Watching City Hall #210“Bill has a good lie in the intermediate rough.”
(TV golf announcer)
As Jens might say: “Sounds like Bill’s got it going on.” … I know, I know, I’m a pervert and I see sex in everything, but you have to admit there are lots of erotic sounding phrases in the game. Take a few samples that I heard just watching the second round of the NEC tournament with Tiger Woods playing:
“Watch his stroke, Bob … smooth and strong … this could go right in the hole.”
I’ve told you before to keep your kids away from my columns. Politics is a dirty, nasty business full of crime and sex and greed and sots and addicts. It’s kind of like one of my parties. … Ahhhhh, brings back old memories. … But, back into the mud pit.
Odds & Ends
If the Board of Supes OK the Glen Park Library plan (as presented by the Residential Builders Association) … they suck. … Personally, I don’t think a library should be the junior member of a condo-association but that’s just what the developers plan. In this convoluted political climate, the City first bought the land for the library, then sold it to one of the Mayor’s Irish developers at a discount, then they plan to rent back a portion of it at beyond market rate but with no final control over the property since the grocery store and condos that will share the lot will be able to outvote them on … on … ANYTHING! … Can you believe that shit like this skates right through the Board on a regular basis now? … Hey, we had a right to think that the new Board would side with neighbors over developers now and then, but sadly, it has been rare for the Board to overrule the Planning Commission and … the Planning Commission is as bad as ever. If this ugly pig skates through the Board, look for most of the Library Bond money (over 100 million) to be spent quickly funding RBA projects that not only share grounds with the new branches … but, also control the premises. Dumb … dumb … dumb!
Speaking of new parking meters. … The Examiner’s Bruce Bellingham noted this morning that the City’s new parking meters can be easily disabled. … Now, I hate to say I told you so (actually, I friggin’ love to say it) … much as I hate to rub the Board’s nose in it, I did tell them that buying Freddie Hampton’s new meters last year against the advice of the Budget Analyst (who, at least, wanted another bid) … that it would come back to bite them in the ass. … I noted that the Analyst (the MVP of City Contractors for 34 years in a row) … I noted that the Analyst had questions about whether the City’s meter mechanics could handle repairs on the new meters. He thought the City could end up losing money. … The Board, of course … ignored him. … Now, the chickens are coming home to roost on pert near each and every parking meter in the Tenderloin. While no estimates are yet available as to how much repairing each disabled meter will cost … it is certain that none of the money you pour into the meters will make it to the General Fund. … Not only do you get a ticket or towed (or both) … not only that, but the money you pay won’t go to help kids’ playgrounds or City parks. … Nope, it will go right into the pockets of Willie’s vendors. … You lose!!! … Neat huh? … Willie wins again.
Gavin cleaned up Muni?
Last week I left the opening of Matt Gonzalez’s campaign office (sharing Horseshoe Café’ just West of Fillmore on Haight) … I strolled over to catch the 22 Fillmore with one of the supe’s volunteers. I was going to Petco to get some Advantage flea treatment for my herd of cats & she was headed to work in the Mission. … We waited for the bus … and waited … and waited.
She ended up being late to work (the bus was 25 minutes late) … I told her I was going to wait for the next bus, which I figured would be just a few minutes behind. … I was wrong. … It was 60 seconds behind. … The driver was pissed. He said the female driving the bus in front of him had an attitude and delayed on purpose. He’d complained, he said, but Muni would do nothing about it. …
We played bumper tag with the butt driver of the rig in front of us all the way to 16th and Bryant where I disembarked. There was a Muni inspector stationed on the corner (#2890) and after I had done my futile search for Advantage (see below) … after that, I went to ask the Muni inspector about why the butt lady driver had been allowed to hold up the line and to file a complaint. … He stood on the pavement at the bus stop yapping on his cell phone and ignored me. A little fat guy with a big silver belt buckle and an attitude. … After a few minutes, I dug out my press pass and waved it at him. … Then, he talked to me. … He said the buses were 10 minutes apart as they were supposed to be. Everything was perfect, was what he said. … I mentioned that he was mistaken, and that I knew this because I’d been on the trailing bus since Haight street. “Oh, they were 2 minutes apart at Haight, but 10 minutes when they got here.” … Put simply, he lied. “Why don’t you write a story about it?” … That’s what he said. … Then, he went back to his cell phone. … I walked away thinking that at least he wasn’t as bad as the old inspector they’d had on the corner. That one just sat across the street in his vehicle, stone drunk and sipping booze from something in a brown paper bag. Muni still blows. Gavin just made it more expensive.
Now, that shows why the drivers on that line cannot improve service by complaining to the inspectors. If all of the inspectors are like this one, it explains a lot. I’d like to say this surprised me, but I kept remembering a conversation I had with a coked up Muni driver a couple of years ago:
“You almost can’t get a job with Muni unless you just got out of prison.”
“Every line has a switch-back where you can circle a block and change the order of the buses. That way, if someone has been waiting an hour for a bus in Hunter’s Point, the bus that picks them up will be on schedule. The bus that should have picked them up 40 minutes ago will be second or third in line a minute behind. We use the time to smoke crack and screw our women. We take turns being the first bus cause you get so much shit from the people who have been waiting. But, when they turn in your number, according to the schedule, you were on time. The inspectors BETTER agree with you.”
“They put these GPS things on every bus to track them, but you just break off the antenna and say some kids did it.”
Muni still sucks. The staff is still full of bums. The only difference is there are more of them. This is the Newsom ‘reform’. Newsom and Ammiano have also made certain (joined lately by Bevan ‘diesel’ Dufty) that the ‘new’ muni fleet will again be diesel (does Michael Burns have a tie to Cummins Diesel back in his home Ohio?) … not only did Newsom and Dufty lead a charge to keep the fleet, filthy diesel, they also decided that a hundred million or so for the new buses shouldn’t come from the City, but should be borrowed from a conglomerate of unnamed investors doing business out of the Cayman Islands! Plus, (you won’t believe this) … plus, maintenance on the fleet will be done from a City pier to be leased to an outside vendor chosen by the Mayor … the pier space will be almost free and … AND, the vendor will be able to tow in buses and the like from other locals in the Bay area to do repairs. … I’m not making this shit up folks.
So much for Gavin Newsom’s Muni ‘Reform’.
SPCA goes ‘for profit’
The San Francisco Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has more donors than any such institution in any comparable city in the world. Now, I’m into rescuing cats as you know, so I’ve worked with them several times over the years and they’ve been wonderful. … Those days are ending.
The new SPCA management is using a big chunk of the money donated to ease the suffering of feral animals to create a ‘for profit’ hospital to be staffed by outside City vets who want to get out from under high rental space. Instead, the SPCA will provide all of the facilities to them for free and they will charge you out the ass. … That’s fair, huh?
In order to make certain there is enough money to build the new private hospital for the mercenary vets (no freebies from these folks) … to save money, the Society plans to cut out their free treatment for feral cats program. … That’s nice, isn’t it? … I mean, you agree that rescuing and treating animals should be all about profit, right? … After getting off the bus, running behind the butt driver, I got a taste of how the ‘new’ SPCA will work.
Petco had no Advantage. The knock-off substitutes don’t work and it is flea season. Every place in town was out of advantage but had bins full of the useless knock-off product. I went from Petco, across the street a ways to the SPCA. I asked to purchase some Advantage.
“You have to be a registered customer.”
“Listen, I’ve done lots of cats through your feral rescue program. Just call Mary Ann.”
“Oh, OK then. They just told us we can’t sell anything without a prescription from the vet.”
“Great!” (I dig out my money - $80 for 8 treatments! – as the clerk is pulled over by a female vet who talks to him) … “I need two cards of the 2 kilogram cards.”
“I can’t sell it to you. The vet says your cat needs to be registered.”
“The cat IS registered. ALL of them are registered. I got them all through you. They are suffering with fleas and so am I. This stuff is NOT prescription! It is available over every counter in town but they’re out.”
(The vet comes forward.) “We need to see the cat before we can prescribe this.”
“Yeah, I see where you’re coming from. … There are 5 cats. You want to charge me about $100 each to tell me they have fleas. You are one of the new vets who will be closing down services to the feral population and making big bucks doing so.”
“I won’t sell you the flea medicine.”
You don’t want to know what I said to her next, but I made a short speech to the entire room and went away. Yet another public service handed over to greed.
One more
Some dude named Bud Hazelkorn wrote one hell of a story for August 17th’s San Francisco Chronicle Magazine. It was called: ‘Crime Pays … Security guards are packing guns and rounding up suspects – and no one’s watching’ … In the Tenderloin, when the thugs from Citi-Apartments harass senior tenants in newly acquired apartment buildings, the police help them! It was around 11pm when I got the call from the terrified tenant. The ‘security’ goons were back. I headed right over and told him he should call the cops.
“We pay the cops.” Said the crew-cut young man at the folding table in the lobby of the O’Farrell street apartment house. Kid (real buff, in all black with hob nailed boots and a set of handcuffs on his belt) quickly amended his statement: “We give them information and they leave us alone.” … Now, that’s scary. I didn’t want to believe it, but I’d had people tell me they saw Citi’s head security goon, Andrew Hawkins, sitting in undercover cops’ cars. … You see, I know these guys.
Two years ago Citi (formerly ‘Skyline’ Realty) bought the building I’d lived in and managed for the previous 5 years (676 Geary). At the time, they sounded fine. I talked to Hawkins on the phone about security problems in the neighborhood and it sounded like he had some good ideas. Our idea of quick response up until then had been an informal arrangement amongst neighbors and shopkeepers that went something like … if you have trouble, run out into the middle of Geary and yell: “MONGIE!!” … This would bring out the best Palestinian wrestler in the world, who was now the night clerk at the Star Market Liqour store on the corner. But, Mongie died and … Hawkins and his boss, David Raynell had apparently come up with a better idea. … Trouble is, their idea turned out to be a private police force that roamed their buildings in the middle of the night, forced their way into apartments and were generally charged with getting a list of people they carried with them out of buildings the company had just purchased. They were … and are … the spear tip of gentrification in San Francisco.
I’d gotten calls like this before. … I’d written about the issue. That night’s call came from a twice wounded retired Korean War vet Hawkins was trying to get out of his rent-controlled apartment. They’d shuffled him out of his unit while they did ‘repairs’ on his unit (a common ploy they use) . On this night, the vet (Paul Barkdoll) had apparently been on the goon squad’s list of people to harass. He was frantic. I got nowhere with the kid in the lobby. He told Barkdoll and I that we should: “Go back to Europe!” I guessed he must be a red-neck Indian. Now, there’s a redundancy. I went home and called the cops.
‘Mr. Wilson’, as the kid in the lobby on O’Farrell called himself was right. The cop who talked to me at Tenderloin refused to even send a unit to talk to Barkdoll or his tormentors. Clearly, the cops were on the side of the goons. I went back around to talk to the veteran but I turned back when I came across 3 black limos from Citi parked in the dead-end street across the way. They were full of Skyline goons dressed in all black and they were laughing at me. … Pretty much the same thing happened to me on Geary. I was advised by friends who knew to tell the neighbors I feared for my life from Hawkins and his boys and write it in my column. “Then, if they come into your apartment, blow them a-fuckin’ way.” … Now, I’ve always been all talk and I simply moved. … Now, these assholes are buying the building where I presently couch-surf with a friend. They’re buying everything.
Where does Skyline get their money? A broker told me that Skyline went to New York and raised several hundred million dollars several years ago to buy up Tenderloin apartment buildings. They proceeded to bid way over market price for a couple of dozen buildings, then put millions more into total overhauls (often, of places that needed no work). … Is that good business? … Sounds like someone could be laundering money to me. If that’s so, it would explain why they aren’t adverse to using intimidation against tenants.
I don’t know. I just wanted to put it all on record in case the bastards shoot my ass. I’ve called the cops. I called 6th District Supe, Chris Daly (he’s got a good heart, but the cops ain’t gonna do shit to help him) … what would you do? I’ll just hope we get a new mayor who’ll appoint a police chief who dumps the Tenderloin District Captain and puts in someone with an aversion to vigilantes and some empathy for the poor. Right now, the cops are working with the goons and you can’t have a worse situation.
Any good news?
Well, certainly. … I got the Advantage, shampooed the cats and adopted one out (‘Buddy’ went to Rick Hansen) and have a line on another (‘Sister’ will go to Bogdan and Jola). … Jens has his first serious girlfriend in a decade (‘Hi, Leona!’). … None of my friends or family have died for almost 2 months. … As I mentioned, Chris Daly talks to me again. … I have a party to go to tonight and the weed has been great. … At my age, as a good friend of mine likes to say: “It’s all good!”.
Love da one you with:
