Watching City Hall #252, (1-17-04)Lost columns, line jumpers,
seat hogs
(and a cat named ‘Thumper’)
I wrote this just really cool and peachy column. I sent it to Aaron Barnes at sfprogressives.com and my computer changed it into a language that God couldn’t even understand even if He had some help. Then, this new glitzy machine either erases the damned piece or hides it somewhere I can’t find. … Does shit like that happen to you?
Now, this is not funny. … I mean, imagine if I were a good writer or stuff like that. … OK, OK, that’s not a problem here. … Still, I have a column floating around somewhere out there with people’s names and dates and, you know, … stuff like that. If it fell into the wrong hands, who knows what might happen? … Hmmm, I can fix this. … I can rewrite the column and condense it into a paragraph and, or … a poem! … yeah, I can do what Joe O’Donoghue does & make it all into a ‘cryptic poem’ as one of my friends describes Joe’s work. … Let’s give it a run. … (Now, remember, this is a 5 page column reduced to a short poem)
I remembered why I hate you
I remembered why I hate you when I saw you on TV
Saw you lie to the Planning Commission for a fat developer’s fee.
I remembered why I hate you when you dumped Mohammed Nehru
Told everyone who’d listen that he never worked for you.
I remembered why I hate you when … naw, not working …
Conspiracy Theory
You’re not going to believe this, but I went out drinking and smoking and gorging again last night. What can I say? My friends spoil me. … But, anyway, we went to 111 Minna (large gallery/bar kinda thing) & it was filled with young and beautiful people.
Feeling out of place, I drank heavily and began to make bad jokes and otherwise insult people while we waited for Nolan, so we could go pick up Jens and maybe go catch the Gonzalez Art Auction at Studio Z. … Of course, we never made Studio Z, but we did get to Jens’ crib at the Edgeworth, then to at least one other bar and … and, where’s the conspiracy? … Here:
1. I met a guy at 111 Minna who announced that he was running for the School Board and that he was a school principal who had been to Harvard and considered the people who ran the Urban Pioneers Program to be murderers and that he felt that Arlene Ackerman was a magnificent Superintendent. (Hey, she gave him a job paying around 80k) … Thing was …
Thing was, the guy is like, 29 years old and Ackerman made him a principal when he was 27! … He went on to profess his support of Gavin Newsom and … you get the drift.
When I quizzed the guy on Urban Pioneers, it was quickly evident that he thought they were a 2 year-old new Charter School that had failed in the worst possible way. … He had no idea that Urban Pioneers was an SFUSD program for 28 years until Ackerman decided to kill it.
It was clear the guy has been groomed to run for the School Board. He had stock answers on busing and test scores and Ackerman’s censorship of teachers (telling them not to talk to the press without clearing it with her!?) … I started to smell the musty odor of old men. This kid was no more fit to be a principal then the new 14 year ‘veteran’ with the Business degree is to be the new Fire Chief. … Here’s what I figured:
2. This kid went to Harvard and for some reason that rang a couple of bells. Didn’t they send Gerald Green (Willie’s Planning Director ) to Harvard too? … Jeez, it all started to make sense!
3. Didn’t Shorenstein give Harvard about a gadzillion dollars to build something? So that was it! Old Walter was creating his own version of ‘Stepford’ candidates. Not saying these guys couldn’t get into Harvard on their own, but I’m sure a little push from Daddy Big Bucks (remember when Walter owned the ‘I’ hotel and he tried to evict all those old Filipino vets and they wouldn’t go and Hongisto went to jail for refusing to evict them and then the place burned and an old guy got killed and Walter, like, all of a sudden, sold the building?) … Wow!
4. He’s been doing it for years! I heard from someone who knows that Newsom ain’t worth shit as a baseball player and never was and that the ‘partial’ baseball scholarship he got to Santa Clara came because Walter Shorenstein gave them a bunch of money to pay for it.
You gotta admit
You gotta admit, that’s pretty amazing. … Now, all the facts there are true. … Whether you think Walter Shorenstein and Downtown are smart enough, or organized enough to have been providing ‘Machine Scholarships’ and ‘Machine Mentorships’ for all these years … ? Trent Rohrer (the young Department of Human Services head, who copied the Alameda Model of forcing the poor to migrate and called it: ‘Care, Not Cash’) Trent has one of the degrees they all get. The kid at 111 Minna was touting his ‘advanced’ Harvard degree: “It’s in ‘Leadership’!” Meaningless degrees from fancy schools bribed to bestow them upon a chosen few of the children and lackeys of the rich. … God, and here I am on welfare. … Are they that much smarter than me? Than all of the Left?
Yeah, probably. … Here we are, all so proud because the Gonzalez showing in the Mayor’s race has spawned any number of new organizations and outlets (did you catch the opening of the new Lefty Center in Matt’s old 13th & Mission digs?) … We’re proud to have a couple of phones and Downtown is handing out scholarships to Harvard. I’m trying to outlive my 3rd Student Loan Officer and Newsom (the ‘scholarship’ kid) … Newsom is accepting 20k cash from a woman named Heather Hiles, whom he promptly appoints to the School Board. Much is made of Ms. Hiles’ work as an ‘adviser’ to philanthropists? … ??? … I mean, they’re shitting us, right? … Like, hey!, … where does one go to get a job telling people whom to give their dineros to? … Ya wanna bet that Ms. Hiles has been working for Shorenstein and Donald Fisher and Warren Hellman and … Gordon Getty? … I’ve also got this really wild idea that maybe the 20 grand she gave Newsom (reported on Patrick Murphy’s, Sentinel) … I’m betting that wasn’t her money. … But, they didn’t talk about her giving 20 large to Gavin. Naw, they focused on her race and sexual orientation and gender and meaningless shit like that. … Hell, I don’t wanna know what she does for fun, I want to know if she got her job because someone bribed someone else. … I know where all that money comes from and so do you. … It’s your money. … It is, too. … Bush gave it back to the rich by the hundreds of billions and lots of those billions came to the rich in San Francisco and they’re using some of it to effect an economic cleansing of the City in order to transform it into what they call: “A world Class city.” … I kid you not. When they start saying ‘world class’, you know they’ve been coached by Downtown.
Yeah, I can see all those codgers sitting around at the Bohemian Club, sipping cognac and planning how to get rid of all of the poor people. …
Incidentally, I came through the Civic Center tonight and there was a gigantic tent filled with rich people drinking champagne right where ‘Camp Agnos’ used to be … the entire Center was freshly scrubbed and there was nary a homeless person, nor shopping cart to be seen … 200 yards away, there was a broad red carpet running up the stairs of City Hall. … A provender of future San Francisco? Probably.
Let me say this about that. … I’m not opposed to cleanliness, nor beauty, not good taste. … Further, I think it a failure of strength and courage to allow anyone to sleep in the streets of the world’s richest City. But, we need to solve our own problems, not deport them.
Line jumpers
I have a kind of attitude sometimes. This morning, it almost got me into a fight with a kid about a third my age. … He line-jumped me (and about 10 others) at MacDonald’s at 24th and Mission before I’d had my coffee. It went something like this:
Me: “Yo, mister, there’s a line here. … You gotta wait in line like the rest of us.”
Jumper: “What’re you gonna do about it? I could take you outside and kick your ass, yank!” (he was clearly Irish)
Me: “Bring your lunch for that one kid.”
Jumper: “You think I can’t!?”
Me: “What’re you gonna do, throw me in the Bay?”
(He actually froze when I said that. He’d obviously heard of the case where the Irish laborer murdered a man by throwing him off a party boat in the Bay. The line is moving by then and he’s headed back to the end and some huge black guy behind me is starting to laugh at him.)
Jumper: “Fuckin’ Yanks, what have you ever done!?”
Me: “We threw the British out of our country.”
The worst lines
Those would be Welfare lines. … As luck would have it, I was in several the other day.
I was at the main Welfare office at 1235 Mission to track down a check that hadn’t arrived. Like most of the 15,000 or so homeless in San Francisco (if you took in ‘couch-surfers’ who don’t get welfare, I’m sure you’d easily triple that number) … like most, I keep a permanent address as long as I can with a friend or relative. That keeps you off the list of 2,000 or so who are unable to even find a couch. Those people are the ‘Care Not’ initial targets and they WILL be driven out of town. … Anyway, I try not to put too much pressure on any of the households who provide me with shelter & showers & the like. I, as they say, … sleep around. … Where the hell was I?
Hey, it’s pushing 1 o’clock (am) and I’m pushing to get this thing out because my machine kidnapped my last column and … the weed is pretty good. … And, … the Forest Ville 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon is wholly adequate. … But, I was at the welfare office.
Speaking of lousy jobs
How would you like to deal with thousands of people who are broke and desperate and strung-out and angry and violent and dirty and obscene and drunk … liars, thieves and cheats (starting to sound like a Raiders home game) … how’d you like to deal with people like that every day? … That’s what the staff does at the Department of Human Services and I salute them.
I try to arrive with a reasonable medical marijuana buzz, on, and plenty of reading material. There’s not a lot to look at unless you’re a hopeless degenerate or a reporter. … Being both, I kind of dig the place. … Let me jump ahead to where I’m waiting in line to get my check. I’ve already seen my 2 case workers (Foodstamps & GA) & been given a voucher which sends me to another building to join another line where everything from Checks to bus tokens and passes to Food Stamp cards are disbursed. About 60% (I’m guessing from sitting and watching for about 100 hours over a couple of years) … about half of the people waiting in the lines get what they came for.
The rest are sent back for more interviews or paperwork or fingerprints or told to go sit in the waiting area until they’re called or whatever the hell and the worst place to get turned away from is the line at the disbursement center because that’s what you’ve been jumping through hoops for all along … to get the check or card or pass in your hand and go on with your life. … The tension is higher here. … It manifests itself in any number of ways.
Tension relief at 1235 Mission
About every other person in line threatened to kill the clerk who waited on them. … Oh yeah, I’m not kidding. Shit, I’ve worked in jails where the people were better behaved. … I did my time in the line and thought about buying some ice cream and doing my laundry and getting my cat some food … and, the things you think about when you’ve been flat broke for a few days. … There were 4 clerks working when I entered at around 10:30am. The line was around 20 people long and even with all the threats and shit, I got to the window in less than a half hour.
“Your check isn’t ready yet.” Said the nice, elderly Chinese clerk. “Sit down and I will call you when it is ready.” … I went and sat.
An hour passed. New people entered, went through the line, threatened the clerk, then left. At noon, 3 of the 4 clerks let down their little blinds and went to lunch.
Now, the line really got long. … Tempers flared. … The huge, black security guards (male & female) moved to and fro, just keeping the lid on. … A clerk came back from lunch, then another. The clerk who’d solo’d over the noon to 1pm stretch left for lunch. I was amazed that he walked out the door seemingly without a concern when at least 20 people had promised to be waiting outside for him. … Two clerks worked. Another hour passed. I was coming up on 4 hours sitting quietly waiting for the old guy who never came back from lunch. I wondered vaguely if one of the people who’d threatened him earlier had gotten him. … Finally, I arose from my front row seat & motioned to the clerk who’d been looking at me with occasional curiosity since she’d returned from lunch.
Me: “Hey lady, that guy said he’d call my name and I’ve been waiting 4 hours and he never came back.”
Voice behind: “You line-jumping mother fucker, I’m gonna kill your white ass!”
Seat Hogs
I think the world would be a better place if you were allowed to shoot all line-jumpers and seat hogs. … You know what I mean?
What the hell is it that makes people think they have the right to 2 or more seats in exchange for 1 (or, sometimes – in the case of back door banditos – zero) … for 1 fare? … You’ve seen them.
There’s the big bruising gang-banger or other thug who sits in the middle seat at the very rear of the bus and stretches out his arms and legs and tries to literally, block access to 3 seats on either side of him. Daring you to get him to move.
The worst to me are the seemingly normal, decently dressed and groomed riders of all ages, nationalities, shapes and sizes who take an outside seat and will not move, even for the elderly and the infirm. I approached one of them after a ride from downtown Berkeley to Civic Center on Bart.
Like the line at the Welfare Office, the train filled and emptied over the half hour or so trip. One thing that didn’t change was a well dressed 40’ish woman who held an outside seat on one of the double seats next to the rear door. … I was headed to City Hall and wearing a press pass and I started taking notes. Another couple of passengers noticed. … At one point, around Powell Street Station, the car was full and there was a little old lady with a cane standing next to the woman taking up 2 seats. It was disgusting. … As the car emptied at Civic Center I spoke to the seat hog.
Me: “Excuse me but I’m a reporter and I noticed that you blocked that inside seat there all the way from Berkeley and wouldn’t even give it to an old lady with a cane. … Why did you do that?”
Seat Hog: (No response)
Fellow Rider: “Because she’s rude! That’s why.”
Another Rider: “That’s right!”
Seat Hog: “I never noticed.”
Voice from rear: “I’ll kill you, you white mother fucker!”
Ah, another day draws to an end. Another column to try and send. Hope this one gets out of the room. I’m still looking for work and permanent digs. I don’t seat hog and seldom line-jump. I share my pot and do dishes and clean toilets and litter boxes. You think about it.
Roll with it:
