrift shops.
But surreal isn’t a new term to the self-sustaining artist. In fact, it’s the word most people use to describe her work: diorama pins, images trapped under magnifying glass, and items like dice, knobs, or bottle caps fused into a statue, all deceptively simple at first glance but strikingly detailed on closer examination.
"I am very particular about the images I use," says Gould, who often alters pictures and then collages them together in Photoshop. "They need to evoke a certain warmth that I can feel."
WORKS OF ART
Gould usually starts with images.
"I am always drawn to the bizarre world of the Victorians," she says. "Vegetable and animal bodies with human heads. Surreal imagery. And definitely nostalgic imagery. I love the vivid colors in Renaissance paintings and costumes and old scientific images. But even these subgroups cover a wide category, and there are many contradictions."
For example, Gould isn’t a fan of retro, cute, or whimsical styles. It’s the fine line between nostalgia and whimsy that differentiates Gould’s art from similar work. Hers are small pieces of reality that have been encapsulated and distorted into foreign and lovely objects that tug at the subconscious.
"I love the idea of taking things out of context and of evoking emotion visually out of pieces of parts," she says. "The dimension invites me to look inward. And it is this idea of being transported into an imaginary moment that intrigues me. Who says this has to be the only world?"
Even as a child, the concept of small, segmented realities fascinated Gould. One of her first encounters with the idea was when her parents took her at age six on a trip to the Museum of Science in Boston.
"I remember being captivated by the variety of shadowboxes and dioramas and thinking, ‘If this is a job, I want it,’<0x2009>" Gould explains.
That fascination set her on the path to self-supporting artistry in 1986. Today she has retail carriers nationwide, as well as in Japan and Canada. Locally her art is sold at the Studio Gallery on Polk Street and at a few festivals and studio sales every year. She’s also recently signed a contract to produce custom work for a company that supplies 43 specialty museum stores.
ART AS WORK
After working as a freelance graphic artist for 12 years, Gould was forced by outside circumstances to examine new employment options.
"The woman who was paying me $20 an hour as a freelancer told me she had to hire me as a full-time employee for $10.50 or she couldn’t keep contracting me. And the idea of walking around with a portfolio like a first grader, showing it to potential new employers, made me cringe," she says. "So I asked myself, what else can I do?"
With no investor and no other source of income, Gould simply leaped headfirst into her business.
"I just ate rice and beans for a year and worked and worked and saved and saved and kept on going. I think my total investment in getting this business off the ground was $1,000. It became like a challenge to see how little I could spend, how much I could save," she recalls. "I learned so much about myself."
The experience was so important that Gould lists tips on her Web site for people looking to follow her example. According to her site, the top three things one needs to start one’s own business are luck, optimism, and perseverance — in that order.
"I think luck is a factor, but not the only one," Gould explains. "I was lucky in that the things that appealed to me happened to appeal to a large audience. I’ve seen so many talented artists whose stuff doesn’t sell, and I don’t get it. I don’t even really feel like I can take credit for the things I make, most of the time. The objects are themselves. They’re already beautiful, and I just see ways to put them together. It’s not something I’ve created; it’s just a way of seeing things differently."
In order to support herself solely by the sale of her work, Gould sometimes has to make tough decisions about which pieces she offers to buyers.
"In making a living selling my art, I have learned not only to become an efficiency expert and listen to my inner judgment, but that I sometimes have to sacrifice really great products that I cannot make a profit from," she reveals. Gould offers her recent production of dice as an example. Each set took painstaking work to create: she used cubes of wood wrapped in distressed foil from wine bottles and formed the numbers with upholstery tacks. Gould says she could never sell them for their true worth, so she gave them away as gifts. It is that fluid, compromising attitude that has enabled her to succeed.
Gould also does custom work for individuals. If a person provides her with pictures, she can turn them into anything from a bracelet to cufflinks to earrings. She also creates superhero figurines by taking a small plastic toy, removing the head, and putting the image of a loved one — magnified under glass — in its place. The figure is then mounted on a wooden base with wheels. It sounds simple, but Gould’s hand brings a sense of the surreal to the affair, turning what seems like a child’s craft project into a true work of art.
However, not all of her work is for sale or given away. The corners and walls of her apartment are home to the few pieces she likes enough to keep or art that others have made for her, each of which has a story. Through these creations I learn a lot about her father, her brothers, and her friends, their memories preserved and constantly present. She has a miniature tomato mounted on a pedestal that she’s kept for years and a rack of key chains that inspires me to talk about my sister and the emotional attachments people form with inanimate objects.
Which eventually leads to the topic of my shoes and the project, currently at hand, of repairing them. Now we’ve got a small drill, which we’re using to bore through the rubber sole. Gould asks me to prop my foot on a stool before I leave, when she pulls out a camera and snaps a photo of the finished product, which looks like something emo kids would pay $50 to own: shoes, slightly damaged.
"Preserving the moment," I joke as I leave.
"Always," Gould replies with a smile. "I’ll send the picture."
Careers & Ed: Branching out
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Paul Donald, the founder of sustainable online retailer Branch Homes, agrees to meet me at Mission Beach Cafe. He arrives dressed in a black turtleneck sweater and smart bluish purple rimmed glasses and takes a seat at the wooden table where I’m sitting. At one point during our conversation I accidentally make a big black ink smudge on the tabletop.
"It’s heavily varnished, and we’ve got some toxic industrial cleaners that will take care of that," he says dryly.
This is clearly a joke, as everything about Branch — and Donald — is the polar opposite of varnished and toxic. In fact, the San Francisco company only carries ecofriendly, fair trade, and organic objects, clothing, and furniture, with an emphasis on local and national designers (though it has products from all over the world).
But Donald didn’t start out as a retailer, or even a sustainability advocate. His background is in design. In fact, he spent 12 years in New York and San Francisco helping craft the identities of magazines like Spy, Wired, and Sunset before founding Branch Home in 2005. Which is probably why he describes his current job this way:
"I’d like to tell people that I’m the creative director for this cool company that’s at the nexus of design and sustainability — and it just happens to be a retail store," he says, sounding slightly apologetic when he gets to the retail part. After all, when you’re used to being a hip graphic designer, perhaps the title of shopkeeper just doesn’t hold the same mystique.
So how did he get from one to the other?
SMART SHOPPING
Donald said there wasn’t a singular "aha!" moment behind Branch. Instead, the idea percolated over time. It could’ve started with his childhood in small-town Iowa, where working in cornfields during the summers inspired his love for the land and a curiosity about where food comes from. This curiosity expanded to include other everyday products when, years later, he read William McDonough and Michael Braungart’s Cradle to Cradle (North Point Press, 2002).
Then, while in his often stressful role as creative director for Sunset magazine, Donald frequently found himself shopping to relax — although he says his motives were more entertainment driven than consumption driven. But he openly celebrates the role of shopping in our lives — as a form of exploration, education, connection, and, of course, therapy.
"It’s an opportunity to discover what’s new and interesting and beautiful in the world," he says.
He also acknowledges shopping’s darker side, including the toxic materials, processes, and packaging that put our objects of desire on the shelf and our purchases’ not-so-pretty by-products: deforestation, global warming, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (or GPGP, a plastic floe of trash floating in the ocean that’s twice the size of Texas), unfair wages, and poor working conditions.
This duality pointed toward the creation of Branch, which represents a greener, happier alternative to our society’s often blind and copious consumption. "No one wakes up and thinks, ‘I want to contribute to deforestation today,’<0x2009>" Donald says. "We’re just not brought up to think about the life cycle of the things we consume." Instead of flat-out asking people to abandon their consumptive ways (an improbability as far as Donald is concerned), Branch encourages design-savvy shoppers to get curious about whence and from what things come. "We can’t consume our way to a better world, but we can be more considerate about what we buy," he says.
That’s why each item Branch sells, from stuffed animals to kitchenware, comes with its own story — what it’s made from, how and where it’s made, and who made it — on the Web site and on printed cards that are included in each package. This helps to create another point of connection between object and buyer and furthers Branch’s goal of educating consumers about sustainability, something that’s close to Donald’s heart.
But even people who don’t read all the stories that come with the products can rest assured that Donald, in his dual role as Branch’s curator and art director, has already made a lot of the hard choices for them. Branch offers a well-edited collection of products that are also manufactured and brought to market in such a way that its customers don’t have to feel guilty about buying — or, eventually, disposing of — them.
In addition to the Web site, Donald’s original plan involved opening a physical store with an adjacent café that would serve locally and sustainably grown foods. After a few bids fell through right around Thanksgiving of 2005, it dawned on Donald that he had a bunch of inventory on the way and no place to display it. He decided to launch the site first and deal with the rest after the holidays. At the time there were no other stores like Branch, and it found popularity online through blogs and word of mouth. When sustainable design hit the mainstream a little over a year later, Branch had an advantage over new competition as an already established brand. Plus, more exposure and increased visibility meant increased sales.
With zero retail or customer service experience (Branch is his first job that involves interacting directly with the public) and no formal business background, Donald says he was lucky to learn the ropes online, without the albatross of a physical retail space — not to mention a café, something with which he has even less experience. With just a single focus, Donald found he was less in the spotlight, and the growing pains weren’t so extreme. He likens his role at Branch to being a single parent and admits he’ll always choose thinking about branding and design above burying himself in a spreadsheet.
He still longs for a storefront in San Francisco, and if all goes according to plan, there may be a Los Angeles and a New York Branch in the not-so-distant future.
BEAUTIFUL AND SUSTAINABLE
A self-described design snob, Donald says he’s only interested in working with objects that are both beautiful and sustainable. "To make any kind of real impact we need to reach a broad audience," he says. "Tie-dye and hemp sandals aren’t going to do this." Branch is successful largely because it caters to anyone who appreciates good design — green or not. It educates unsuspecting browsers when their guards are down — when they’re relaxed and curious. Donald avoids loaded labels like environmentalist and opts instead for the more friendly moniker of thoughtful citizen to describe himself and the people he’s targeting. "In the same way I try not to be preachy about Branch, I try not to use preachy words," he says.
Ultimately, he would like to see more designers take the green road. (He’s currently on the lookout for affordable, everyday, sustainable tableware, which so far has proved difficult to source.) Donald is also working to expand Branch’s offerings to include things that make it easier for people to live a more sustainable lifestyle, such as power strips with easy-to-reach on-off switches and reusable shopping bags.
In fall 2006, Branch partnered with the California College of the Arts and became a client for its wood furniture class, which required students to neither create furniture nor use wood as a material. "Leave it to an art school," Donald says. The assignment was to design a sustainable product for Branch. The final designs were exhibited in a show at the end of the semester — and a few have been earmarked for possible future production for Branch. Each student was forced to grapple with the challenges of sustainability, but even more significant for Donald, many commented that their involvement in the Branch project had already begun to influence their approach to their other work. "Designers have so much power," Donald says. "And the best way to solve a problem is to not create one in the first place."
Donald is keen on helping designers establish more sustainable practices, which sometimes results in an exclusive product line for Branch. For example, designer Derrick Chen of Urbana Design modified his popular resin-coated bent-plywood tray by creating a cork-topped version — an item that has proved hugely popular in its sustainable iteration.
But for all of its cool, Earth-friendly appeal, Branch is still competing in a price-driven world dominated by the cheap and clever designs of Target and IKEA. "There’s a big difference between getting the message and shelling out an additional 10 to 20 percent more for a sustainable product," Donald says. To his mind, it’s going to be a long time before the Target shopper starts asking the tough questions. "We’re like dogs," he says. "We need to have our noses rubbed in it before we’ll change."
Visit Branch at www.branchhome.com.
Consolidating power
› amanda@sfbg.com
A proposal to consolidate some of the permitting functions of 10 city departments into one is currently floating through Mayor Gavin Newsom’s administration as a result of his call to department heads for bold initiatives. It was developed by a department head who is receiving harsh criticism from his staff.
Isam Hasenin, the director of the Department of Building Inspection, originally unveiled the idea in a Dec. 3, 2007, memo presented to the mayor that calls for a shift into Hasenin’s department of the permitting currently reviewed by the Fire Department, the Planning Department, the Bureau of Street Use and Mapping, the Public Utilities Commission, the Redevelopment Agency, the Mayor’s Office on Disability, the Port, the Airport, the Bureau of Urban Forestry, and the Municipal Transportation Agency.
The reason offered for such massive consolidation is customer service. "A single city-wide permitting department will be better equipped to manage the needs of our citizens and deliver a more efficient, reliable, consistent and timely service with a focus on excellent customer service," the memo reads.
Hasenin told us the idea was in response to a solicitation from Newsom. "The genesis of this idea came about as a general commitment from the Mayor’s Office to improve the city … to reinvigorate and streamline the processes of the city," he said.
It follows policy pledges made by the mayor since his first run for office. In campaign literature from 2003, Newsom wrote that his economic plan would "direct city agencies to streamline regulations and meet accelerated schedules for approving worthy new public and private projects, without compromising standards."
More recently, Newsom addressed a Dec. 19, 2007, Building Inspection Commission meeting at which this memo came up. "Systemically, the organization of things are such that institutionally they can’t change to the degree that we’d like to see them change," Newsom said. "So we have to break the institutions … in order to make the kinds of changes all of us in the city expect."
Several department spokespeople contacted by the Guardian had only heard vague suggestions about consolidation. Hasenin stressed that the proposal was still in an early, conceptual stage and that discussions among staff and all of the relevant stakeholders had yet to occur.
One department that hasn’t held back criticism of the proposal is the San Francisco Fire Department. "The administration, the Fire Commission, and Fire Fighters Local 798 are all aligned. We’d be concerned about any changes," department chief Joanne Hayes-White told us.
She first learned of the plan at an impromptu Dec. 6, 2007, meeting with the mayor at which, she says, she outlined several immediate concerns with the idea, including the fact that it may not be legal. She reported this to the Fire Commission at a Dec. 13, 2007, meeting: "There is specific language in the state’s Fire Code that the authority for these types of inspections rests with the Fire Department and the fire chief or the fire marshal."
Hayes-White also said, "I think it is important also — which we pointed out to the mayor — that there be appropriate checks and balances … and that there is no rubber-stamping of things." The Fire Commission echoed her sentiments and sent a letter to the mayor on Dec. 19.
Newsom’s Sept. 10, 2007, call for his senior staff to offer letters of resignation has had a chilling effect on his remaining administration, with some heads contacted by the Guardian reluctant to speak out against a policy that’s perceived to be coming from him. In some ways, that’s given the mayor even more power to advance potentially controversial ideas. Among those recently replaced by Newsom are the heads of the Planning Department, the Department of Public Works (which oversees the Bureau of Street Use and Mapping), the SFPUC, and the Redevelopment Agency.
"There’s an opportunity right now because of all these resignations to manipulate policy," said Debra Walker, president of the BIC. She stressed that she wasn’t sure whether that was an intention of this proposal, but she was unaware of the memo until concerned members of the Fire Department brought it up at the Dec. 19 meeting of the BIC. She said her department has since received a copy but has yet to discuss its implications as a commission.
Hasenin is a relatively new employee who joined the city about nine months ago from a previous post in San Diego. His leadership has already garnered a lengthy anonymous letter addressed to Newsom from a contingent of DBI staff outlining a raft of concerns about their new leader, including specifics like "Plan check engineers are afraid they will be fired unless they keep up with unreasonable turn around times and sign off on plans that are not ready for issuance because they do not comply with code."
Tiger tales
More on the SF Zoo:
>>20 Questions the zoo won’t answer
>>Editorial: Take back the zoo
>>Opinion: Shut down the zoo
>>From 1999: The Zoo Blues
› news@sfbg.com
When I first heard about the attack at the San Francisco Zoo, I felt strangely vindicated to learn that a Siberian tiger had been involved. I am irrationally prejudiced when it comes to big cats: I don’t like Siberians. Of all the tigers, lions, jaguars, and other exotic animals I have known in my day — and I grew up on a wild animal farm, so I have known quite a few — the only ones that truly frightened me were a chimpanzee named Lolita and a pair of Siberians (they’re known as Amurs now) that lived in an old shed about 100 feet from my front door.
When I read in March that two chimps from a California primate sanctuary had attacked a 62-year-old man, biting off much of his face, tearing off his foot, and mutiutf8g his genitals, I thought of Mike’s thumb. And when I heard that Tatiana had attacked three young men, killing one of them, I immediately thought of his ear.
Mike Bleyman was a biologist who built a research and breeding compound outside Pittsboro, NC, and like many exotic-animal fanatics he had a tendency to lose body parts. Fortunately, the surgeons in Chapel Hill were skilled at sewing them back on.
Mike was also my stepfather. My parents divorced when I was in junior high, and when my mother moved in with Mike on "the farm," I went with her.
I was present when Lolita bit Mike’s thumb right through the bone, almost severing it completely. I was away at college when the tiger got him.
Mike had arranged a trade with the Albuquerque Zoo in New Mexico — two Siberians and a Himalayan black bear for a young Sumatran tiger. Mike hit both tigers with tranquilizer darts. But ketamine, the drug of choice for sedating big cats, takes several minutes to work, and being an impatient man who didn’t play by the rules, Mike entered the cage before the recommended time had passed. When he approached the male, the female roused herself. She slashed Mike across the back, dislocated his elbow, and removed his ear.
The fact that Mike was able to extract himself from the cage alive is testament to the fact that the ketamine had at least begun to have an impact. Siberian tigers are not creatures you want to mess with.
Our other tigers, all Bengals, were sociable and playful. As I walked by they would chuffle their hellos. I would chuffle back and reach through the fence to scratch their necks or rub their noses. The Siberians, however, had a flat affect, rarely vocalized, and menacingly tracked passing humans.
I know it’s not fair to judge an entire subspecies by two individuals, and these cats had every reason to be sullen. They had evolved to preside as alpha predators over rugged territories of hundreds of square miles, and they were being forced to live sedentary lives in a gloomy shed probably no bigger than 200 square feet. But fair or not, they freaked me out.
I have been thinking a lot about those cats in the past couple of weeks as I have read the news stories coming from San Francisco. As someone who has bottle-fed several cubs, built my share of tiger cages, and shoveled more than my share of tiger shit, I know more than a little about Felis tigris.
I have been equally fascinated, if not more so, by the behavior of the other species that populates this tragic tale, the one known as Homo sapiens. In addition to being a former tiger farmer, I am also a journalist who once covered San Francisco politics. I still work occasionally as a communications consultant to nonprofits, and in my day job I am a manager of a small state agency and work regularly with elected officials. So when I look at this story through the lens of a behaviorist, I think about the traits of various human subspecies — politicians, bureaucrats, managers, spin doctors, journalists, self-proclaimed experts, and supposed guardians of health and safety. Frankly, I am not impressed.
Tatiana was killed for being a tiger. Tigers have only one self. They are what they are; end of story. Humans are a different order of being: we are capable of self-deception. We can lie to ourselves, we can deny what is right in front of us, we can try to shift blame, and we can avoid the things we know we should face.
And thereon hangs this tiger tale.
TARZAN AND TIGER ISLAND
People have often asked me over the years why my stepfather had all of his animals. I like to tell them it was because he thought he was Tarzan. It’s not the absolute truth, but it is as valid as any other answer.
It started in the 1970s, when he just drove down to Florida one day and came back with a tiger cub.
For her first several months there, Gretchen had the run of the farm. I remember one weekend when Mike was teaching us to shoot: my sister Gwenn was lying in the bed of a battered red Toyota pickup, one eye closed and the other sighting down a rifle barrel at a paper bull’s-eye. She never saw the tiger stalking her from behind. As soon as Gretchen was near enough, she closed in a sudden burst, easily cleared the side of the bed, and landed squarely on Gwenn’s back. Gwenn just huffed, "Gretchen, get off," and calmly squeezed the trigger.
Gretchen, however, was soon too large to be treated like a funny-looking dog. Mike hired a backhoe operator to dig a moat around a knoll where an abandoned farmhouse perched. The man arrived on a day when Mike’s very wild foster daughter, Dianne, had cooked brownies. The backhoe operator didn’t realized they were laced with pot and ate a few. It took a long time to finish the job, in part because the guy kept nodding off, and in the end the moat had a peculiar shape.
Mike didn’t mind. He just put up an acircular fence around the acircular moat and called it Tiger Island.
The fence was 12 feet tall and built of heavy-gauge chain link. A barbed-wire overhang jutted inward from the top at a 45-degree angle. A tiger might be able to leap to the top of a 12-foot fence, but the moat meant there was no solid place from which Gretchen could launch herself.
If she tried to hurdle the fence, she’d have to start at least 10 feet back. And if she crossed the moat and pulled herself onto the narrow bank, she would have to jump straight up. That would mean an encounter with the overhang. She wouldn’t climb the fence because chain link is too wobbly. It was the way the moat and the fence and the overhang worked together that made the compound secure. Even when the moat ran dry in later years, a tiger would still have had to jump from the bottom of the dry moat, making the total leap on the order of 16 or 17 feet.
In other words, a stoned heavy-equipment operator and a somewhat oddball zoologist, with a few thousand dollars’ worth of chain link and barbed wire, managed to make a very secure tiger pen. I have to wonder why the privatized San Francisco Zoo, with millions of dollars in bond money and a director who earns $339,000 a year, couldn’t.
THE MISSING WALL
Early reports from San Francisco described the tiger grotto as having a wall and a moat as if they were separate things and gave dimensions for both — initially 15 feet for the moat and 20 feet for the wall. When I read that, I began examining aerial photos to look for other points of egress. I studied the height and the angle of the side walls.
All tigers can climb trees. Amur habitat includes mountain ranges. They don’t like steep slopes, but they’re capable of scrambling over rocky faces. Perhaps Tatiana got out that way, I thought, but I soon rejected the idea.
The aerials showed me the initial reports were inaccurate. There never was a wall and a moat. Tatiana’s compound was nothing like Gretchen’s. There was only a moat, and the so-called wall was simply the far bank. The moat isn’t, in zoological terms, either a physical or a psychological fail-safe. It’s simply a way of recessing a wall into the earth so it doesn’t block human sight lines.
A dry moat can actually be worse than a wall because the far bank gives a tiger launching points. When the jump-off point is around the same elevation as the top of the far bank, as it is at the San Francisco Zoo, the moat’s depth may not matter. The question becomes not how high the tiger can jump but how far it can leap. History and a close look at pictures of the grotto suggest that is exactly the question San Francisco and zoos everywhere should be asking.
One rule of thumb is that a moat needs to be four times the average body length of the species it is suppose to contain, which for an Amur is just an inch shy of six feet. That means a moat should be at least 24 feet across. I’m skeptical of this calculation. Mean body length for a mountain lion, for example, puts the recommended moat distance at just over 13 feet, yet there are credible reports of mountain lions leaping 35 feet.
An alternative is the cat’s known leaping distance plus 20 percent. The oft-reported leaping distance is 20 feet, so the minimum width would again be 24 feet. There are accounts of tigers leaping 30 to 33 feet, but I have not been able to determine whether these were documented. In China, the Yangtze River runs through Leaping Tiger Gorge, so named because a tiger leaped the river to escape a hunter, according to local lore. The river at its narrowest is about 82 feet wide. The story is a fable, but it gives you a sense of the tiger’s reputation as a prodigious leaper. Based on my years of observing tigers at play, 30 feet does not seem at all out of the question.
Such calculations likely contributed to the standards of two Association of Zoos and Aquarium committees. Both the AZA Felid Technical Advisory Group and the AZA Nutrition Advisory Group recommend a minimum width of 25 feet for a tiger moat.
So imagine my reaction when Zoo director Manuel Mollinedo stated his belief that the tiger could not have escaped from the moat, while also saying that according Zoo records, the moat was 20 feet across. I have never met Mollinedo, and he didn’t return my calls, but in my opinion the man has no idea what he is talking about.
Then came reports that the moat is 33 feet across. Well … sort of, maybe, kind of. It may be 33 feet from wall to wall, but the bank on the grotto side slopes to a flat floor 20 feet across. Some clever bloke decided to make the transition look more natural by placing fake boulders atop the slope. These project out into the moat and in some cases rise above the grotto floor. A tiger that launched from the lip of one of these would have to cross far less than 30 feet.
I asked the Zoo for the narrowest leap between the outside wall and these "rocks." Zoo officials didn’t respond. So I went out there with my tape measure.
The tiger grotto is closed off, and Zoo officials also declined to answer my request for access to the area. But through a side window I was able to study a neighboring lion grotto with a similar design. A rock ledge stuck out into the moat more than seven feet, leaving a gap I measured along the outer wall at about 25 feet. Using aerial photographs and online measuring tools to look at Tatiana’s grotto, I repeatedly got widths of less than 24 feet.
In other words, the width of the moat most likely does not meet AZA standards, which could hardly be described as overly cautious.
NO MARGIN FOR ERROR
The world soon found out the bank of Tatiana’s grotto was less than 12.5 feet high, and experts quickly agreed that a motivated tiger could have surmounted the wall. Yet Mollinedo was still expressing disbelief.
We know tigers pluck monkeys from tree branches, bound over steep rock faces, and jump on the backs of large prey. But how tall do they stand, and how much can they elevate? The best evidence I can find of an Amur’s reach comes from the field studies of Anatolii Grigor’evich Yudakov. One way Amurs mark their territory is by making scratches high in the bark of trees. Yudakov measured these marks at 210 to 290 centimeters, or roughly 7 to 9.5 feet.
For an Amur standing on its hind legs to reach the top of a 12.5 foot wall, it would have to elevate another 3 to 5.5 feet. Remember Gretchen jumping effortlessly over the side rail of a small pickup? Four feet.
A major prey species for Amurs is the Manchurian red deer, which stands up to five feet at the shoulder. Though not sourced, many references report a vertical leap for tigers of six feet. Take a tiger with a reach of almost 10 feet and a vertical leap of six feet, and suddenly the industry standard of a 16-foot wall has no appreciable margin for error.
Then there are the events of May 14, 1994, when a Bengal tiger in India’s Kaziranga National Park attacked a man on the back of an elephant. According to a press release from Wildlife Trust International, executive director Vivek Menon reviewed footage of the attack and exclaimed, "I could never imagine that a tiger could so effortlessly leap from the ground onto an adult elephant’s head, which is at least 12 feet above the ground."
There has been much speculation about whether a captive tiger is capable of matching the jumping ability of a wild cat. Presumably a confined tiger would be sluggish, out of shape, her muscles atrophied. No one to my knowledge, though, has studied the sports physiology of tigers.
I can say from personal experience that even captive tigers are incredibly agile and powerful. We had a Bengal named Engels (the litter was born on May Day) who lived on Tiger Island. One day a female Bengal tried to snatch some food from him. He swiped at her almost casually, hitting her in the side. The force of the blow immediately stopped the young tiger’s heart, and she fell over dead.
THE LONG JUMP
So what happened that day at the Zoo? So far, none of the witnesses are talking. Media accounts suggest one scenario: Tatiana may have stood on her hind legs against the wall, pushed off from the bottom of the moat, grabbed the top of the wall with her front paws, and leveraged herself up and over by digging her hind claws into the wall. That’s conceivable, I guess. Tatiana may even have escaped before the attack and waited for her prey in the tall grass beside the moat.
I have a very hard time imagining that, though. For one thing, the wall curves outward at the top. For another, such methodical, incremental movement is not typical of a tiger. They stalk their prey slowly, but in a brutal burst, they close with amazing speed. I am convinced Tatiana exploded from the grotto, landed on the lip, and then powered her way up. Whether she sprang from one of the protruding rocks, the sloped bank, or the moat floor is almost immaterial, but I am inclined to believe she jumped over the moat.
Strangely, Mollinedo may have been on the right track at a Dec. 28 press conference when he said, "How she jumped that high is beyond me." She may not have jumped high at all; I suspect she just jumped long.
I base this on my observations of tigers and my study of grotto photographs, but it is supported by history. There are three known escapes from Tatiana’s grotto and one near escape. In one case the escape went unwitnessed.
Keepers Jack Castor and John Alcaraz walked by the grotto one day a few years back and saw a Bengal named Jack wandering outside, Alcaraz told me by phone. They yelled at him, and he jumped back in.
David Rentz witnessed another escape in 1959, when he was a young Zoo volunteer. He’s an entomologist in Australia now, and he recently wrote in his blog that the tiger "flew across the moat from his position on the other side … and sprung back to the grotto all in one graceful movement." There had been previous reports this same tiger could jump the moat.
Then there’s the near escape witnessed by Marian Roth-Cramer in 1997. In an interview in the Dec. 27 San Francisco Chronicle, she said, "I saw the tiger leap over the moat." This makes me wonder why so much coverage has focused on the height of the wall and not the width of the moat.
Media coverage has also focused on whether the men taunted or teased Tatiana. I find this discussion ludicrous. Zoos know animal abuse comes with the territory. They must anticipate it, prevent it, and prepare for its consequences. It’s part of the job. And besides, how does one taunt a tiger?
When I think of taunting, I think of the French kibitzers and King Arthur’s men in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a scene reprised in Spamalot. I imagine some kids shouting into the grotto, "Your mother was a wild boar, and you father smelt of porcelainberries. I scent-mark in your general direction."
Teasing a confined animal means tempting it with something it can’t have — a ball, say, or your throat.
Tatiana wasn’t teased. She got what she wanted.
Tigers attack for limited reasons — they see you as prey, they see you as a threat to them, their cubs, or their food, or they dislike you because of something you did to them. Perhaps Tatiana saw the young men as a threat. Perhaps they pissed her off. But a simpler explanation is that their behavior got the cat’s attention, and perhaps they crossed the fence and got too close to the edge, until at some point Tatiana identified Kulbir Dhaliwal as prey that had come within range. It seems significant that the attack occurred at twilight, since tigers are crepuscular, meaning they are most active then. It’s their favorite time to hunt.
Naturalist and western novelist Dane Coolidge wrote in 1901 that Indians classify tigers as game killers, cattle lifters, or man killers. People have suggested tigers become human killers because they develop a taste for human flesh. I believe tigers will eat almost anything — but they’re wary of taking on prey that might fight back effectively. They lose any hesitancy when they discover just how vulnerable we humans are. Tatiana proved she had no inhibitions about dining on human flesh when she attacked keeper Lori Kamejan in 2006.
Carlos Sousa Jr. apparently tried to distract Tatiana from her attempted "kill," and I use that term loosely since tigers naturally feed on prey that is still alive, and captive tigers are in-between creatures, psychologically speaking. Wild cubs learn from their mothers to dispatch prey effectively, but captive-bred tigers are never taught that skill. In terms of hardware, they may be the world’s finest killers, but their software is buggier than Windows Vista.
Tigers often have to protect their prey after an attack. They are followed by wild dogs and bears that try to scavenge their kills, and herd animals will sometimes try to rescue a herdmate. Tatiana most likely fought off the threat from Sousa, slashing his throat in the process, then tracked her wounded prey to finish what she started. It wasn’t a rampage, a vicious and angry outburst, as media reports have described it, just the methodical, instinctive actions of a top-of-the-line predator.
THE BIPED PROBLEM
If you look at what led up to Tatiana’s escape, you follow a trail of denial and avoidance.
Consider the players, starting with Zoo management and keepers.
Zoo staffers have known for almost a half century that a tiger could jump out of that grotto. Carey Baldwin, then the Zoo director, witnessed the escape with Rentz in 1959. His solution, according to Rentz’s blog, was to post instructions to keep the offending tiger indoors. Castor’s solution to Jack’s escape was to fill the moat with water, according to Alcaraz, but that practice ended after Jack died. Neither solution was permanent or designed to deal with the next strong-legged, strong-willed tiger to come along.
When Roth-Cramer witnessed the near escape, a passing keeper apparently laughed it off. She reportedly wrote a letter to then–Zoo director David Anderson, but there is no evidence her letter produced any response.
As far as we can tell, no one ever tried to convince the AZA or federal regulators that they needed tougher standards or tougher enforcement. No one took the story to the press or published a journal article to warn other Zoo professionals. No one posted public warnings, ordered changes to the grotto, banned tigers from the exhibit, or shut the lion house.
Mollinedo should have known about the problem if his keepers knew. But there seems to be a lot he doesn’t know, and previous Guardian reports and a recent Chronicle article suggest communication has broken down between employees, particularly keepers, and Zoo management. Lower-level staff complain of not being heard, not being consulted. Morale is low. Institutional knowledge is being lost as keepers quit in frustration.
And what about the regulators? Ron Tilson, the conservation director of the Minnesota Zoo, said in a Dec. 27 Chronicle story that the AZA standard, which he said was seven meters (closer to 23 feet), is "very conservative." Yet this has less than a 20 percent safety margin when you consider the conventional wisdom about how far a tiger can jump, and it is far less than reported leaps of 30 feet or more.
The day after the attack, the AZA issued a statement that "AZA accreditation standards contain no specific dimensions for big cat enclosures." The AZA did not return calls seeking comment, but what it provides is really a set of guidelines produced by advisory committees for a voluntary association composed of the very institutions being regulated. The guidelines aren’t consistently known and have never been fully implemented.
We know the AZA accredited the San Francisco Zoo despite a wall almost four feet shorter than the recommended height.
In 1974 the Philadelphia Zoo surveyed 10 other zoos about their tiger moats. It published the findings in the 1976 International Zoo Yearbook. San Francisco reported its moat was 13.5 feet deep. Detroit said its moat was 15.5 feet deep. Chicago’s moat was only 21 feet wide, and Tulsa reported between 15 and 20 feet. Oklahoma’s moat was only 17 feet wide. Half of the surveyed zoos couldn’t meet AZA recommendations.
There are signs the San Francisco Zoo did not meet other AZA standards. For example, the AZA’s 2008 Accreditation Standards and Related Policies states, "A written protocol should be developed involving local police or other emergency agencies." On Jan. 3, I e-mailed 20 questions to the Zoo’s public relations firm, many of which related to AZA standards. For example, I asked about the last emergency drill and about gun training. I also asked for copies of related Zoo policies. The Zoo never responded. But the next day Mollinedo announced that the Zoo is working with police at Taraval Station on a coordinated emergency response and that police and Zoo shooters will be training together.
The United States Department of Agriculture regulates zoos as exhibitors under the Animal Welfare Act. That act and the rules written to implement it are primarily meant to ensure healthy conditions for the animals. They contain specifications for the size of the fences around the outside of a zoo facility to keep unauthorized people out, not for the fences separating the animals from visitors.
And local oversight? The city owns the grounds and the animals. Zoo employees are part of the city employees union. But since 1993 the nonprofit San Francisco Zoological Society has owned the institution and operated it under a contract with the city. There were problems at the Zoo when the city ran it, but, as Sup. Tom Ammiano told me, "Nobody died."
The contract retains a role for the city through a Joint Zoo Committee of society board members and Recreation and Park Department commissioners. I have gone though the minutes of that committee going back several years, and I have to say the committee provides as much oversight as the stuffed animals in the Zoo’s gift ship. As Ammiano put it, "It’s all lip service."
The employee relations problems, the animal injuries and deaths (see Opinion, page 7), and other management issues at the Zoo are nothing new. Savannah Blackwell reported on these same sets of issues for the Guardian twice — see "The Zoo Blues" (5/19/99) and "The Zoo’s Losers" (5/7/03) — and there is no indication anything has been done.
The city’s contract with the Zoological Society and the Joint Zoo Committee should mean Zoo documents are public under the city’s sunshine laws. But the Zoo has not been forthcoming with key documents requested by the media. Sup. Sean Elsbernd has called for hearings, and Ammiano said there will be multiple hearings. "I think the key issues are accountability and transparency," he said.
The Zoo’s high-priced director has demonstrated that his knowledge of the animals under his care, the condition of his facilities, and the concerns of his staff are embarrassingly limited. In press conferences he looked befuddled, evaded questions, broke every rule of crisis communication, and speculated about the victims without clear information.
The Zoo hired Sam Singer, supposedly a crisis communication specialist, but I have attended multiple trainings in crisis communication, and I have to say he seems more like a fixer to me. And despite this, Mayor Gavin Newsom and the society’s board publicly support Mollinedo.
Mollinedo and his PR people have tried to direct blame toward the victims. Perhaps they were drunk, stoned, rowdy, throwing things — but if Tatiana was killed for being a tiger, it could also be argued that Sousa was killed for being a young man.
There’s a whole process of brain development that scientists are now beginning to understand. The maturation of brain cells through something called myelination starts from the back of the brain. The front of the brain, the seat of executive functions like judgment, matures last. Young people often don’t make good decisions. Boys, in particular, take unnecessary risks.
In the public health world, we understand this and concentrate on policies that control risk and reduce harm. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hold the survivors accountable for anything they might have done, but it does mean the Zoo has no business shifting the blame.
So where does that leave us? It leaves us with more avoidance than a tiger has stripes.
In the end, this was a human problem. People weren’t doing their jobs. They had not taken action when it was clearly needed. And in the end, the only innocent creature in this drama was the one that had no choice other than to be what she was. Her name was Tatiana.
And now she is dead, along with a young man whose parents loved and miss him very much.
Craig McLaughlin is a former Guardian managing editor. He is coauthor of Health Policy Analysis: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Jones and Bartlett, 2008).
The questions the zoo won’t answer
Editors note: Craig McLaughlin sent the following questions to the office of the zoo’s hired flack, Sam Singer. We received no reply by press time.
I was raised around tigers. I know their habits and capabilities and was personally involved in constructing cages for them. I have been amazed by some of the comments attributed to Mr. Mollinedo in local news accounts. He initially reported that the wall of the moat was 20 ft high but the moat was 20 feet across. The difference between the elevations of the grotto and the viewing area is clearly, by any direct observation, only a few feet. That means that regardless of the depth of the dry moat, there is a question of whether the tiger could simply leap from bank to bank. Conventional wisdom in the tiger literature is that they can jump 20 feet, and there are accounts in the literature of leaps as long as 30 or even 33 feet. Given this, it makes no sense based on records available to Mr. Mollinedo that the grotto could be considered secure. In the end, we learned the moat’s width varied from 20 to 33 feet depending on how far one descended, but that the far wall was only 12.5 feet. Mr. Mollinedo then expressed surprise that a tiger could leap or climb over a wall of that height. Given my own knowledge of and direct observation of tigers, a tiger making that leap, even a captive tiger, is not surprising in the least, and taunting would not be a prerequisite. I would have to say that Mr. Mollinedo has no idea what he is talking about when it comes to tigers, and would even go so far as to say it was idiotic for him to make the comments he did–and I am prepared to say that in print. Does Mr. Mollinedo or your firm have any response?
1. Please provide a copy of the zoo’s written protocol concerning tiger escapes.
2. What is the size, caliber, and make of the zoo’s kill rifle(s)?
3. Where is it/are they stored?
4. How many people are authorized and trained to use it (them)? How often do they practice?
5. How many of those people were on the zoo grounds from 5-5:30 pm Christmas day?
6. Was a kill rifle (or rifles) and/or a shooting team deployed during Tatiana’s escape?
7. Minutes of the San Francisco Joint Zoo Committee talk about the improvements, including improvements to the lion house, providing keeper staging areas. Where is the nearest staging area to the to the tiger grotto and was it staffed at 5 pm on Christmas day?
8. When was the last date that the zoo conducted an emergency drill for an animal escape? AZA accreditation standards state “Emergency drills ensure that the instiutution’s staff know their duties and responsibilities and know how to handle mergencies properly when they occur…. Emergency drills shouldbe conducted at least once annually for each basic type of emergency.”
9. Please provide a copy of the record and evaluation of the last animal escape emergency drill? AZA standards state that “these drills need to be recorded and evaluated … Records of these drills need to be maintained.”
10. What training do security personnel recieve in how to respond to an animal emergency. How long is the training, who provides it, and are refreshers required? Had security personnel on duty that night been trained?
11. Why did cafe personnel not let the injured patrons inside so they would not be subject to further attacks? What are the policies about sheltering patrons in concession, entertainment and administrative areas during an animal attack?
12. Please provide a copy of the written protocol between the zoo and local police and other local emergency responders as required by AZA standards.
13. The Chronicle and other sources have reported that the tiger grotto was refurbished/remodeled recently and the cats returned in September. Is this true? Please describe what alterations or improvements were made? What contractor did the work? Was an architect involved in preparing plans and if so, who and at what firm? Was Tatiana housed in the same grotto prior to the remodel? Were keepers consulted in the rennovations?
14. There are at least two credible media accounts of tigers escaping from that grotto previously and one account of a near escape. These were known to keepers and in one case reported in a letter to zoo management. Was the zoo director aware of any of these accounts? Should he have been?
15. It is common practice in the business, public and nonprofit sector to consult with subordinates when conducting performance reviews of senior managers (a so-called 360 is one of the best known examples). When was the last performance review of Mr. Mollinedo conducted? Were keepers and other direct and indirect subordinates consulted as part of that review? Does the zoo have written policies in place concerning executive performance reviews? If so, please provide a copy.
16. I believe the zoo’s agreement with the city makes clear that zoo documents should be made available to the city Rec and Parks Department and therefore should be available to the public under the city’s sunshine law. The zoo, however, has not been forthcoming with specifics about the incident or readily provided related documentation. Why is this and how is this allowed under the contract?
17. Who was the designated person for emergency contact for the zoo at the time of the escape? When was that person accessed and by what form of communication?
18. Your firm specializes in crisis communication. The field of crisis communications is well established and has some commonly accepted principles. One of these is truthfulness–officials and spokespersons should be forthright and direct when communicating with employees, the public and the media. Another is timeliness–respond quickly to media and legal inquiries and be be proactive. Expressing empathy and putting people first are also important. Accepting responsibility goes a long way and blaming and attacking is contraindicated. As a public health official, I have been trained in crisis communication. Zoo management seems to be evasive and not forthcoming. Requests for interviews have not been responded to. How do you think the zoo performed initially in this regard and how have things changed since your firm became involved? For example, simple questions are still not being answered. I was surprised to know the zoo had been closed for a long time for a variety of reasons (including the fact that it was a crime scene) and then after they hired your firm, the Web site announces the zoo is closed in honor of the victims. This seem disingenuous to me. I find it dubious that that was really the motivating factor for the extended closure. Any response? (My own opinion is that given joint oversight, the wording of the agreement, and the fact that many dispositions will be conducted, I see no advantage to not responding affirmative and immediately to requests for information and records.)
19. Did the zoo have a media relations policy in place concerning employee interactions with the media prior to this incident. If so, please provide a copy.
20. Does the zoo have a response to SF Chronicle articles that paint a picture of poor management and very bad employee morale at the zoo?
The Zoo Blues
This story was first published May 19, 1999
IN EARLY 1997, the San Francisco Zoo had a serious public-relations problem. The zoo wanted San Francisco voters to approve a $48 million bond measure to overhaul the facilities. But the Asian elephant exhibit was making the zoo look bad.
Tinkerbelle the elephant had been living alone since April 1995, when her longtime companion, Pennie, was put to sleep. Animal activists had been complaining that, for an animal that herds and has complex social interactions in the wild, life alone was cruel and unacceptable. According to the minutes from a board meeting of the San Francisco Zoological Society, the private group that manages the zoo, executive director David Anderson decided it was time to find a friend for Tinkerbelle. He thought he found her in Calle.
Calle was about 30 years old and on exhibit at the Los Angeles Zoo. She had put in her time entertaining humans, working shows in Las Vegas and giving rides to kids at the San Diego Zoo. Animal advocates in Los Angeles were trying to get her to a sanctuary in Tennessee. But Anderson decided he wanted her in San Francisco.
Animal rights advocates hated the idea. Gretchen Wyler, executive director of Endocino-<\h>based Arc Trust came to San Francisco to check out the zoo’s facilities. “I was devastated when I saw how small and barren it was,” Wyler told the Bay Guardian.
S.F. Zoo curator David Robinett denies that the decision to move Calle to San Francisco had anything to do with the timing of the bond campaign. “We were anxious to move ahead and get a companion for Tinkerbelle,” he told us.
Either way, the zoo was in a hurry — and it wound up with a huge problem on its hands. Before leaving Los Angeles, Calle was tested for tuberculosis. According to Susanne Barthell, who ran the Council for Excellence in Zoo Animal Management until her death last fall, the elephant population at the L.A. Zoo was known to have problems with T.B., a claim Robinett denies. But S.F. Zoo officials did not wait for the test results to come back before they brought Calle north on March 19, 1997.
The tests came back positive. The zoo had just bought a tuberculous elephant.
As soon as she arrived, Calle had to be quarantined from her new companion. And the financially troubled zoo got hit with elephantine medical bills. Calle’s treatment would run from $60,000 to $65,000 a year, curator Robinett told the city’s Commission of Animal Control and Welfare in July.
It got worse. In separating the elephants, zoo workers put Calle in the cushier exhibit quarters, which at least had some vegetation and a watering hole. Tinkerbelle was moved to neighboring quarters, without vegetation or water. She had to poke her trunk through a hole in the wall to refresh herself. (Only this month was the electrified barrier between the two areas removed permanently. Calle is cured, and the two elephants can now interact.)
The elephant debacle is all too typical. San Francisco’s zoo has never been one of the country’s best — but six years after it was placed in private hands, it’s in worse shape than ever. Privatization was supposed to save the zoo; instead it has failed it. A Bay Guardian investigation based on interviews and documents shows:
* Dozens of animals live in squalid, substandard conditions: primates have died because of disease-<\h>ridden cages, orangutans are cooped up in tiny cement boxes, rare rainforest mammals are losing hair.
* The number of zoo employees charged with taking care of the animals has plummeted — while the number of other employees has doubled.
* The U.S. Department of Agriculture is so frustrated with the S.F. Zoo’s animal mistreatment, it is threatening to fine the zoo thousands of dollars — and one foundation that had given hundreds of thousands to the zoo has withdrawn its funding.
* Thanks to a string of expensive bond issues, the public is still paying for the zoo, but zoo executive director David Anderson has seen his own salary substantially boosted.
* Marketing expenses have skyrocketed, and the zoo is heavily dependent on amusement park–<\d>type rides and other non-educational attractions to break even.
* City officials have become so skeptical of the zoo society’s ability to manage itself that Board of Supervisors president Tom Ammiano called for an audit last spring. Stanton W. Jones, an auditor who works for budget analyst Harvey Rose, is expected to release the audit late this summer.
In fact, the zoo is a case study of everything that is wrong with privatization.
A bad place to live
The push to privatize the zoo got rolling in 1990, when David Anderson was brought in from New Orleans’s Audubon Park and Zoological Garden. The zoo’s infrastructure was crumbling, and its finances were in bad shape. Sources in the Recreation and Park Department say Anderson enthusiastically advocated privatization as a solution.
Without accepting bids from other organizations, Rec and Park handed over control of the zoo to the private San Francisco Zoological Society, which had been raising money for the zoo since 1954. In the summer of 1993 the society agreed to lease the premises and take over management of the zoo, promising to balance its budget by June 30, 1998 (see “Sold!,” 10/19/94).
Anderson has made out handsomely from the deal. In 1994 the society paid him $81,443; by 1997 his total compensation had gone up to $148,500, including a $25,000 bonus — in a year when the zoo was still losing money.
The animals have fared much worse.
Within the past two months the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which governs animal care in zoos, has issued the society a warning. According to the USDA, inspectors have repeatedly notified zoo administrators about problems. If those problems aren’t corrected, the agency is now threatening to fine the zoo.
“We made it clear that they are not doing a good job on maintenance,” Wensley Koch, supervisory animal care specialist with the USDA’s western sector office, told the Bay Guardian. “Basically there’s a management problem.”
Records of inspection reports dating back to 1990 reveal problems throughout the zoo facilities — from the big cats’ lairs to the monkeys’ quarters. Wood is rotting; fences are rusting. Rats get into food areas and leave droppings.
Many of the problems are associated with the primate center, which has been a trouble spot since it was built in 1985. The colobus monkeys’ metal climbing bars were grooved. Since keepers couldn’t clean them of feces, the monkeys got sick from contact with their own excrement. The colobus population was decimated. According to Sandra Keller of Citizens for a Better Zoo, which was watch<\h>dogging the zoo at the time, 53 of the 85 primates in the center died.
“Once they opened it, the animals started dying,” Keller told the Bay Guardian. “They didn’t quarantine the new animals sufficiently when they were brought in. They basically wiped out the whole primate collection. It was heartbreaking.”
But turning the zoo over to the private society didn’t help. If anything, conditions are worse. A September 1996 USDA inspection found feces all over outdoor structures in the primate center. And in April 1997 an inspector noted that rat feces were found in the gorillas’ indoor housing area and that weeds and bushes grew out of control in the outside exhibit.
Inspectors frequently found that problems they had repeatedly brought to the society’s attention had not been addressed. For example, rotting wooden structures in the primate center went unrepaired for years between inspections; wire mesh fences keeping the colobus monkeys from escaping the exhibit continued to rust for a year after the USDA-imposed deadline to fix them.
Indeed, records from the past three years show that the zoo was regularly blowing its USDA-imposed deadlines on fixing facilities.
“When you’ve been writing ‘rust up’ for 10 years, most people get the message,” Koch told the Bay Guardian. “We’re at the point where, if the zoo doesn’t shape up, we might be forced to take an action against them. We can fine them up to $2,500 per violation.”
“If we’re looking at a monkey enclosure and we explain that a rusty enclosure is a problem and we note they also have rust at the zebra site, then the next time we come out, we don’t want to see a rusty elephant enclosure,” she said. “What becomes obvious is that either they don’t care about complying or they have decided not to. When they’re doing that, they’re using us as a quality control agency. The impression is that they have no quality control themselves.”
A 1993 incident involving an orangutan named Chewbacca sheds light on how zoo officials have tended to respond to agency involvement. Responding to an anonymous complaint, the USDA found that zoo officials had been planning to keep the 150-pound Chewbacca confined to a four-by-six-foot converted entryway for more than a year while they used his quarters to breed chimpanzees.
“From my perspective it appears that the project with the chimpanzees has been ill conceived,” William DeHaven, a sector supervisor with the USDA, noted on Oct. 12 of that year. “If you do not have sufficient space to conduct a breeding program properly, we feel it should not be conducted at all.”
USDA veterinary medical officer Richard Spira found Robinett to be uncooperative in dealing with the situation. “Incredibly, David Robinett took exception to my observation that the temporary night quarters were cramped at best,” Spira wrote to Koch. “This … is to give you a little taste of the double<\h>speak I’m getting at the zoo.”
The zoo has been no quicker to respond to problems brought to its attention by private citizens. On January 23, 1997, Barthell complained to both the zoo and the USDA. Barthell, an outspoken critic of the zoo, reported that she had seen a herd of six blackbuck standing in a driving rainstorm with no shelter, not even a tree. She also noted that 12 kangaroo were soaked and huddling against a wall for protection, their shelters too small to protect them.
Robinett responded to her concerns in writing. “This is not atypical of antelope,” he wrote. “In fact, many species react to inclement weather by seeking open space rather than cover.” He also said the kangaroo shelters were fine.
The USDA didn’t see it that way. The agency informed the zoo in February 1997 that shelter provided for both the blackbuck and the kangaroos was inadequate.
Robinett denied that the zoo has a cavalier attitude toward facilities problems.
“A lot of it is the age of the enclosures,” Robinett told us. “It is also a problem of limited resources. When you’re patching the patch of a patch — that’s when there are problems.”
He said that the zoo had to choose carefully how to spend its funds and that it gave the highest priority to the ones that officials there felt posed the greatest hazard to animals. And Wayne Reading, the society’s chief financial officer, says the infrastructure improvements are well underway, funded by donations and bond revenues.
Private zoo, public funds
When the society assumed control of the zoo in 1993, it was on the verge of collapse. City officials had neglected at least $10 million in facility maintenance; the number of paying visitors was in decline.
According to the zoo society’s lease, the city agreed to keep paying the zoo $4 million a year (to help cover the cost of civil service employees). In exchange, the society was supposed to take over the zoo and make it financially viable.
The society was not able to pull the zoo out of the red. In the spring of 1997, after four years of losing money, zoo officials admitted to acting parks director Joel Robinson that they were paying operating expenses with a loan of roughly $2.5 million from Wells Fargo as well as with money raised before the zoo went private. And in November of that year, Reading told the Rec and Park Commission that the marketing expenses for that fiscal quarter were over budget by $47,000. The society raised admissions prices in spring 1998 to cover an immediate $250,000 shortfall.
The society had already started going after an infusion of public funds. The minutes of society meetings show that for more than a year, the group devoted almost all its energy to getting a $48 million bond issue passed. According to the lease, the city agreed to sell at least $25 million in bonds to improve crumbling facilities. The society was supposed to raise $25 million from private funders by the time the bonds were sold. (To date, the society has raised $17 million.)
In June 1997, voters passed the $48 million bond issue. The zoo expected the bonds to start selling in late fall 1998, but they were delayed by a lawsuit seeking to overturn voter approval of the 49ers stadium bonds, which passed in the same election. That litigation was thrown out of court; the zoo bonds are expected to be sold this summer. The society has also taken $26 million from bonds issued for rebuilding after the Loma Prieta earthquake.
The city’s Recreation and Park Department responded to the zoo’s financial troubles by looking the other way. Rather than conduct an audit of the zoo or monitor the operation more closely, the department announced that it would no longer scrutinize the zoo’s budgets at all (see “The Secret Zoo,” 11/26/97, and “Don’t Feed the Zoo Society,” 12/10/97).
Rec and Park’s former finance director Ernie Prindle, who had been checking the zoo’s budgets until 1997, told the Bay Guardian that Anderson seemed to want the zoo to have the advantages of being run by a private organization while still being covered by a public one. When the zoo admitted in the fall of 1997 it was further in debt than it should have been, Anderson asked why the department could not just take care of the deficit and make the numbers work as it had done in the days when it was part of the city system, Prindle said.
“We had to tell him it does not work that way anymore, now that the zoo is a private contractor,” Prindle said.
Carnival or classroom?
By the end of October 1998 the zoo was in the black for the first time since the society took it over. But with that success has come controversy. Instead of investing in the animals, the society has capitalized on theme rides, such as the merry-go-round, the Puffer Train, and the Tiger Express ride.
Amusement-park attractions and a pricey marketing campaign — costing the zoo almost $3 million from 1995 to 1998 — have brought more visitors to the zoo. That plus higher ticket prices means more money. And Anderson is certain that with this increased revenue, the zoo will ultimately be able to shed its carnival atmosphere and focus on its true mission: education to foster environmental activism among visitors.
But if environmental activism is Anderson’s goal, he has a strange way of showing it. For example, when the zoo brought in a lorikeet exhibit in April 1998, it allowed its sponsors to place a display — a shiny Ford sports utility vehicle — near the site.
“If you’re setting yourself out as an educator, then you’ve got to have a source of funds,” Anderson told the Bay Guardian.
Some of Anderson’s more straightforward forays into environmental education have had trouble. One of his pet conservation projects is the Madagascar Fauna Group, head<\h>quartered at the San Francisco Zoo. Among other things, the group supports the protection of Madasgascar’s Betampona National Reserve and hopes to re-introduce zoo-bred lemurs and other endangered primates, such as aye-ayes, to the island nation’s wilds.
Since 1994, when the society assumed control of the zoo, it has spent $785,222 on its Madagascar projects.
In August 1997 Anderson brought two aye-ayes from Duke University’s primate center to San Francisco. Merlin and Calaban are the only male-female aye-aye pair in any zoo in the United States. Zoo officials hope to breed them.
Anderson speaks proudly of the work the zoo has done to educate people in Madagascar about protecting aye-ayes. But he hasn’t done such a great job protecting the ones in his care.
In Madagascar, aye-ayes spend time more than 60 feet high in the rainforest canopy, where they pull bugs from trees with their long fingers. In San Francisco, they live in an eight-foot-tall glass case.
Male aye-aye Merlin has had an ongoing problem with hair loss on his hind legs. As a result the zoo’s vet put him on steroids periodically from 1997 to 1998. Zoo officials blame the hair loss on two factors: premature separation from his mother, which took place while Merlin was at Duke, and the stress of being introduced to a new female.
Anderson told the Bay Guardian the hair loss wasn’t a big deal; some activists feel differently.
“That’s a shame,” Shirley McGreal, director of the International Primate Protection League, located in South Carolina, told the Bay Guardian. “Those guys cover a good distance of territory in the wild.”
But the aye-ayes haven’t been a huge success with zoogoers either. Aye-ayes are nocturnal creatures and extremely timid; Merlin and his mate, Calaban, rarely leave the shelter of leafy branches. The best chance you’ll get to see an aye-aye at the zoo is in the gift shop, on a sweatshirt or a postcard.
Paying the price
Luckily for the society, hardly any of its donors know about how the zoo animals live; it’s hard to woo grants with rusty fences, feces-filled cages, and cramped cement cells. But one funder did find out.
In September 1994, the zoo announced the opening of its $2 million Feline Conservation Center. Keepers had already raised questions about the new facility; some thought it was unsafe for the keepers because the animals could reach through the fence to the service area with their paws and claws.
When zoo administrators brought in Denver Zoo curator John Wortman, he had the same concerns. In his final evaluation to the Zoo Society, written in October 1994, Wortman stated, “I hate to sound like a broken record, but the old safety issue rises again. The repairs should have been made prior to the felines moving unto the enclosures. Fortunately, enough of the lock system functioned and no person or creature was hurt during the shake-down period.”
The keeper at the time, Terry Moyles, was fired by the zoo March 1995. Barthell and other animal advocates suspected he was dismissed because he was outspoken about the inadequacy of the facility; Robinett denied the charge.
In a Jan. 30, 1995, letter to the charitable foundation that was funding the center, Wortman described the Feline Conservation Center as “a poor design and dangerous exhibit for both the animals and the zoo keepers.”
The center’s problems got its funders’ attention. In a Feb. 19, 1999, letter to city auditor Jones, executives from the Redmond, Wash.–based Leonard X. Bosack and Betty M. Kruger Charitable Foundation blasted the zoo.
After the foundation made initial grants of more than $200,000 for the center, the letter states, “the Foundation Board also pledged two payments of $162,000 to be made in 1994 and 1995 contingent on continued progress reports. The Foundation rescinded the pledge of $325,000 in 1995 after years of unsatisfactory response from the Zoo Executive Director and the Board of Directors.”
The letter goes on to lay out how the zoo hired a contracting firm with no experience in building wildlife care facilities, how it wasted funds, and how it ignored the recommendations of its consultant.
“As John Wortman noted, the `major problem was the inability of the S.F. staff to design a modern animal facility,’” the letter stated.
Robinett denies that the zoo staff is to blame. “To say this was a screwup in design — I think that is incorrect,” Robinett told the Bay Guardian. “We have had success [with the center], especially with breeding. It’s been a very good exhibit.”
It is that attitude that makes some people worry about making animals pay the costs of privatization.
Privatization “has not helped animal care,” Ron Lippert, a longtime animal health technician and former member of the city’s Commission on Animal Control and Welfare, told the Bay Guardian. “What privatization has done is allowed the society to do more things on their agenda — without the public scrutiny they had before. It seems like this is [Anderson and the society’s] kingdom and palace, and they want to see how much they can show it off.
“But the bottom line is that with the cold, windy, and wet climate at the zoo, it’s the wrong city. It’s the wrong location. Animals who aren’t used to handling ocean climate have to handle it day in and day out. Maybe we just shouldn’t have a zoo here. The zoo society was supposed to do all this great stuff. But as far as zoos go, this one still sucks.”
Bob Porterfield contributed to this story.
Edwards Reconsidered
There have been good reasons not to support John Edwards for president. For years, his foreign-policy outlook has been a hodgepodge of insights and dangerous conventional wisdom; his health-care prescriptions have not taken the leap to single payer; and all told, from a progressive standpoint, his positions have been inferior to those of Dennis Kucinich.
But Edwards was the most improved presidential candidate of 2007. He sharpened his attacks on corporate power and honed his calls for economic justice. He laid down a clear position against nuclear power. He explicitly challenged the power of the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical giants.
And he improved his position on Iraq to the point that, in an interview with the New York Times at the start of January, he said: “The continued occupation of Iraq undermines everything America has to do to reestablish ourselves as a country that should be followed, that should be a leader.” Later in the interview, Edwards added: “I would plan to have all combat troops out of Iraq at the end of nine to ten months, certainly within the first year.”
Now, apparently, Edwards is one of three people with a chance to become the Democratic presidential nominee this year. If so, he would be the most progressive Democrat to top the national ticket in more than half a century.
The main causes of John Edwards’ biggest problems with the media establishment have been tied in with his firm stands for economic justice instead of corporate power.
Several weeks ago, when the Gannett-chain-owned Des Moines Register opted to endorse Hillary Clinton this time around, the newspaper’s editorial threw down the corporate gauntlet: “Edwards was our pick for the 2004 nomination. But this is a different race, with different candidates. We too seldom saw the positive, optimistic campaign we found appealing in 2004. His harsh anti-corporate rhetoric would make it difficult to work with the business community to forge change.”
Many in big media have soured on Edwards and his “harsh anti-corporate rhetoric.” As a result, we’re now in the midst of a classic conflict between corporate media sensibilities and grassroots left-leaning populism.
On Jan. 2, Edwards launched a TV ad in New Hampshire with him saying at a
rally: “Corporate greed has infiltrated everything that’s happening in this democracy. It’s time for us to say, ‘We’re not going to let our children’s future be stolen by these people.’ I have never taken a dime from a Washington lobbyist or a special interest PAC and I’m proud of that.”
But, when it comes to policy positions, he’s still no Dennis Kucinich. And that’s why, as 2007 neared its end, I planned to vote for Kucinich when punching my primary ballot.
Reasons for a Kucinich vote remain. The caucuses and primaries are a time to make a clear statement about what we believe in — and to signal a choice for the best available candidate. Ironically, history may show that the person who did the most to undermine such reasoning for a Dennis Kucinich vote at the start of 2008 was… Dennis Kucinich.
In a written statement released on Jan. 1, he said: “I hope Iowans will caucus for me as their first choice this Thursday, because of my singular positions on the war, on health care, and trade. This is an opportunity for people to stand up for themselves. But in those caucuses locations where my support doesn’t reach the necessary [15 percent] threshold, I strongly encourage all of my supporters to make Barack Obama their second choice. Sen. Obama and I have one thing in common: Change.”
This statement doesn’t seem to respect the intelligence of those of us who have planned to vote for Dennis Kucinich.
It’s hard to think of a single major issue — including “the war,” “health care” and “trade” — for which Obama has a more progressive position than Edwards. But there are many issues, including those three, for which Edwards has a decidedly more progressive position than Obama.
But the most disturbing part of Dennis’ statement was this: “Sen. Obama and I have one thing in common: Change.” This doesn’t seem like a reasoned argument for Obama. It seems like an exercise in smoke-blowing.
I write these words unhappily. I was a strong advocate for Kucinich during the race for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination. In late December, I spoke at an event for his campaign in Northern California. I believe there is no one in Congress today with a more brilliant analysis of key problems facing humankind or a more solid progressive political program for how to overcome them.
As of the first of this year, Dennis has urged Iowa caucusers to do exactly what he spent the last year telling us not to do — skip over a candidate with more progressive politics in order to support a candidate with less progressive politics.
The best argument for voting for Dennis Kucinich in caucuses and primaries has been what he aptly describes as his “singular positions on the war, on health care, and trade.” But his support for Obama over Edwards indicates that he’s willing to allow some opaque and illogical priorities to trump maximizing the momentum of our common progressive agendas.
Presidential candidates have to be considered in the context of the current historical crossroads. No matter how much we admire or revere an individual, there’s too much at stake to pursue faith-based politics at the expense of reality-based politics. There’s no reason to support Obama over Edwards on Kucinich’s say-so. And now, I can’t think of reasons good enough to support Kucinich rather than Edwards in the weeks ahead.
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Norman Solomon’s latest book is “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State.” For more information, go to: www.normansolomon.com