Watching City Hall #249, (01-05-04)What the hell is a ‘progressive’, anyway?
(Eileen Left)
Search me, Eileen. … No, really, … search me. … OK, bad joke and the year just started. … Where the hell was I? … Yeah, what is a ‘progressive’? … I mean, shit … we just won almost 50% of the vote in San Francisco and we don’t even know who the hell we are? … That figures. (Incidentally, Eileen will be back in columns from now on – she was temporarily excised from my work at a suggestion from the highest ranks of the Gonzalez campaign. She’s pissed too, so I can hardly be expected to take responsibility for anything she says.)
It’s also reassuring
As I mentioned, it not only figures that a near majority of San Franciscans cannot define their political identity, … it is downright reassuring! … I’m working with a guy named Aaron Barnes to help him launch a new online news publication. It is dedicated to the new ‘progressive’ movement in San Francisco whose crowning achievement to date has been, the near-election of Matt Gonzalez (a Green) as Mayor. … Funny thing is, about a month or so ago, I tossed Aaron out of the Gonzalez Central Headquarters when he came in driving a Mercedes at midnight and said he wanted all kinds of materials to launch a new ‘Gonzalez for Mayor’ effort in Gavin’s own backyard (District #2). I assumed he was a spy for Newsom! … As happens so often, I had to apologize profusely to the boy the next day. … Bottom line is that I couldn’t identify a progressive.
That’s Gavin’s problem
The most amazing thing that came out of this race for Mayor was my new friends. … C’mon, you were thinking I was gonna say I got laid? … Naw, no such luck. … It was a toast someone held up at Gonzalez’s crib on New Year’s eve when they said: “To New Friends!” … and someone across the room added the eternal Irish close: “To absent friends.” Somber moments. … But, I realized that for the first time in awhile, the ‘new friends’ portion of the toast was so very, very true. And, as tears formed in my eyes, I realized I’d reached the Nirvanah of every drunken poet who ever followed some wavering tractor-beam into town. … The new friends could afford to pay for the rounds! … How the hell could you beat that?
Where was I? … Yeah, I made friends with Aaron Barnes because we have common values although he drives a Mercedes and lives in the rich part of town and I’m a rolling stone. … That’s why the progressive movement can continue to grow in San Francisco. … Hell, joining some political parties and movements is like going to a friggin’ Klan meeting, or something. … I’m floundering here. … Progressives can be rich as well as poor. … Yeah, that’s the point I was trying to get out there. … I thought that gentrification would mean the end of progressive politics in San Francisco and that is not the case. … Recent research on the Gonzalez campaign data seems to indicate that it is possible to have money and also have a heart. … You don’t need to be in rehab to be an artist, either. … These were all news to me. … It seems that ideas matter. … To the new arrivals who paid top dollar for their digs, too. Soooo, all those market-rate high-rise apartments rising South Of Market that were supposed to produce an out-of-the-closet Republican Supervisor are going to vote for Chris Daly from now on. … Beats me. I was wrong, at least on the short-range effects of gentrification upon the voting demographics. If anything, the town went further left.
Where does that leave you and me?
Pack up. It’s more ‘pay to play’ now than ever. Newsom’s people are not putting ‘Land Trust Housing’ on the March ballot. … Naw, it’s something misnomered as: ‘Workforce Housing’. … Now, as I’ve indicated above, that doesn’t mean that the people who eventually occupy this housing will not share my own political viewpoints. Indeed, that seems to be the nature of the local immigrant. However, they’ll certainly have more money than you or I. … By the time they get around to voting through some land trust bond funds, I’ll be living with Big Foot up North. … Bottom line … the town will still be liberal, but there will be no poor remaining. That’s the entire point for ‘Downtown’. I mean, how the hell can you tell someone to live on $59 a month in a town where ‘Workforce Housing’ requires a family to make $10,000 a month? … Let’s look at some more numbers.
Limiting population?
We have just under 780,000 people in San Francisco right now. A good friend said the other day that he thought the City could support a population of 3 million. … I was flabbergasted. … He noted that we’d just approved an upgrade of the Hetch-Hetchy system that would increase the carrying and storage capacity of the system to that level. … He didn’t note that virtually all of that expanded capacity will go to the likes of San Mateo County. Imagine the increased pressure on the sewage system? … Imagine a Police Officers Association with 10,000 members. … Think the Texans will charge more for the gas to fuel PG&E’s dinosaurs? … Pack up.
Nope, what will really happen is exactly what is happening. Every turnover of rent-control property will be followed by enormous ‘pass-through’ upgrades that will double the costs of the units. Hell, it’s been happening for years. It’s the way I got the boot on my own last two places. … Eventually, you and I are out of here and, what’s left?
I recall when Willie Brown was asked that question (‘What’s a town with no poor?’) … Willie answered: “Maybe that’s not a bad thing.” … Hmmmm.
At the time, I was younger and still thought I might achieve some kind of financial success and recall thinking that it took lots of guts for him to say that and that I kind of agreed with him. … I mean, imagine a town with no poor. … Isn’t that what the world has been working towards? … So, here we are a few years down the line from Willie’s comment and I’m one of the people who’ll have to go unless I can boost my bottom line by a factor of 10 or some such shit. … I’m wondering if maybe having no poor people is such a great idea after all. … I feel like a cow getting herded toward … toward … toward? The City limits, at least.
Sometimes I hate being right
The morning paper had an innocuous item on the Sports page about how 500 or so veteran golfers in two clubs at Harding Golf Course were complaining that prices for a shoot-around (or, whatever the hell they call it) … costs more than a lap dance at the O’Farrell Theatre now. (Something like, up to $75 to take your best shot in each case now.) Personally, I couldn’t afford $75 for a heart transplant, but all of that aside, I am interested in rising prices among other things.
Two years ago, when Willie Brown moved through Rec & Park’s flunkies to apply a portion of a hundred million or so in bond money to toss out all of the members of the golf clubs at Harding and the Swimming Pools and the folks who had stables at the Golden Gate Stables … I do recall saying that these items, along with building a garage that guaranteed people would have to pay money to come to the park … no more free parking – I guaranteed it was to put the park more firmly under the control of the rich, who felt they owned the place anyway. …
I was right! … Ha ha! … Funny, it doesn’t feel great. Kind of a downer, actually. Yeah, the horses got sent out of the stables which are built of re-barred concrete with thousand year tile roofs (in a funny turn, the WPA reached from the grave and saved the things – now, to justify tossing out horses and families for the first time in over a hundred years, Park & Rec staff are cutting holes in the concrete between the stalls so’s the horses can talk to each other) … yeah, dumped the horses and citizens from the stables. Word is that the new boss of the stables will be the woman who runs the horse rides on Fisherman’s Wharf but lives in Marin. Friend of Willie’s and Gavin’s. … Then, there’s the golf course.
A couple of months ago, the PGA had a tournament at a City Park back East. … The pros had one hell of a time. … It was an ugly course, to be sure. It was overgrown and the like and was truly urban. … The pros loved it. They kept talking about how it reminded them of the courses they grew up on. … Now, San Francisco’s Harding, untamed … made that place look like shit. … The renovation was not necessary. … That’s what I’m saying and it’s the truth. A guy named Sandy Tatum (one of the swells) wanted to give our gold course to the PGA and, if Jake McGoldrick hadn’t gotten in the way (there, and the Marina – Jake ain’t on the top of the guest list for the SF ‘old’ money) … Jake kept em from privatizing the place, but they went ahead and spent 10 times what they needed to make the mortgage on the place so high that it would necessitate greens fees that guaranteed most of the course’s traditional users could afford to come back.
Privatizing Civic Treasures is what Willie Brown did best. … Ask the town of Sunol, California which he turned into a gravel pit. Ask the golfers at Harding where fees have tripled for an unneeded upgrade that could have been had for 10% of the cost actually charged against the voters’ bond measure funds. … Ask the horses who became dog food. … Ask my cat, ‘C.C.’ wandering aimlessly and sending nightmare pleas in her quest to reunite with her evicted humans (I left her and her sister with a neighbor 2 months ago upon our eviction and she got out and went to find me … tough, since I had no home) … Ask evicted small sailboat owners in the Marina who are being evicted to make room for large yachts. … Oh yeah, all true. … Lord, if daddy had lived to hear me defend the owners of small yachts against those of large yachts. …
Lunch with Angela
This piece was meant to be my initial contribution to the new HYPERLINK "http://www.sfprogressive.com" www.sfprogressive.com (I think that’s the right address). … As usual, I’m late. … Anyway, the centerpiece was to be my description of my lunch Tuesday with my friend, Angela Alioto. … Let’s backtrack a couple of days and set the stage.
I looked over the rack of suits in my closet
OK, so I don’t have a closet or any suits. I knew Angela wouldn’t hold my wardrobe against me. Once she took me to a party with 300 of the City’s most powerful people and, when she saw my shorts and thongs … she trots back upstairs, ditches her designer stuff and comes back in a sweat shirt and jeans. … My kind of girl. … She does stuff like that all the time.
Did you know that if you wear one of those sports watches with the Velcro band for 3 or 4 days without taking it off, that almost all of the time … you’ll develop a rash on the inside part of your wrist (skin more tender) … ? … I sanded my feet and took my change of clothes across the street from Frank’s (Frank Webster, my buddy who owns the place Naomi & I crash – a Mission District Vic condo, he’s polishing – may be for sale) … I took the near-new shoes I got at the junk store near Frank Gallagher’s … had to wash my shoes … real underwear (I have 2 pair and only wear them on special occasions) … few pair of socks (I change my socks lots even in the worst of circumstances – the feet are always the first to go) … the socks, a couple of long sleeve dark shirts that will show off my ‘save the whale’ tie given to me by my professor wife who left me for a colleague so long ago … Baggy jeans that are developing holes from wear that necessitated calling in the skivvies … (you wanted to hear this, right? – don’t you get ready for dates like this?) So, my friend, Frank doesn’t have hot water right now, so I have to arrange laundry in one place and a shower in another and lunch in another … pretty typical for me, really.
I decide I’ll go jeans jacket and baggy jeans with a woven leather belt, dark shirt, the whale tie (very tasteful all silk sea green and blue – pod of whales swimming from the wearer’s right, toward the left side) … I buy a cup of detergent from the ancient Chinese man who runs the tiny Laundromat. It is .65 and the washer is 1.00. Both are bargains. … I have to stand by the dryer as it spins the first 15 minutes because the tennis shoes always hit the dryer door every 50 revolutions and knock it open. I think about the questions Aaron (Progressive editor) … think about the questions he wanted me to ask. … I’ve forgotten them. … I check for a notebook. … No notebook. … I check for a pen. … No pen. … I’m nearing my ready mode. I still have to shower.
Marc & George’s house
I gather my damp clothes and shaving kit and back pack and head down Capp street for a date with a shower George Aluska has arranged for me at he and partner, Marc Salomon’s place on Adair. … You getting the idea here, that just walking out the door clean & groomed is tough when the door isn’t yours? … … I luxuriate in the shower for way too long. … The room is warm as a tropical jungle with a floor heater, all pre-heated for the honored guest-from-the-street. … Lord, gay people are sensitive. … I scrub off a week’s gathering of sloughed skin and scraped and sanded callous, washing it down the drain in repeated latherings from head to foot. It is paradise. … I shave, put on my just damp clothes (shit, it’s raining anyway, so who’s gonna notice I didn’t have enough time or money to fully dry my clothes – they’re clean, I’m clean … Angela awaits).
Alioto and the Progressives
Angela Alioto is a Progressive. … Anyone who thinks differently, is an idiot. … There is no more faithful proponent of the teachings of St. Francis than Angela. … Hey, the woman is tough, talented, loud … and, has the biggest heart in town. … Having said that, she and I differed on chosen candidates for the recent mayoral runoff. I’ve wanted to talk to her about that since the race and she’s wanted to listen to me too. … She drove around Bekeley after attending Father Bill’s funeral looking for Noel Wilson’s house (Gallagher’s bride) … I was crashed there sitting Jake and Harvey, the house hounds. I went in ready to hammer out a coffee table book together with Gonzalez Campaign Photographer, Matt Hitt, but ended up with no computer or no real outside contacts. Shit, I spent 2 weeks writing long hand on a table with dogs at my feet and strong drink in my nostrils (thanks, guys) … I felt like friggin’ Hemmingway. I went into a funk about Matt losing and simply stopped returning calls… Soooo, we missed connections for coffee (her) and a brew (moi) for about a month. … She was, from the start, Newsom’s acknowledged ‘Vice Mayor’ … empowered with investigating contracts, implementing her victorious prop ‘J’ and being the go-to person on public power. … Lots of people wanted to know what Angela would say to me about these issues. … So did I.
“Gavin sat at my table.”
Angela had been to some kind of party thrown by Julie Lee the evening before to celebrate Gavin’s victory. It must have been something. “There were 1,500 people there and I was seated at table one with a whole group of people important to my political and business life. That’s very important and Gavin understood that. Some of the people were chilly at first, but when Gavin showed up, he came to my table first and he thanked me numerous times in his speech.” …
I like this girl. I scoffed when she talked about her run for Mayor being her last political hurrah. That’s just not possible. … “Will you have an office at City Hall with your name on it?” I asked her. … “I have an office to run across the street. (we were at a quiet little restaurant catty-corner to her law offices at 700 Montgomery) I spent a lot of money that I worked very hard for in that campaign and I have to take care of business.”
Angela’s offices are like Angela. Very classy and very traditional. As with her home, there are well placed murals. Three of them line the wall of her conference room and stare over conferees. I stared back at the guy on the end who didn’t seem to like me very much. … “That’s Dante.” said Angela. … I nodded, remembering that Angela built her own novel (‘Straight from the Heart’ – read this an the Sac Bee’s Richardson’s ‘Willie Brown’ if you wanna sound like a serious local wonk) … I smiled. Ahhh, it made sense. Angela compared local politics to the Circles of Hell in Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’. There was the mural of Virgil, the blind poet who led Dante through the tougher neighborhoods. … Walking around Angela’s work space is kind of intensely relaxing if you know what I mean. Now, I’m good at this stuff, so you pay attention.
I mean, you’re in this building that’s a combination of (I’m guessing – but, I’m usually right on this kind of thing) … a combo of gray granite and marble … inside the little 3 story corner structure is a little neighborhood law firm, if you consider (as did Richard Simmons – owner of Spec’s up the street) … if you consider as Simmons once noted: “We’re just a little neighborhood bar. … In the craziest neighborhood in the world.” … Yeah, Angela has a little neighborhood law practice that just happens to be in the center of the bulls eye of one of the most powerful spots on the center of the world. … One that takes on giant corporations and wins. But, as you walk around the place with her, it ‘feels’ (& I put lots of stock in that ‘feels’) … it ‘feels’ like you’re back in her mansion in Pacific Heights which looks, but doesn’t ‘feel’ extremely rich. … How does she do that?
The baby playing in the little round (no water of course) wading pool, helped. … Before that, even. That was in one of the offices of her little law firm. Also, the fact that her receptionist is a senior citizen like myself and probably watched Ginsberg walk through the same door that had delivered me this day … had seen them all for decades. The place feels homey. The baby was a kid of one of the staff (and, the staff didn’t tighten-up or run, or look scared when Angela appeared doing one of her tours – and, they were just starting work on one of the lawsuits that regularly propel Angela into the national news. … The kid was cool. Angela has a new grandkid, as do I and here’s yet another baby under a year, hanging with a parent at work – way to be human, Angela – the wading pool of about 3 feet diameter was perfect for an infant who couldn’t crawl yet, but was able to roll over – 3 months I’m guessing – able to roll over and needing to be out of a basinet, but a long way from a playpen. I’m digging this stuff and feeling good about the future of Lefty San Francisco and … Hey, am I boring you here!? This stuff counts. Trust me on that. Angela Alioto and Matt Gonzalez may not be Mayor of San Francisco, but together, they have the support of the majority of the City and they are not going away. The little pool-turned-infant-playpen was a gift from one of Angela’s sons to the baby. … Hey, I’m an old softie. So, anyway.
Here I was picking Angela up for lunch. I’d finished my shower at Marc & George’s and packed my dirty clothes into my backpack for the trip from the Mission to North Beach. I hung my nylon windbreaker through a strap of my leather pack (a gift from Poland from my friend, Ania) … Sooo, I’m looking OK. … I think. … I mean, I’m homeless. I know it. Angela knows it. … But, I’m not shopping cart level and never plan to be. I’m a little damp. My pack is a bit too full, but you’d have to be looking for the signs. (they look full when they have a full shaving kit, a change of clothes and a pair of shoes stuffed inside the main compartment and 100 business cards – in order, to add to e-mail or phone) Angela and I finished our tour of her offices and headed across the street to the little Italian restaurant (I forget the name, but owe you a mention) Angela was determined to get me: a computer, a job, & … a place to live. She took her ‘usual’ table and placed herself opposite the door with a full view of everyone who entered and was already seated. She smiled like Picasso on the Riviera as she swung into the familiar seat that looked out onto Broadway. … “I’m Sicilian and I need to see the door.”
Had someone entered behind us?
“This guy is a great writer!” said Angela Alioto. … I feigned looking behind me to see if anyone else had entered, but of course, she was talking about me. … I mean, you agree, right? There are, after all, advantages to not having an editor or a wife or girl or boy or whatever friend to screen your work. Your readers get the straight skinny. … They don’t always like it and the people who are most sensitive and easily offended might sometimes surprise you. … Whatever, we immediately began to quiz one another.
“I looked all over for you in Berkeley!”
People don’t know how much it hurt when Gonzalez lost. I ducked meetings and parties and even Christmas day with family and friends, for God’s sake. … I fended off the question lamely. She kept on: “You aren’t writing enough! Do you have a computer?” … I explained about the ‘gift’ computer I’d picked up at Gonzo central. She’d been ready to put together some kind of computer for me. … Now, if you write, you know how big that is. I’ve been through at least a half dozen computers since I retired my last typewriter a decade or so back and all of them have been either outdated gifts from friends or scavenged remains. It gets to be like you’re suddenly lost in the desert with a pad and pencil when you’re not online. … Today’s generation doesn’t even know about carbons and white-out, let alone what the hell an eraser is. … Spoiled, that’s what we are. Now, communications in my day …
I wiped off the last of the puke
I sat on the rolling destroyer and puked into the wastebasket between my legs as I copied the Morse code. The teletype was down and continuous wave (‘CW’) was still 30% of our communications. I was 20 years old and the message had to get to the Captain fast. It was 1964 and the message had something to do with a place called ‘Viet Nam’. I was suffering off an island called Sicily where I’d spent the previous weekend in a place called ‘Palermo’ that reminded me lots of East St. Louis. There was a Russian cruiser with a teakwood deck, which we all envied, running somewhere alongside us in the same rough seas. … I quickly copied the message with a carbon copy and made corrections in the rolling sea by erasing, then re-hammering the letters through fresh carbon. If you wanted to ‘info’ someone in those days, you had to make a friggin’ copy for them and hand-deliver it. But, first, you had to convert it from: ‘dit-dit-dit, dot-dot-dot, dit-dit-dit (ask your grandpa to decipher that for you) … I wiped my chin and wiped the last of the dribble from the face of the paper, put it all on a clipboard, put on my Dixie cap and pulled my way along rails and through water-tight doors up to the bridge for a signature. …
It’s not like that anymore. … Sadly, to an extent. … Now, I hit one button and get a ‘blast’ to a couple of hundred of my inner circle in a millisecond. … That can be good. … It can be bad. … But, you have to be able to put the stuff out there and losing a machine or a phone line can spell the end of communications in our time. Angela was
What about contracts, Angela?
“Gavin personally delivered boxes of contracts for me to study. … I need people more than anything.” … She looked aside and pondered the thoughts. … Gavin had given her props in the dinner. I assumed he’d do the same in fundraisers for her. He certainly owes his office to her. He was standing by his pledge to allow her to review contracts even before his inauguration. How about public power and her ‘Prop J’ which was passed by the voters and promised to give private shelter space to families … ? … Nothing’s happening on public power although she again teaches me that San Francisco had public power (she has a crate at her house that says something like: ‘San Francisco Power and Gas’ from the last century) … she notes that the City had its own public power until the 20’s and, legally, should again. … I agree, but say it should be tidal power and we discuss Texas natural gas and the spans of power lines from Hetch-Hetchy. … When we talk about the homeless, it gets interesting.
“I tore down the barrier & walked in.”
Angela went looking for shelter for the families covered by her successful Prop J and she found some. … She found some other things too.
“Did you know that they’re building the 3rd Street Light Rail for the rich white people who are going to live in the new places they build where the public housing is now on those hills in Hunter’s Point?” … I always do a double-take when Angela says things like that. … I covered up, and coughed: “Yeah, I never assumed it was so’s little black kids could motor down to the yacht slips in District #2. But, what gives you that idea?”
“I went up to the projects up there on the hill. I tore down the barrier and went into some of the units. The views were absolutely incredible! I remember my father saying that it was the best place in San Francisco. There were views all the way from the Golden Gate Bridge all the way South to the airport. My father said that the place had not only the best views in town, but that it also had the best weather.” … Of course, old Joe was right.
Angela keeps her word
No one’s perfect. I didn’t like Angela’s decision to back Gavin. However, she extracted some concessions and is moving to make certain Gavin (who seems amenable) … make sure Gavin keeps his promises. … The Public Housing issue really had her pissed. We discussed how Willie had moved for privatization of the public projects through the federal ‘Hope’ program and as those funds ran out, moved to form private partnerships with the likes of John Stewart Company (See Treasure Island – see Presidio – see North Beach Public Housing) … moved to tear down the public housing and replace it with mostly market rate housing (Stewart’s specialty is showing black people the City limits) … I noted that Street Sheet’s Chance Martin had listed some 905 vacant units of public housing in San Francisco while downtown streets were clogged with homeless. … Angela added a figure: “The vacancy rate on the hill with the view is 38%!” … Hey, she’s looking and still has her sensibilities. Mayor Newsom treats her with respect. We can’t ask for more.
Putting a sock in it
I’ve gotten some nice offers from y’all on temporary quarters and a space for my cat in an emergency. No actual job or permanent roomie things yet. … Maybe when the documentary of my run against Gavin comes out next month, things will get better. … I’m not alone. … Even the mainstream TV has picked up on couch-surfing. I watched a show called ‘NCSI’ or something like that and one of the investigators is always trying to crash at one of his colleagues’ homes. They kind of fend him off as though he is irresponsible to not have his own digs, but in the end (like myself) … in the end, he has (like me) a little metal band in his pocket with keys to each of their pads (given privately, so’s the others won’t know) … my own such ring has 5 keys on it. … We have to come up with some creative and legal alternative living arrangements for people like me, folks. I’m thinking of land trusting a couple of buildings. It’s a Gonzalez project that Newsom backs in principle. … More later.
Peace:
