Steven T. Jones

Bike Plan is on track

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SFBC director Leah Shahum addressed the Land Use Committee today.

Photo and story by Joe Sciarrillo

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) today quelled fears that its $120 million budget deficit might kill or delay implementation of the long-awaited Bicycle Plan and its 56 near-term projects, which have been stalled by a three-year court injunction.

Timothy Papandreou, assistant deputy director of Transportation Planning and Development at the SFMTA, told the Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee that a new expanded bike network of paths, lanes, racks, and signage will likely get underway in July.

“July/August, we’ll physically start putting things on the street,” he said to a packed room of bicycle supporters, with neon green “Bike Plan Now!” stickers on their shirts and helmets, enthusiastically greeted the news.

SF protests target corporate greed

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Photo and story by Ben Terrall

Popular anger at obscene corporate bonuses being issued in the midst of economic collapse was directed at Wells Fargo’s offices in the SF Financial District yesterday.

Wells Fargo received a $25 billion bailout from the federal government. And while its CEO was paid $26.6 million last year, the bank’s tellers make a median wage of $10.20 per hour.

The San Francisco rally was part of a national day of action that included protests in 33 states. The crowd of around 60 people waved signs that included, “IT’S TIME FOR AN ECONOMY THAT WORKS FOR EVERYONE.”

Waging the online war on war

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By Andrew W. Shaw

Both the media and the anti-war movement are hurting today, on the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, but a growing information clearinghouse that combines both continues its quiet but surprisingly well-resourced fight from its home base in San Francisco’s Sunset District.

Antiwar.com disseminates information about developments in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as stories on the Middle East, Sudan, various other hot spots, and what it calls “the war at home.” The site – with up to 120,000 hits per day and up to 500,000 regular visitors — has a paid staff of 10 people, funded by donations and philanthropic foundations.

“There’s a lack of original sources,” Eric Garris, who started the site in 1995 during the US intervention in Bosnia, told us. “At the beginning there were a lot of reporters in Iraq. Now it’s a lot of ‘official reports’ and unverifiable blogs. We incorporate both.”

Garris edits and publishes the site, drawing from a broad range of regular contributors.He said the site has grown more sophisticated with each military deployment, illustrating Randolph Bourne’s philosophy that “War is the health of the State.”

“Americans are suffering war fatigue and are vulnerable to myths. Most people think Obama is going to end the wars, so they don’t have to worry about it anymore,” Garris said, a sentiment he disagrees with. “Obama seems weak on foreign policy: he keeps [Hilary] Clinton, [Robert] Gates. That’s a slight shift, not really a change.”

Finally, Labor starts to come together

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By Steven T. Jones

The labor movement, which in recent months has been destroying itself with bitter infighting among various unions, today announced an important accord that could help achieve health care reform and passage of the landmark Employee Free Choice Act.

Service Employees International Union and the California Nurses Association (which recently joined forces with the National Nurses Organizing Committee) jointly announced a “dramatic agreement” to cease recent hostilities, organize and divide up potential new members in health care, support allowing states to create single-payer systems, and work together on political objectives such as the EFCA, which would make it far easier for employees to unionize.

“ We are lining up to make sweeping changes to this country’s broken healthcare system, and as we wait for the starting gun it is imperative that we put the past behind us and move forward by putting all healthcare workers in the strongest possible position to define reform, move legislation and make the new healthcare system operational,” SEIU president Andy Stern said in the statement.

“This agreement provides a huge spark for the emergence of a more powerful, unified national movement that is needed to more effectively challenge healthcare industry layoffs and attacks on [Registered Nurses’] economic and professional standards and patient care conditions,” said CNA/NNOC Executive Director Rose Ann DeMoro.

Meanwhile, the National Union of Healthcare Workers – formed by local labor leader Sal Rosselli and others following divisive battles with Stern’s SEIU – finally has its first 350 official members after organizing four Northern California nursing homes and it hopes to soon add tens of thousands more (most of those current SEIU members) as it prepares for its founding convention in San Francisco on April 25.

Reflecting on reflections on war

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By Steven T. Jones

Today is the sixth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, a decision that diminished our democracy, our moral standing, and our empire. There’s much to be said about this legacy, and we plan to post some reflections on the subject today and tomorrow, but first I’d like to link to my lengthy look at its implications from a year ago, a widely reposted story that was recently named as a finalist in the Best Essay category for the Western Publishing Association’s 58th annual Maggie Awards (I find out next month whether I win).
If you missed it last year, please give it a read today because I think it raises issues that are still relevant under our new regime, maybe more than ever.

Station leaves the train

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› steve@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY The Transbay Terminal rebuild is moving forward, but this multi-modal downtown transportation station seems to be pulling away from what was supposed to be its showcase centerpiece — the California High-Speed Rail Project — before it can satisfy the design and capacity needs rail officials require.

San Francisco officials from Mayor Gavin Newsom to Sup. Chris Daly, who sits on the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) Board of Directors, all say high-speed rail must be a component of the Transbay Terminal. Yet they were caught off-guard when the California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) recently made clear that the station would need to handle up to 12 trains per hour, more than double what current station designs can accommodate.

Even as phase one of the station got underway in December (see "Breaking ground," 12/10/2008), it lacked the more than $300 million needed for a so-called train box that would make it easier and cheaper to later bring high-speed rail and Caltrain into what would otherwise be a $4.3 billion bus station and commercial complex.

TJPA officials were struggling with how to secure that money, ideally through federal stimulus funds, when officials from CHSRA and Caltrain told a Feb. 25 Metropolitan Transportation Commission meeting that current designs were inadequate for their needs (see "Stimuutf8g transit, 3/4/09).

While the demand for straight platforms, rather than the curved ones TJPA designed, can be fairly easily addressed, the volume issue is far more significant and costly. During a March 12 TJPA meeting on the issue, engineers said that adding the third floor of trains that would be needed to handle 12 trains per hour would add $1 billion to the cost. Even if no train box is built, TJPA officials say that just the foundation work and deeper dig needed for the higher capacity would add $500–$700 million to the cost of the project’s first phase.

The good news is the federal stimulus package sets aside $8 billion for high-speed rail development, and Transbay Terminal is one of the few shovel-ready projects out there that would qualify for immediate assistance. The bad news is the criteria for attaining those funds won’t be ready by the time TJPA plans to sign its construction contracts in late May.

Delaying the project would not only increase costs and forestall the immediate economic stimulus impacts of the construction, it would also anger bus transit agencies such as AC Transit, which kicked in $57 million to the project. "AC Transit expects the TJPA to meet its commitment to AC Transit and its passengers, as well as keep the construction of phase one on schedule," AC Transit attorney Kenneth C. Scheidig wrote to TJPA March 11.

At the March 12 meeting, TJPA members uniformly reacted with dismay to their dilemma, criticizing CHSRA for its unrealistic demands. Program manager Emilio Cruz said the agency had designed to high-speed rail specifications and only learned in January of the desire for trains to run up to every five minutes during peak hours.

"They were presented without adequate justification for why they need increased frequency," Cruz told the TJPA board as he offered his analysis for why that frequency isn’t needed to handle the 12 million annual riders the system predicts for 2030 and noting that Tokyo — which has far greater volume and density — is the only high-speed rail station in the world to run 12 trains per hour.

CHRSA executive director Mehdi Morshed said Cruz isn’t a rail expert and disputed his analysis, noting that Tokyo and Paris each have multiple stations that together run far more than 12 trains per hour. He also noted that the BART system is at capacity after just 30 years.

"We are building a train that has the capacity to hold not just the riders in 2030, but beyond that," he said. "They are trying to fit the high-speed trains of the future in a very limited space, and we’re telling them that’s not adequate."

Morshed said his agency is still years away from getting into station design, but has been as accommodating as possible with TJPA’s desire to move forward now. Daly and others have pointedly criticized CHSRA and its chair, Quentin Kopp, to which Morshed said, "Sure, we can take all the blame, but how is that going to help San Francisco get its station?"

Burning Man season in San Francisco

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By Steven T. Jones, aka Scribe

Burning Man is more than an annual event popular with San Franciscans: it is a year-round culture, one that really comes into season right around now as the art projects take shape and the myriad theme camps starting fundraising. And recently, there have been some fun and inspiring manifestations of this festive season.

Opulent Temple, Burning Man’s biggest and most enduring large-scale sound camp (and my former camp), threw a massive March 6 fundraiser in a Treasure Island warehouse, featuring legendary DJ Carl Cox (and a long list of other spinners) and mind-blowing art pieces by the Flaming Lotus Girls and Peter Hudson. The NBC news clip above insightfully focuses on how the Bay Area’s art communities help each other during hard economic times.

Then last week, there was the benefit party for Hollis Hawthorne, a friend of the Guardian and Burning Man families who is in coma. The event at Slim’s turned out a wide range of talented acts and community-minded burners that raised a staggering amount of money for a one-night event to bring Hollis home to the Bay Area.

The Burning Man story itself came to the stage in San Francisco in January as “A Burning Opera: How to Survive the Apocalypse,” and after receiving critical acclaim for this talented production’s limited engagement, the crew will hold two fundraisers this week to stage another run: Wednesday at the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence “Burning Bingo” event and this Saturday evening at Café Flore.
There’s also the release of a film about the event, “Dust & Illusions” (an early version of which I reviewed here) by Oliver Bonin (who was embedded with the Flaming Lotus Girls at the same time I was). Among other showings is one at Chicken John’s place on March 28.
Meanwhile, the company that stages Burning Man, Black Rock LLC, is about to be homeless. That well-entrenched crew is getting bounced out of its Third Street headquarters to make way for a massive new UC hospital on the Mission Bay site. Word is they’re still looking for the right digs and only have until next month to find them.

Nurses’ union sues Sutter’s CPMC

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By Steven T. Jones and Joe Sciarrillo

The California Nurses Association (CNA) today filed a federal lawsuit to compel the California Pacific Medical Center to comply with two previous binding arbitration rulings and restore healthcare benefits that the unions says the Sutter Health-affiliated facility illegally cut.

The arbitration helped resolve last year’s CNA strikes at CPMC facilities, and they came against the backdrop of other controversies involving CPMC in San Francisco, including efforts to scale back primary care services at St. Luke’s Hospital, which serves poor Mission residents, while trying to open a high-end hospital on Cathedral Hill.

Sutter and CPMC have long tried to break its outspoken nurses union, which has pushed progressive reforms such as single-payer health care and high nurse-to-patient ratios. A March 2008 CPMC press release (PDF) criticizing the CNA strikes quoted a nurse claiming that employee conditions were fine. “During the time I’ve been working here the conditions have been great,” said Rosangel Klein, R.N., an oncology nurse at the Pacific campus.

But Nato Green, the labor representative for the CNA nurses at CPMC and St. Luke’s hospital, believes that CPMC is acting like an elite employer out of step with San Francisco values. He claims that it is “the worst non-profit hospital when it comes to charity care,” and he also fault its for union busting and rejection of recent arbitrations.

Despite CPMC’s refusal to uphold healthcare contracts and reimburse nurses’ medical payments, the Guardian has reported that its parent organization enjoyed a net income in 2006 of more than $500 million and employed sketchy tactics to pocket millions while maintaining its non-profit tax status.

Supervisorial candidate excuses police abuse

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By Steven T. Jones

Scott Wiener seems to have a real zeal for his job as a deputy city attorney defending San Francisco against police abuse lawsuits, but his attitude and public statements raise serious concerns about his goal of being elected to the District 8 seat on the Board of Supervisors next year.
Take this story, for example, in which Wiener is defending the city in an excessive force case in which Officer Sean Frost and other SFPD officers chased down Chen Ming after being called to a loud argument in SoMa. After they caught him and held him down, Frost hit Ming in the face with his billyclub, breaking Chen’s jaw and knocking out 10 of his teeth.
“The officer did not do anything wrong,” Wiener told the Chronicle, a statement he repeated to me the other day, although he wouldn’t say more about how he arrived at that conclusion (such as whether it was supported by an internal affairs investigation), claiming he could not discuss the facts of the case.
Yet excusing such obviously excessive force — including use of a billyclub in a way that goes against officer training and SFPD general orders, and using extreme violence against a suspect who was down and not threatening anyone — is commenting on the facts of this case.
Wiener could have simply denied the city’s culpability in a general way, but he chose to go further, excusing inexcusable police conduct and sending a scary message to the general public.

Weirdness at the Washbag

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By Steven T. Jones

There was a surreal air to last night’s celebration of the Board of Supervisors’ Class of 2000 at the Washington Bar and Grill in North Beach. That weird vibe was created mostly by the fact that the event was sponsored by Platinum Advisors and the Residential Builders Association, two groups that didn’t always see eye-to-eye with that progressive-dominated class.
That class – which included progressive firebrands Matt Gonzalez and Chris Daly, liberals Aaron Peskin and Jake McGoldrick, and independent conservative Tony Hall – were swept into office largely as a backlash against the top-down rule of then-Mayor Willie Brown, who shares both an office and a corporatist ideology with Platinum.
All those guys were in attendance and the mood was buoyant, helped by the free booze and food. Hall called the supervisors elected in 2000 “the original class of rebels,” while Peskin told the crowd, “Thank you for keeping the progressive spirit of San Francisco alive.”
But it was Brown who had the quote of the night in his not-so-subtle dig at the prickly current Mayor Gavin Newsom (who was rumored to be upset about the gathering): “My guess is if that class was still in place today, they would want me as their mayor.”

Transbay Terminal still lacks rail solution

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By Steven T. Jones

It’s still an open question whether the trains will ever arrive at the new Transbay Terminal, an impasse that the Transbay Joint Powers Authority Board of Directors will discuss tomorrow morning in City Hall.
After breaking ground on the new terminal in December, the project was thrown into doubt last week with surprise revelations that officials with both the California High-Speed Rail Authority and Caltrain say there are fatal design flaws that could preclude their use of the multi-modal transportation hub.
Since then, there’s been lots of finger-pointing but no real progress, frustrating city officials and transportation advocates. As Dave Snyder, transportation policy coordinator for the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), told the Guardian, “The most important thing really is that the different agencies stop fighting and figure it out so we can get this downtown extension.”

Artists sue over La Contessa arson

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By Steven T. Jones

Almost three years after La Contessa – an authentic Spanish galleon built on a bus for Burning Man by members of the Extra Action Marching Band – was deliberately burned to the ground by Nevada rancher Mike Stewart, the artists have filed a civil lawsuit seeking more than $900,000 in damages.
A 2007 Guardian cover story told the tale of this unique artwork, its colorful builders, and the man who admitted torching it. Stewart and his attorney claimed he had a right to destroy La Contessa because it had been left on property he purchased. “I was forced to clean it up,” Stewart told Washoe County Sheriff’s Deputy Tracy Bloom.
But the suit is based the federal Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, which makes it illegal to destroy artwork even if it is no longer in the artist’s possession. “It’s right on point with the facts of this case,” attorney Paul Quade told the Guardian.
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Stewart is a major landowner in the region around Gerlach, where Burning Man has been held since 1989 after it moved from San Francisco’s Baker Beach, and he has a history of battling both the organization and its attendees. Although Bloom considered the fire arson, he opted not to recommend criminal charges because he thought Steward lacked criminal intent. As he told us at the time, “Chances are this is something they will pursue civilly.”

San Francisco reactionaries and their crackdowns

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By Steven T. Jones

Fresh off of a nearly averted city crackdown on partying at the Bay to Breakers race, the Chronicle has back-to-back reports that city officials are planning to crackdown on nightlife and on impromptu dance parties, zombie infestations, pillow fights, and other flash mobs. Further embarrassing this city that once embraced parties is the fact that this threat has already made international news.

Why must city officials use threats and zero tolerance as their first resorts? Problems with trash and noise can be solved if there’s creative leadership in City Hall willing to work with the community, and leaders that value San Francisco’s unique, messy, and fun culture. Instead, we have the absentee and conflict-averse Mayor Gavin Newsom, shorttimer Police Chief Heather Fong, and Newsom’s dour, judgmental special events coordinator Martha Cohen playing reactionary roles, time and again.

Prop. 8 and American Theocracy

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This Christian minister had “gay’s” [sic] debating with him all day, but his main “argument” was simply a faith-based belief that God opposes homosexuality.

Text and photo by Steven T. Jones

I got a call from Sen. Mark Leno, who was frustrated by dealing with what he labeled “religious zealots” during yesterday’s Prop. 8 hearing and rally, and wanted to talk about my reporting on how churches bused in conservative Christians from former Soviet-bloc countries whose immigration was sponsored by Sacramento area churchgoers.

The problem isn’t with religion. After all, Leno noted that the California Council of Churches opposed Prop. 8 and the stripping away of same-sex marriage rights. People are entitled to their beliefs. The problem is with religious fundamentalists who want government and laws to conform to their religious values. Several Prop. 8 supporters told me they were trying to implement God’s will, and a couple even said that God told them to be there.

“These folks are theocrats. They want a theocracy,” Leno said. “We’re spending tens of billions of dollars fighting theocracies around the world, because they’re antithetical to the concept of democracy.”
Assembly member Tom Ammiano agreed, telling us that he’s drawing a line in dealing with these hateful religious zealots. He said someone from the Catholic League sitting near him in the hearing tried to be chummy with him, and he told him, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

Ammiano was also irritated by attorney Kenneth Starr, the darling of the religious right who argued their case yesterday, whose main argument Ammiano summarized this way, “I felt like he was saying, what are these slaves complaining about? They’ve got a house to sleep in. What, they want clothes now?”

Marriage equality showdown, on the streets and in court

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By Steven T. Jones

The scene at Civic Center Plaza today showed that the culture wars are still raging in the United States, with same-sex marriage arousing strong feelings on both sides of the debate. But it’s a clash that the California Supreme Court could largely end if it sides with San Francisco and finds that same-sex marriage rights aren’t subject to majority will.
That ruling isn’t expected for several months. While there was no clear sign during today’s oral arguments whether the court would uphold Proposition 8, swing vote Justice Joyce Kennard did seem to be leaning toward letting the measure stand, emphasizing that changing the constitution (in this case, to remove same-sex marriage rights) is “a basic right, a fundamental right” and how “this case is different from last year’s case,” when she found the ban on same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional.
But San Francisco Deputy City Attorney Therese Stewart engaged with Kennard for a long time, arguing that constitutional protections of minority rights are worthless if they can be simply voted away at the ballot box. As she said outside the courtroom after the three-hour hearing, “We hope the court will not sell our constitution down the river.”

Justices engaged with the issue

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Steven T. Jones on the Prop 8 case

Attorney Shannon Minter had just started arguing that Prop. 8 violated equal protection provisions of the state constitution when Chief Justice Ron George cut him off with questions and arguments, and the hearing has been going like that ever since, with lots of rapid fire back and forth between judges and attorneys.

“Clearly, they are deeply engaged and the read the briefs. Shannon just got one sentence out,” Attorney Kate Kendall with the National Center for Lesbian Rights told me at the group’s watch party in the basement of the main library.
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Newsom confers with Kendall.
Mayor Gavin Newsom showed up, and was called by Kendall to be recognized by the crowd “whether you like it or not,” but he didn’t have much to say this time. He watched the proceedings as George summarized arguments from pro-same-sex marriage intervenors as, “it is just too easy to amend the Constitution.”

Kendall said it’s tough to read the tea leaves just yet. Deputy City Attorney Terry Stewart is up now and arguing passionately. The infamous attorney Ken Starr (booed earlier by the crowd) is up soon.

Culture war in Civic Center Plaza

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Steven T. Jones blogs the Prop 8 case

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Photos by Steven T. Jones

Thousands of people on both sides of the same sex marriage issue have filled Civic Center Plaza as the California Supreme Court begins to hear oral arguments in the case on the constitutionality of Prop. 8. Ukrainian churches are the largest faction of same sex marriage opponents, along with “God hates perverts” wackos, while gay marriage supporters have rainbow representation. Come on down and watch the arguments on the Jumbotron outside City Hall.

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Economy kills porn’s hard-on

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Kink.com owner Peter Acworth

By Steven T. Jones

The San Francisco Chronicle today reports (way back on its Business page) on how the recession/depression and free Internet porn sites (which often steal content from paid sites) are hurting the porn industry, which will in turn hurt San Francisco’s economy.

Among the revelations is that homegrown success story Kink.com last month laid off 13 employees and scuttled plans for some new sites after a major expansion at its San Francisco Armory headquarters just last year.

Just like the newspaper and music businesses, the porn industry will need to find ways to continue to monetize its content. Maybe the bankers aren’t the only industry that could use a government fluffer these days.

Stimuutf8g transit

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› news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Public transit agencies in the Bay Area are being hit with deep cuts to their operating budgets, thanks to the recent state budget deal, and are hoping to use money from the federal economic stimulus bill to maintain their operations.

That conflict played out during a Feb. 25 hearing by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in Oakland, the agency that distributes federal transportation funds to the nine Bay Area counties, which was considering how to distribute $341 million in funding intended for public transit agencies and $154 million for road projects.

Caltrain, AC Transit, Bay Area Rapid Transit, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, other Bay Area districts, and transit user groups urged the MTC board to direct most of the money to immediate needs rather than long-term projects.

Community groups urged the MTC to abandon plans to use $70 million for BART’s Oakland Airport extension and $75 million for the Transbay Terminal rebuild in San Francisco.

“People who are most affected when Muni makes fare increases and service cuts are people who are transit-dependent,” said Razzu Engen, who represents the Tenderloin Housing Clinic and the Transit Justice Project. “You can have the best capital expansion project there is out there, but if you don’t have the money to run it, forget it, it’s not worthwhile.”

While the MTC voted to remove the Transbay Terminal expenditure — noting that it could tap into a separate pot of $8 billion for high-speed rail projects in the stimulus measure — they kept the BART extension project in place, leaving $271 million to be divided among the transit agencies.

“Our ongoing need is to maintain continuing operations. But maintenance doesn’t have a very big constituency on the commission. We have a firm commitment to capital programs,” MTC spokesperson Randy Rentschler told the Guardian.

Judson True, spokesperson for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (which operates Muni), said the money will help offset state funding losses of $61 million over the next two years and allow the agency to “rehabilitate the system.”

Among the expenditures approved by the MTC was $11 million to install 67 new Muni ticket vending machines and money for new Muni vehicles and rail interchanges.

Jose Luis Moscovich, executive director of San Francisco County Transportation Authority, supported the MTC’s decision. “[We’re] going to see money flowing through formulas to Muni to alleviate service conditions on the T-Third, N-Judah, the L.”

Moscovich maintains that the region “needs to take the opportunity of the stimulus package to do things that are going to change the way we live. Paradoxically, these big projects like the Transbay project are the things that are going to take us in that direction.”

Yet the removal of the Transbay Terminal funding, while upsetting to Sup. Chris Daly — who serves on both the MTC board and the Transbay Joint Powers Authority board — turns out to be even more complicated than it seemed at the time.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported March 2 (“Transbay high-speed rail station hits a snag”) that both the California High Speed Rail Authority and Caltrain — systems expected to share the new Transbay Terminal rail terminus — are now expressing doubts about whether they will use the facility after all because of design flaws with its rail component.

CHSRA chair Quentin Kopp was quoted as saying, “Three sets of engineers met and concurred that the design for the station was inadequate and useless for high-speed rail.”

TJPA spokesperson Adam Alberti, who has been sparring with Kopp in recent months over whether Transbay will be the terminus for a high-speed rail system extending from San Francisco to Los Angeles (see “Breaking ground,” 12/10/08), told the Guardian, “I don’t think it’s as bad as it sounds.”

He said the TJPA is currently working to resolve the engineering problems and handle the increased volume expected from high-speed rail and Caltrain and he hopes to have a solution in place by March 12, when he said the MTC will revisit the matter.

BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger also defended the Oakland Airport extension, telling the Guardian, “The challenge in transit is not one over the other. We need to address all those requirements if we’re going to end up with an effective, functioning system that continues to attract people out of their cars and into the smart environmental choice — which is public transit.”

 

Score one for fun

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› steve@sfbg.com

City officials and race organizers have dropped plans for a crackdown on partying at the annual Bay to Breakers race in the face of a massive grassroots organizing effort that quickly generated more than 20,000 members opposed to the proposed bans on alcohol, floats, and nudity.

"We’re pleased with the outcome. I think it’s a victory," Ed Sharpless of the group Citizens for the Preservation of Bay2Breakers told the Guardian. "When you have over 20,000 people join your group in two weeks, it means something."

It means that people are tired of the string of crackdowns by Mayor Gavin Newsom (and his special events coordinator, Martha Cohen) that the Guardian has labeled the "Death of fun" (see "Death of fun, the sequel," 4/25/07), which have included canceling Halloween in the Castro District and placing restrictions on the Haight Ashbury Street Fair, How Weird Street Faire, North Beach Festival, North Beach Jazz Festival, and other events.

And the public outcry demonstrates that big events like Bay to Breakers don’t belong to the organizers and sponsors; they’ve become the property of the entire city.

Sharpless was part of a Feb. 27 meeting convened by the Mayor’s Office that included opponents of the crackdown, race organizers, neighborhood groups, and Sup. Ross Mirkarimi, who has been trying to balance complaints about public urination, drunkenness, and trash with his concerns about killing yet another party.

Afterward, the Mayor’s Office issued a statement indicating that floats would be allowed as long as they aren’t used to transport alcohol, urging Bay to Breakers participants to register for the race, and stating that alcohol consumption "will be subject to the laws of California. Race organizers will coordinate with the San Francisco Police Department to proactively remove kegs and glass bottles of alcohol from the race course."

While that alcohol policy was left deliberately vague, those involved with the negotiations and the May 17 event say drinking will be allowed as long as attendees don’t get out of control. As with alcohol, nudity isn’t specifically allowed, but it’s no longer explicitly banned.

"The issue was it had gotten out of hand last year," Sam Singer, a crisis communications specialist brought in by race organizers, told the Guardian. He said the race organizers wanted to put a stop to the mayhem and proposed the restrictions, but eventually agreed to work with the partyers this year.

"There was a request by the pro-float, pro-alcohol group to continue what had been a San Francisco tradition. Now it’s incumbent on them to register for the race so organizers can pay for it," he said. "This debate has created a positive social pressure to be a cool person and to be respectful of one’s self and one’s neighbors."

Opponents of the crackdown agree and say they will work to keep things under control. Or as Citizens for the Preservation of Bay2Breakers wrote in a public statement, "The problems with public drunkenness … we get it and agree. People, you need to act more responsibly. Pace yourself. It’s a long day. Don’t get out of hand and don’t ruin it for the majority of folks who are acting responsibly. Most importantly, take care of your friends and each other."

But there are still outstanding questions about whether race organizers (including for-profit corporations AEG and ING) are providing enough portable toilets and trash receptacles to avoid last year’s problems, concerns that were raised but not resolved on Feb. 26 during a permitting hearing before the city’s Interdepartmental Staff Committee on Traffic and Transportation.

Organizers told ISCOTT they would provide 650 portable toilet this year, compared to 550 last year, and that they would be more concentrated around problem areas such as Alamo Square and the Panhandle. But Sharpless told the committee that still wasn’t adequate, describing last year’s problems as "mostly a logistical issue" and saying the proposed crackdown and hiring of Singer, who often charges $400 per hour, were counterproductive.

"Why is it they bring in such a heavyweight to deal with this when they could have applied their resources to these logistical issues?" Sharpless told ISCOTT. "They want to take away the fun in San Francisco to make a buck."

Longtime runner Tony Rossman, who supports the crackdown, didn’t agree and told ISCOTT, "There is a one-word problem here and that is alcohol. And that requires public enforcement."

But Conor Johnstone, a runner who opposes the crackdown, told ISCOTT that banning alcohol was an attack on the character of the 97-year-old event, rather than dealing with the main stated problems. "I think an increase of 100 Porta-Potties is anemic at best," he said.

Jeremy Pollock, who was representing Sup. Mirkarimi, offered ISCOTT and race organizers a long list of suggestions to mitigate the problems, including using large capacity urinals, creating an end point with entertainment and Dumpsters for those with floats, and setting a cheaper registration tier for those who aren’t serious runners. "Nobody wants to see this race end," he said.

Opponents of the crackdown say they will continue working to resolve the outstanding issues.

"We’re not done, folks. There is still work to be done. Issues to be resolved. Details to be hammered out," Citizens for the Preservation of Bay2 Breakers wrote in a public statement. "What wasn’t discussed at the meeting and tabled for later discussion are the logistical deficiencies we still believe exist with race organizers’ plan for the event. Recent research by our group revealed that the New York Marathon sources 2,250 toilets for 39,000 participants in their race, while AEG race organizers source only 500 toilets for 65,000 participants in Bay to Breakers. Could it be that there are such massive issues with public urination because there simply aren’t enough toilets?"

Mirkarimi was happy with the agreement, but said it didn’t address the logistical concerns he’s been raising. "It’s a good step in the right direction. However, this is predicated on the trust that may not be felt until the day of the race. We were looking for specifics to improve this race."

New push for Harvey Milk Day

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By Steven T. Jones
Last year, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation by Mark Leno (then an Assembly member and now a Senator) to establish May 22 as “Harvey Milk Day,” honoring the late San Francisco supervisor’s birthday with a “day of special significance” marking his causes and encouraging schools to teach children about his life.
Tomorrow, Leno will try again with Senate Bill 572, and this time he’s appealing with Schwarzenegger’s Hollywood side by tapping Sean Penn, who just won the Best Actor Academy Award for his title role in “Milk.” Leno and Penn will appear at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Tosca Cafe (242 Columbus) and will be joined by Assembly member Tom Ammiano, Geoff Kors of Equality California, activist Cleve Jones (a character in Milk and consultant to the film), and Milk’s nephew Stuart MIlk.
Mindful of not pushing too far in tough fiscal times, Milk Day would not be an official holiday from work, but it would finally recognize a civil rights leader who was ahead of his time.
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Please, Hearst, don’t leave us with just the Examiner

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By Steven T. Jones

This morning’s San Francisco Examiner, with its ridiculous cover story puff piece on Pacific Gas & Electric CEO Peter Darbee, offers another compelling reason why it would be disastrous if Hearst Corp. shuts down the San Francisco Chronicle.
This great city simply can”t have its sole daily newspaper, owned by a right-wing zealot from Colorado, claiming that our only hope for dealing with global warming is a business executive whose company isn’t even meeting the modest renewable portfolio goal of 20 percent and who admits to only recently being convinced that climate change is happening and expressing surprise that those who long denied it were full of shit.
It was embarrassing enough that the Examiner endorsed John McCain for president, but now we have obvious and dubious corporate flackery being presented as journalism. For all the Chronicle’s flaws and shortcomings — and there are many — they at least maintain some semblance of professional journalism standards. With the exception of some solid local stories by real journalists, the Examiner is simply a newsletter for the narrow corporatist perspective. It’s an insult to San Francisco.

Howard Zinn’s organized disobedience

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By Paula Connelly

“There is great power in disobedience” ~ Howard Zinn, Mission High School Feb. 26, 2009

Howard Zinn started Voices of the People’s History of the United States six years ago when his best-selling book “People’s History of the United States” sold its 1 millionth copy. It has since expanded from a collection of stories with occasional live readings to a traveling performance, making stops across the U.S., including San Francisco last night.

Actors, musicians and activists read from historic primary sources to illustrate a side of history that standard textbooks tend to exclude. The sustained interest in the People’s History of the United States and the mounting interest in Voices show that this is a story that Americans want to hear. In his charming introduction, Zinn said, “You go into the past, you get lost. You never come out. I want to go into the past and learn something.”

Today, I think this desire is catching on.

Partiers save Bay to Breakers

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By Steven T. Jones

Two weeks after city officials and event organizers proposed a crackdown on partying at the annual Bay to Breakers race – announcing a ban on nudity, alcohol and floats – a large and well-coordinated opposition campaign has effectively scuttled the restrictions.

Event spokesperson Sam Singer disavowed the nudity ban almost immediately, then over the course of this week indicated floats would probably be allowed as long as they register and that a zero tolerance policy on alcohol was unenforceable, with the focus now on keeping out kegs of beer and glass bottles.

Although Mayor Gavin Newsom’s announcement today tried to cast the outcome as a negotiated compromise, Ed Sharpless of the group Citizens for the Preservation of Bay2Breakers said they got everything they wanted. “We’re pleased with the outcome. I think it’s a victory,” he told the Guardian. “When you have over 20,000 people join your group in two weeks, it’s means something.”

Yet Sharpless and other opponents of the crackdown – who testified yesterday at a city permitting hearing — say the race organizers are still underestimating how many portable toilets and trash cans will be needed to avoid last year’s problems with litter and public urination, something they will continue working with the city and race organizers to address in the coming weeks.

P.S. For more on this rare victory for preserving fun in San Francisco, read next week’s Guardian.

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