Grading Gavin
(or)
Eat no sushi with Warren Hellman
Happy New Year’s boys and girls and undecideds. I hope you all got laid last night (or, at least got a good night’s sleep). I’ve spent the last week at a secret location on the outskirts of the City contemplating the year just finished and jogging slowly with an old beagle. I’ve come to a few conclusions.
First, the SF Progressives had a worse year than the 49’ers but, like the Niners, we can learn a few things from our numerous ass-kickings. ... Let’s go down my own Bulldog ‘State of the City’ list and see how Gavin’s faired in his first year in power. We’ll start with a basic list of positives and negatives, then go into detail as possible from the master list. Throw a couple of alka seltzers in a glass, settle back and peruse.
Positives
Gay marriage proclamation
Gavin, congratulations. You’ll be in the history books for this one to be certain. I’ve bombarded your minions with the idea that you should be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for this move (along with the two ancient lesbians chosen to kick-start the process). San Francisco is the gay capital of the Earth and it is altogether fitting and appropriate that quantum leaps like this (fuck you Barney Frank! – Frank’s idea of forwarding gay rights was having his boyfriend run a gay whorehouse out of their apartment in Washington D.C. – no kidding) … real steps forward should begin here. Gays are the last international minority seeking credibility. You made the move. I congratulate you.
Angela Alioto, Vice-Mayor for the Homeless
Who the hell would have believed you’d keep this promise? Joe’s girl remains the local patron of the poor and, unlike those who designed Care not Cash, she really gives a shit.
Just keep in mind that she said in a TV interview that if you didn’t hold up your end of the deal, she’d work to recall you. The program itself sucks (as a bed bug bitten participant, I know) but at least you had the balls to try something. Hey, it’s a work in progress and if we poor have nothing else, we have patience.
Wade Crowfoot as liaison to Board
Ben Rosenfeld as Mayor’s budget guru.
Steve Kawa as Chief of Staff.
Joe Veronese as Police Commissioner
There are others. You rescued Rich Hillis and Rick Bruce. You’ve apparently realized that you have plenty of sharks around you and that it’s a good idea to keep some staff with people skills. Way to go on that one, boy wonder.
Not chopping Lafco
I’m sure PG&E lobbied to cut this one out of the budget. Maybe I’m giving credit where none is due (see PUC) but this entity is vital for the City’s future. It’s the Victory Garden where small cuttings of Public Power and Alternative Energy projects peek above the soil.
Ghetto Ball
Window dressing? Sure, there’s lots of that but at least you cared enough to get out there and try. Willie Brown’s idea of outreach to his own people was going to a party where Charlie Walker poured him champagne, then getting back into his limo with a white girlfriend with big tits. You put ace cop Rick Bruce in charge of the cops in this black bastion and that was the right move and took lotsa guts. He wudda made a great chief, but you know that.
Being a class act
It matters. We San Franciscans are proud of our image and you’ve certainly been a plus in that department. Willie Brown went on national TV and called the Board of Supervisors a bunch of whores and announced that he was their pimp. … Funny? Sure. (even accurate) That ain’t you. While I may disagree with most of what you’ve done, you are a class act.
There are other positives. He supported the hotel unions during the recent strike. He’s civil to the Board.
Negatives
Squandering the Shipyard and Treasure Island
Hunter’s Point Ship Yard
This piece of land (500 acres – roughly a third the size of the Presidio) is perfect for only one thing. It should be a grave yard. Relax, developers. Not forever. … Just for the 15,000 years that it will take for the place to actually be safe for human habitation. Get ready for documentation Linda Carlsen’s film on the base which will be out later this year. The place was in the top list of toxic waste sites for a reason. It is not fit for human habitation. You think ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ was bad? Move into a house above this poisoned parcel (the City was out pouring concrete into crevices that appeared in the dump just 2 days ago – in the pouring rain – and denied it!).
Oh yeah, instead of killing people with the radiation from the same bombs that killed a quarter of a million people in Hiroshima & Nagasaki (see ‘The gift that keeps on giving’) … instead of killing (mostly babies – one woman had 5 still-born babies while living over this Super Fund site) … instead of killing people here over the long range (that makes every present SF supervisor other than Daly and Gonzalez an accomplice to this crime - the evidence was clear) … instead of killing them here slowly and shipping their corpses to Colma, plant people who are ALREADY DEAD on this plot of cursed soil. It should be a graveyard.
Chief architect? That would be one Michael Cohen who used to be an assistant City Attorney but who either works Lennar (the latest site developer – how’d they beat out Forest City? – hint – they have experience building over toxic landfills from their experience in Florida) … Cohen either works directly for Lennar, or (what a farce) is still being paid by the City to represent Lennar.
Just do one thing. Name the streets in the new 1500 unit development to be built on the 90 acre plot ‘A’ after the supervisors who voted to build over this radioactive soup. That way, as the babies die, we can read: “Another 3 babies died on Sean Elsbernd Way this month” … It’s only fair. Hey Sean, get any money from Lennar?
Treasure Island
The federal government took Hunter’s Point from the Ohlone Indians (from Francisco De Costa) by way of eminent domain. NOT giving it back is one of the few things the feds have ever done for native Americans. I mean, hell, we used to give the Indians diseased blankets to kill them. Radiation is another kind of invisible death. It’s only fair that it should kill white people. Treasure island is different.
Yeah, this piece of land is being stolen from the poor and homeless and given to developers. Uh huh. Federal law says that bases turned over to local authorities should first be used to alleviate local homeless problems. Instead, Ron Burkle and Bill Clinton are building yacht parks (I shit you not – I usually shit you, but not now) … yeah, Willie Brown did a really funny thing here.
You see, the base at Treasure Island was perfect for the homeless. There were barracks. A dispensary. A jail. All that shit. Willie Brown not only tore the facilities down. HE HIRED THE POOR TO TEAR DOWN THEIR OWN HOUSES!!!. At minimum wage.
Think Uncle Willie didn’t laugh his ass off on that one? Long range for San Francisco, this one rates #2. While we could have cleared the streets of downtown SF of junkies and drunks and put them on the island, instead, the island goes to developers and the poor have their welfare payments cut 80% for the promise of decent permanent shelter that seldom comes (I know, I’m in that system and I’m still healing from bed bug bites – of which I’ll get many more when I finish my holiday house sitting and go back to the SRO’s and shelters).
So, Treasure Island is lost. The most appropriate, nea, the
only legal and free property available in San Francisco to house,
feed and care for the poor and destitute.
More than you needed to know? Keep in mind that we’re talking about open space in a place where nothing is more valuable. I mean, lots of open space. Spaces larger than the Presidio. Willie sold it all out and Gavin has kept the ball rolling.
Selling out Public Housing
Last I looked, there were over 700 vacant units of public housing. In yet another misnamed government program, ‘Project Hope’ was designed to take away the hope of local housing for the poor of San Francisco. The architect of this project is one John Stewart who was Willie Brown’s ‘Sheriff of Nottingham’, charged with evicting the poor from public housing with the promise that they’d be able to return once new structures were built. It was all a mother fucking lie and remains so to this day. As a matter of fact, less than 10% of the evicted poor have been allowed to return to their homes. It gets worse.
There are enough vacant units in public housing to shelter every single person presently living on the streets of San Francisco. When the federal government said they didn’t want to pay for Project Hope, the local developers said they’d fund it themselves in the final dozen or so projects remaining. Mercy Housing (bring your own ‘mercy’ they got none), AIMCO, John Stewart … birds of a feather. The lead bulldozers for continued gentrification. Racial & economic cleansing is their game.
The decapitation of Emergency Services
The SFFD
On the plus side, Gavin’s new fire chief is a female. Unfortunately, that’s her only plus. The woman’s only qualification for the job is that her grandfather was a huge political power in the Sunset. She had 14 years of experience as a firefighter before her appointment and spent virtually all of it as a chauffeur for a variety of chiefs. Is it so surprising that she volunteered to do her own driving?
She’ll need to do lots of driving because she lives closer to the City Hall in Pacifica than she does to the one in San Francisco. And, she refuses to move into the centrally located Chief’s house that the citizens built for their fire chief because the citizens thought that the fire chief should be in the center of the City in case the fire chief might have to go to a fire or other natural disaster some time. The friggin’ town is 7 1/2 miles across. The chief lives 7 miles from the area that suffered most in the last earthquake in ’89. I drove from Stern Grove near the chief’s house late one night to the Marina and it took 35 minutes! Folks, I was a firefighter for 5 years and that kind of response time is outrageous. Her solution? She keeps a blanket and some pictures at the old chief’s house in case she ever needs to go there. Meanwhile, she lives in the boondocks. The woman is a total incompetent and should be demoted immediately to the back step of a pumper in the Bayview. Hire a chief from downtown Tokyo with 30 years experience of earthquakes and serious fires. We’ll teach em English. (an aside, while paramedics do 90% of the work on the department, the redneck union – don’t you just love 8 foot American flags dragging from their rigs? – the union is cutting them out of the stations)
The SFPD
Worse than the fire chief. She still lives at home with her mom. … Does that give you the beginnings of an idea as to where she’s coming from?
When told that the police union had created a film inciting the cops to remove a member of the Police Commission and was showing it around precinct houses, the chief said she knew nothing about that and hadn’t seen the film. Asked when the department would get helicopters back in the air (we are the ONLY major American city without them), she refused to comment. When asked when the department would bring back the kiosks that we formerly had in high crime areas, she again, refused to comment. When asked when the department would return cops to walking beats, she refused to answer. Muni should have the outline of her face on their tokens cause she’s the biggest token of them all. The real chief of this department is P.O.A. head, Gary Delagnes. The only way to bring back public confidence in the force is to go back to the neighborhood forces we had for the first 100 years of the City’s existence and hire only cops who live in the neighborhood. What we have now are around 2,000 Irish thugs, 200 lesbians and 25 gay men. Good luck.
Emergency Services
Another incompetent female political hack. Anne Marie Conroy. Got where she is by being a close friend of Willie Brown. And, oh yeah, surprise … surprise … surprise … she’s a daughter from a prominent political family. Just the qualifications you want for someone in charge of responding to an earthquake or terrorist attack.
Fresh from handing over Treasure Island to developers and lobbyists and an ex-U.S. president, she’s perfectly suited to sorting out the response to a Tsunami. But, of course, I forget, … she’s a Republican and can always call in Halliburton.
Limiting public access to government meetings while decreasing public protection from intrusive government programs.
Cutting SFGTV programming
This could be the worst disaster of all. Newsom announced that he was going to defund the televising of an unnamed City commission. It could the the Taxi Commission. It could be the Redevelopment. It could be Planning. … I’m betting it’s Planning because the goings on there are the ones they most want to hide.
The fact is, SFGTV and CSPAN should be free to the public. It should be illegal for Comcast to charge people to watch their government at work. The end result is that poor people and hippies don’t get to see the Board, it’s committees, commissions, the Congress and Senate at work. … Unless they pay Comcast. Now, I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a pile of shit.
What it does, is allow the Chronicle and KRON and the Examiner and the Guardian to interpret what’s happening at these meetings for the people. The people who cannot afford (or refuse to for philosophical reasons) … who do not pay, cannot see their elected officials at work. They instead, get to read some dick head like Ken Garcia (a true dip shit) tell us how dumb the Board of Supervisors is. If people watched the Board with all their faults and glories, they’d realize that most of its members are actually brilliant and hard working.
That’s enough for now. There’s a football game on. I should have gone into the rape of Golden Gate Park by Warren Hellman, the castration of alternative energy at the PUC with the appointment of Susan Leal and Gerald Green and the firing of Ed Smeloff … should have mentioned the disastrous Trans-Bay terminal design that costs 2 billion too much and will get worse … should have mentioned the fact that while the Swells at the zoo finally unchained the elephants and sent them to a sanctuary, they refused to give up ownership, kept them on rubber bands and can bring them back anytime. I’m sorry, but there’s just so much bad shit out there that it’s tough to keep track of it.
Bottom line
Bottom line is that gentrification under Gavin has increased. The poor are poorer and the rich are richer. There’s less freedom of information and more spying on the citizenry (check out a book & the FBI knows what you’re reading – check into a shelter … same). The poor parenting that is destroying public education is ignored and teachers shoulder the blame. You can’t walk your dog without a cop over your shoulder. The zoo and museums are controlled by the rich and they charge admission to all but themselves.
It ain’t all bad
Every day, more determined immigrants arrive. In flight from murderous regimes and bigotry. In search of a haven for dancers and artists and musicians and gays and poets or to simply watch all of the above. They come and they pour their fresh energy and love into this blessed place. Probably the biggest surprise to me is that many of them are wealthy. Oh yeah! It’s turned out that not all gentry are greedy rednecks. We’re quite a mix here. We’ve seen most of what there is to be seen. Together, we can survive. And maintain this amazing place as the refuge and launching pad for art and tolerance for which it is known throughout the world. … Happy New Year, San Francisco. I love you.
Peace:
