(9-12-04)
“There ain’t no tits on the radio.”
(The Scissors Sisters)
There ain’t either. … Not on mine, anyway. … Where was I? … Oh yeah, a promise I made to Bill Barnes at the last D5 Candidates Collaborative meeting. … I remember now.
I came up (Eileen Left did, really) the idea of getting every candidate to give their position on every contest coming up in November. Just, you know, make a list with candidates on the vertical axis and the 20 or so initiatives and dozen or so offices up for grabs over the top on the horizontal axis. That do it, Rick? (Knee knows all about that stuff)
That way, on one sheet of paper, you get an honest profile of where each candidate is actually coming from. (I love not having an editor and being able to end every friggin’ sentence with a preposition if I want.) … Yeah, it would work, I think. You gotta keep the Prop M that the Downtown judge threw off the ballot in the mix. (Candidates who answer with some jive about how they don’t have an opinion on M are actually telling you they are anti-tenant. Strange how some of them want to hide that around election time.) …
Barnes didn’t like the idea but the candidates at the meeting who didn’t have a prayer of winning loved it. Bill realizes it’s best to be obscure so you can claim that you had to have been misquoted or misrepresented on some item because you had never actually given a firm position on anything at all and your record will prove it.
I’m exaggerating. Bill is no fraidie cat. I’ve seen him stand before numerous hostile venues and never break stride. I’m certain that Bill will be the first to return his completed questionnaire as the 5th district again leads in the effort to give voters information to which they are entitled. (NOT!)
Candidates who don’t respond?
Should consider running for the state legislature. (where they take turns being ‘absent’ for embarrassing votes) … Naw, just don’t vote for anyone who doesn’t respond to everything. That’s pretty simple and straightforward, huh? … Let’s give this thing a name, huh?
How about, letting Eileen Left name it?
h.: “Eileen, come in here a minute!” (She’s been here for a couple of hours – she was at the Niners game – attired in a string bikini that would embarrass an Olympic valleyball player - dividing her time between pouring down margaritas and dancing to Dire Straits in front of Charles & Susan’s panoramic view of the Mission District & beyond.)
Eileen: “I heard you. I’ll name this for you but you’re gonna be on your own for the rest of this election.”
h.: “Why? … Hey, really. I need you to hide behind, especially during an election.”
Eileen: (winks and turns to adjust Charles’ telescope – she has to bend and I’m forced to look at the ceiling or go blind) “Hey, tell Charles and Susan that I really love this thing! You can count pimples on young astronauts.” (glances back and smiles as though to a naïve child) “Time you hung out with a real woman or two, geezer. You aren’t getting any younger.”
h.: “Well, shiiit!” (scratches unkempt beard and thinks) … “That might be interesting, but who … oh, never mind. Give me the name for this survey you want to do of the candidates.”
Eileen: (she stands and stretches to pantomime the title in neon with a sweep of her arm) “Just call it:
‘S.F. Bulldog Candidates’ Survey’
(November, 2004)
“It’s a good idea. Everyone of the candidates is trying to be everything to as many voters as possible. They’re buying as many endorsements as possible with promises of future cooperation. Annnd, they don’t want, they don’t want you to know that they’ve agreed to present legislation on behalf of some tenant or developer group. You know how it works.”
“So, I just make the spread sheet and start gathering data?”
Eileen: (Watching neighbors, somewhere a mile or so away in front of yet another picture window doing their own morning ‘workout’.) “I didn’t even know that was possible!”
Who has the info?
This one-step-in-front-of-another bullshit always drives me nuts. … Or, does it? Any of the clubs or organizations that collect questionnaires from candidates will have pretty much all of the data I need. But, most of them hate me. (I am a paranoid, reverse-snob and can be a little gruff with … anyone … ?)
Then, of course, I could wait for the Guardian or the Examiner or one of the big circulation outlets to do the work. (No way the Chronicle will ever give such relevant information to their readers.) … But, they won’t isolate and ‘properly’ profile what support of certain litmus-test candidacies and issues says about the core values of a candidate. Naw, they won’t do that. That’s because they have editors and insurance.
I will, though. Like I always say, you know mea and you know that I’m not one to cause trouble, but did you hear what this guy said about your …
Eileen: “Oh, by the way, dipshit. The idea of a spreadsheet on candidates wasn’t new in 4,000 b.c.. Everyone you mentioned does them every election season, but I think you should do yours anyway, cause I think it might get more attention.”
“Why?”
Eileen: (looks me up and down, sucking on a pipe of great pot, called ‘banana’, swilling a marguerite and listening to Annie Lennox sing about ‘messing’ with ‘Missionary men’ – shakes her head) … “ I don’t think anyone’s every done it stoned, drunk and naked.”
Clearly, she doesn’t know Jack Davis. I had to get a parting comment from this woman who doesn’t exist, yet means so much to me. “This putting together a questionnaire is not gonna be easy. None of the assholes will talk to me. They don’t trust me and I don’t blame them. How am I gonna have a credible survey if they don’t answer?”
Eileen: “Sue Vaughan sent a sample questionnaire to the Sentinel that can act as a template for what you want to know. Plus, … I mean (gestures toward the valley before her, she’s drinking a cheap Gallo merlot now & looks great – the eye of the imagination is always 20/20) … If Barnes or Feldstein or those people don’t answer, just make up their answers and publish them anyway. ‘Credibility’!? Are you friggin’ nuts? Your whole appeal is that you’re ‘IN-crdible’. Get to know thyself, dummy. Now, leave me alone.”
SFSOS sucks!
(fascists finance phony friggin’ forum for Feinstein flunkies)
Lilian Sing as an empty suit. A typical product of downtown San Francisco’s production-line plastic candidates. The problem with empty suit candidates is that usually, their heads are empty too.
Like most Americans, I didn’t think it was possible for Eric Jaye to come up with a losing candidate in San Francisco’s District #1. He’s done it though. He and Warren Hellman and Donald Fisher and Dianne Feinstein all put their heads together and came up with Lilian Sing. Anti-rent control. Anti-immigrant. In a neighborhood where the majority of the voters are immigrants who rent? … I mean, like, … huhhh?
When questioned about McGoldrick’s pending lawsuit against the Republican organization that told Jim Siegel to take the ‘Kerry for President’ signs out of his windows … SFSOS head, Wade Randlett threatened to tear out the supervisor’s “throat”. … Now, as someone who has watched Jake McGoldrick speak for many, many hours on end, I have to admit that I’ve had those thoughts too. However, …
Sometimes I wonder if Jaye and that gang does such a shitty job on purpose so they can build up their hours.
Bottom line is that McGoldrick will win. You don’t come into a tightly knit old neighborhood like the Richmond and beat the shit out of the beloved simple-minded supervisor who spends most of his time smiling while he sweeps the busy thoroughfares with his well-worn broom.
Boy, I sure hope I never get my own endorsement. … Incidentally, check HYPERLINK "http://www.demochoice.org/sfballot" www.demochoice.org/sfballot for the latest unofficial standings in each of the contested district races.
There goes the neighborhood
Suddenly, a middle-aged woman stood in the middle of my friend’s kitchen where I was rolling a joint of perfectly legal, medical marijuana. … “You can’t smoke in here!” That’s what she said.
It’s the problem with gentrification. The main one. I’ve seen more and more examples of it lately.
There’s the guy in the Haight who obsesses on the independent sinage rock bands and the like have been putting on poles down the main thoroughfare for decades. Hell, they’re part of the landscape. They don’t stay. There’s a guy who’s been putting them up and taking them down for 20 years who keeps them up.
Then, comes this guys with the blade and the keyboard. “He cuts down signs for garage sales too!!” Thus spake a citizen at a local D5 forum.
“Every party has a pooper, that’s why we invited you.”
Then, there’s the guy bombarding the free weekend concerts in the park for being too loud. … Too loud? … What would he have thought of Hendrix and Joplin?
Tim Redmond of the Guardian lives up the street from ‘Cool Guy’’s (that’s the cat’s name) crib, where I’m sitting. He goes by the Kalish triple bay office window where I have the blinds pulled to let in the light. He’s walking his dog. … The dog is bigger than him. … Better looking too.
I knock on the window and pretend to moon him. I motion for him to wait. He looks like he wants to run. I go out and invite him to stop by and see a rough cut of the Hillis/Haslett documentary cause he’s in it. He kind of nods and gives me a worried look.
I know the look
The gray haired woman in the window had it. … Yeah, same triple-bay. First couple of days. I looked up from the keyboard to see an older lady standing on the sidewalk staring at me. I finally went over and asked her if I could help her.
Like the woman who showed up in the kitchen of the other friend’s house where I was house-sitting (turned out she had a key to the back door) … like that woman, this one just flat didn’t like my looks. Both knew my friends and probably got along just fine with them.
My friends often wear business clothes. I don’t. Now, don’t get me wrong, my beard and long hair are just fine to most of the neighbors. But, there are always a few who will do everything they can to let you know that you don’t fit.
Ain’t that some strange shit? It’s all true though. No hippies, rock music or hanging art wanted. It is becoming a different town. One of the numerous groups seeking to pigeon-hole D5 supe candidates sent me a questionnaire. Here is one of the questions and my response (from the San Francisco Observer) …
15. “Does your plan address environmental issues such as street noise, loud concerts in the parks and litter and trash in streets and park? “ I answered, being only partly facetious …
These things are the normal collateral damage for hosting the world-class party zone that drew all of us to District #5 in the first place. We’ll be issuing citations to people who complain. Why break up a serious party because a couple of assholes bitch?
Does all of that make sense to you? … Me either, but I mean every word of it.
Let me close this thing down since it’s sat her for 2 days while I party with Jens and Leona and some great smoke. There were a couple of things I made notes about and wanted to comment upon.
Louis Renne & the cops
The Board’s first meeting back from vacation was pretty dead. Peskin took instance with the threat Wade Randlett made about McGoldrick. McGoldrick and Alioto-Pier want to close a couple of roads going into the Presidio to get their attention. That surprised me cause I wouldn’t think that would be anything the Newsom Machine would want to do. Hell, they created the Trust that runs the place and stand to make a couple of billion. It could either be that Pier is distancing herself from Newsom after voting the Room 200 line since he appointed her or it could just be window-dressing for the District #2 voters Michela is facing in November. (I bet it’s item 2)
Renne looks like a big spider
When she smiles, it’s like some kind of mask came alive in a horror movie. … Lord, lord, lord. When the Board packed up and went home, SFGTV ran a week old tape of a meeting of the Police Commission (Sept. 7th) … everything you heard about the commission being in the cops’ back pocket is exactly right.
Renne’s pocket, actually. And, the desiccated spider woman keeps a tight rein on the commissioners. “I’ve arranged a meeting with the police to go over the case. You can come if you want.” … That’s in the most important case presently before the commission. Which would be the of the two cop lawyers accused of leaking information that made it look like the Fagan-era brass covered up and tried to protect the drunken cop bandits in the Faijitagate assault.
I don’t have notes, but the cops names are something like Rappaport and Dwidyiak. Whatever, they obviously ain’t part of the old boys network. “They think they broke the ‘blue wall of silence’.” … That’s what a member of the public said. Renne just opened her mouth and showed the hideous teeth-from-the-grave smile and told commissioners and public alike that no one could say anything without going through the City Attorney. She refused to give the cop defendants the basic evidence their attorney (guy named Burrell) requested through discovery.
Burrell says his clients did nothing and when the brass releases its ‘case’, the entire thing will be tossed out. The cops, as usual, are trying their case in the press to smear innocent victims. “You only released the cops’ side of the story in the Cameron Boyd case too. That’s not fair.” Another member of a cop watch organization brought that one out. Apparently, the good citizen doesn’t know the motto of our local boys in blue when it comes to protecting the P.O.A. and their brass:
“Lie til you die.”
That really is their motto. What a disgusting lot. … Except for the sweet young thing with the gun and flashlight and extra bullets and all of that who jumped on the 14 Mission the other night and rode a few blocks.
“How do you like your new captain?”
I’m always asking fun questions like that to City workers about their bosses and the politicians and stuff like that. “I haven’t met him.” … She said that. “You should put the kiosks back at 16th & 24th and let vendors attach stalls to them.”
The next day there was a big cop standing alongside the front door to McDonald’s @ 16th & Mission. He was alone. On either corner were groups of young gang bangers. By the afternoon when I rode the bus back, the cop was gone. The gang bangers were still there.
enuff:
