Watching City Hall #247, (12-28-03) Closing the books on 2003 Well, let’s see. … On the down side: I lost my mom and my brother and one of my two cats. I lost my home and furnishings and most of my clothes. My income is in question as is my food supply. I lost a few pseudo-friends and Matt Gonzalez lost the race for Mayor. My gutt needs x-rayed and my teeth need repaired. I need glasses so’s I can see you better and I can’t hear lots of what you say. And, I didn’t get laid. On the upside: I can’t hear lots of what you say and I can’t see you very well. False teeth don’t hurt and my mom, brother and cat are in a better space. My friends keep me off the streets and I’m the poster guy for homeless writers. Matt Gonzalez will do just fine and my gutt stopped hurting when I cut out the bourbon. … I’ve made a handful of serious new friends and strengthened the bonds with the friends I made in the previous year. I fought a good fight for a good cause and fought well. And, I hope to get laid. Final comments on the Gonzalez campaign I recall sitting in my office at Gonzo Central at 2am with 6 or 8 other reporters drinking strong liquor and comparing notes from the campaign field. … Adriel Hampton (Murphy’s right, Adriel is the press’s Journalist of the year), Carlos Petroni, Savannah Blackwell, Mike Sugerman, J.K. Dineen & Ethan Fletcher. … Matt Hirsch, Chris Finn, Chance Martin & Randy Shaw. … Joe O’Donoghue and Walter Wong. … Delores Huerta and Mateo Gonzalez. ... Matt tossed me inteviews with reporters from Time and the Washington Post and a host of national and international press. … The late night gatherings in the office with the plate glass window in the bottleneck that forced the entire campaign to within a finger’s reach (one of the sexiest women in the world stopped daily and planted a huge kiss on the window while we all –men and women alike – panted from the other side of the glass) … Those gatherings of the reporters late at night were the high point of the last year for me. … That’s why one of my resolutions is to follow up on my dream to create a new San Francisco Press Club inside a simple little giant nightclub called (modestly) ‘h. brown’s West’. … The club, of course sits beneath a hotel/condo complex housing journalists ranging from the near’extinct, Warren Hinckle, to the ‘scholarship/intern’ class and every visiting journalist who stops in town. … The entire operation is in a Gonzalez designed Land Trust that guarantees journalists will always have a place to gather and drink and flirt and lie and cajole and make merry. … That’s my hope for the new year. One of em, anyway. Matt’s campaign I had nightmares about the campaign for two weeks after it ended. The thing was that intense. … It’s tough to stop a runaway ocean liner. … The current we were all in was so fucking powerful that it carried me way past the landing. … You understand what I’m saying? I honestly believed that Matt couldn’t lose. … Even, if they cheated. … I was wrong and that both galls and empowers me. They sure as hell cheated and we sure as hell can create a national model for elections reform here to insure it doesn’t happen again. Gore did nothing. … Mondale did nothing. Hopefully, Gonzalez will initiate public review of the entire electoral process in San Francisco, from people to hardware and process as a gift to the community for New Year. That’s job #1 for me January 1st. Get in the vanguard. Start agitating for the country’s first ‘open-source’ voting machine system (don’t let em bull shit you, having a ‘paper trail’ is meaningless, if the data base is not open source) … That’s #1. Number two is to fire every poll worker in the City. … Yeah, I went to a bunch of polls on election day and I’ve never seen a larger collection of hacks, deadbeats and thugs in my life. … Draw the poll workers from a random drawing of registered voters who offer to serve as poll workers for a day of training and a day or service (paid) in lieu of jury duty. … This works on a number of levels. … First, the local neighborhood gangsters lose control of the polls (oh yeah, another reporter suggests cutting polling places from 542 to 300 for quality control issues – I agree) … It’s bad out there, folks. You wouldn’t believe it. Hunter’s Point was positively 3rd world. Newsom brought thugs in white City vans who jumped out raising signs and screaming and promptly dropped their signs when realizing they were on camera and went away screaming: “I just want to get my money and get out of here!” (someone got a warrant?) … “This could be dangerous.” said Adriel Hampton who was driving the three of us. … “Take their money, but don’t do what they tell you to do.” Marie Harrison told the hired black youth. … Marie, she was the third reporter in the car on that rainy day when I went into the BayView and saw this shit. … I asked my buddy, Patrick Cassidy (recovering at home from having half of his right foot amputated – what a brutal year in so many respects) … Patrick perked up. He laughed and said: “What’s the name? ‘A. Phillip Randolph’? Never heard of them. … Sounds like the group Jessie Jackson used to hire to ‘Mau Mau’ for Operation Breadbasket. … They had lots of levels. Left overs from Mayor Daley. Their toughest element was the ‘P Stone Rangers’. When you rented this organization you rented attitude and danger. ‘You want signs? Clubs? … Guns? … Guns cost lots extra!’” … I began to realize that for all of my time on the earth and down very close to same, … there was lots I didn’t know. The voting machines are fixed. (I’ll assume that until we have access to the vendor’s ‘proprietary’ codes – tells us how the vote was counted and will reveal any imbedded ‘Trojan horse’ cheater instructions) … The machines are fixed. The absentee ballots are rigged. Plenty of poll workers are crooks. ‘Downtown’ will pay and do anything to win. The voter rolls are padded. Payoffs abound. Hell, it’s my kind of town. Please forgive me for all of these late notes on the election. I was dog/house-sitting at Gallagher’s & his computer is at the office downtown. In order to communicate with me, you had to really know me. It was good to get away from all but a half dozen people. And, you never called me back, Angela. (Actually 6 people run this town, you know – 3 are rich and onerous & 3 are poor and cantankerous – you figure out who we are) … Anyway, we’ll let Gavin get on his little white donkey and ride up the stairs of City Hall. He’s a real savior alright. He spent either 10, 20, 30 or even 40 to 1 to beat a young Latino lawyer who campaigned 100 days. … The national Democrats called Gavin a, “rising star” … imagine that. Normally, it is the Republicans who bury the Democrats in spending. In San Francisco, a Democrat (Newsom) spends 7 years and 10 million dollars to become Mayor & has to resort to … whatever. But, bottom-line this. If Gavin has to outspend a Green Party Latino lawyer 40-1, how much would he have to spend to win against a Texas-oil Republican? Shit, the boy will be spending 10 billion dollars to be Governor! … Hey, I mean, isn’t there some point where we say: ‘Enough!’? OK, Gavin’s in with no complaints from anyone but me. … Just as I figured. … I had a good year too. No one shot at me. … No one beat me up. … No one poisoned my food. I wasn’t jailed or committed or sued. I didn’t knock anybody up or down. I didn’t get a parking ticket or test positive for anything. I did a lot of dancing and some crying. I didn’t fall in or out of love. I learned more than I forgot. It’s important to be realistic as you grow older. Remember, you can always reach your goals … as long as you set them low enough. More campaign anecdotes I spent the last couple of weeks of the campaign entertaining Texans. … Yep, uh huh, I did too. First, Ed Lopez and John Somethingorother from Matt’s high school class stopped by and brought their own, as we say, to what, as I mentioned, was fast becoming ‘h. brown’s SF Press Club Bar and Lounge’ … Sure was. Anyway, I gave away height, range and 30 years to the boys but I held my own with the brew. And, of course, the bull shit. … I’m a good host. I’m well informed and funny. I have charm and charisma out the ass (so to speak). Then, Matt Sr. arrived. When Joe O’Donoghue first met Gonzalez Sr., it was in my office at the campaign and I had the pleasure of introducing them. … O’Donoghue beamed and thrust out a powerful handshake: “Ahhh, it’s the tobacco baron!” Joe has a way with a word and a situation. He and I are the most extreme of the possible type ‘A’s or whatever. Matt Sr. is a listener. … Yeah, he’s some guy. This ‘baron’ (Joe was referring to the Chronicle’s characterization of Matt’s father in a series of campaign smears the Hearsts ran on behalf of the Newsom campaign) … this baron ‘importer’ came out of the military and made a living filling his car’s trunk full of cigarettes and stacking crates of Fritos on the roof because he and his wife made their living schlepping this stuff from town to town in a hot, dusty East Texas county. … Now? … He prefers scotch. … Personally, as you know, I’ve always been partial to bourbon in those rare instances that I do partake. … I borrowed an ice chest from Paul Hayward, who ran the nightclub next door (‘Club Elector – 8’) I got bags of ice for the chest and Matt Fitt, the campaign photographer brought an exotic mix of concoctions for South Seas drinks and the press brought flagons of the hard stuff and, saints, be praised … and, right there in the wilderness, … we built a full service bar. … Which, of course, attracted more press. OK, I keep promising to end the election and I’ll try again. But, first … what are the records of a campaign like Matt’s worth? You know. Things like who gave how much. Every precinct organizer. The entire ‘progressive’ network. … They worth anything? You know what happened? I broke down my little office in the day following the election. Hey, I stapled a couple of hundred items to the walls and as an old janitor/painter, I know that while pins and staples are better than tape, pulling them can be a pain. … I always leave things better than I found em. … It’s a personal value. … So, I pulled every staple and cleared things off the walls I didn’t hang and prepared to get out in the rush that building owner, Walter Wong had suddenly imposed upon the volunteer section of the building. … There went Bruce Wolf (who’s worked IT for Carol Migden & is running for ‘D-triple C’) … there went Bruce pushing a shopping cart of information that Matt Gonzalez just spent $491,000 to collect. “It’s worthless.” … Yep, kid you not. That’s what Bruce said when I asked him why he was helping to isolate the campaign information the campaign had gathered. … I offered that perhaps the information (which he was moving into a new The San Francisco Housing Authority admits to having 905 vacant units. That’s enough space for every person on the streets of San Francisco. No more than 3 to a unit in which they have a private bath and kitchen. … Imagine that. Just clean the places out and move the folks out of the doorways, right? … I say, … right?? … Will they make that happen? … Nope, Willie’s last gift to the people of color of San Francisco is to move to evict the residents of 15 of the City’s remaining 18 Public Housing Projects so’s their homes can be used by white developers to make a bundle of money. As one prominent developer was heard to say: “Hey, you didn’t think you were gonna keep that view from out of the window of your crack house forever, did you?” (Many of the affected projects have sweeping bay views, often combining vistas including both bridges … from the double window of a housing project unit that is a drain on the public coffers and depreciates the value of adjacent property?) Didn’t take a genius to see that one coming, huh Willie? If Willie has his way, all of these will be in private hands before he leaves office. That means goodbye to 80% of the tenants. Now, they’re adding market rate housing in with the new ‘projects’. Hell, you won’t be able to get an apartment in the new projects unless you’re the private appointments secretary of a high official. You know? … Yeah, law students, political consultants … “Will you look at my view!!” Speaking of views I was recently astounded to have a respected associate tell me that he felt that 3 million was a good population for San Francisco. … I am still astounded. … The problem, of course, … is global. We live on the most valuable land on the face of the earth. It is natural that economic pressures upon such a limited space would eventually lead to the displacement of the poor.