Watching City Hall #370  (5-8-5)

When kitties die

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks snuggled up with (first) Jackson (‘the Atomic cat’ - in the lower Haight) who is loaded with radiation ingested by pill (he’s 12), then, ‘Mocha’, the little reverse-calico (she’s 14) up here in Sonoma. She’s fading. ... I remember scratching her belly when she came up to me as I was painting the Cohens’ first house a bit over the hill in Rohnert Park. Got an old trick from years of rescuing, raising and adopting cats out. Pinch the nipples of the spayed ladies and murmur a repetitive “meeww, meeww”.

Toughest cats to socialize go into a catatonic state. It’s the kittens they subliminally know should be theirs.  ... Lots of other things. ... When they trust you enough, you can massage their individual toes and massage their feet.

Kinky? Nawww, only an anal iceberg would think so.  Affections repressed turn to bitterness. Love your cats and dogs and plants and, hell, even the people in your life. They don’t last forever and neither will you.

Forgive the shock title. Wanted to get your attention. A series of software and related failures have kept me off the net for a week or more. No specifics. Let’s just give you the news you may have missed.

Ted Millikin leaps from bridge!

The first time I saw Ted Millikin was on the tube. Channel 26, of course. He was last in line for public testimony before either the full Board or some committee or other. Doesn’t matter. He sung this little song about how tough it was to be a cab driver in San Francisco and he brought the house down.

Maybe six feet tall. Well proportioned and proud of it. Guy was naked all the time when I came to retrieve him from a vacant apartment or storage room or whatever where me or Ania had put him up for a night along his travels. He was the most appreciative person you ever saw when he got a hot shower and a stretch of new carpet. Hairy from head to foot with a dark curly coiffure and a full bushy mustache. When I heard he’d taken his own life, short snippets of the times we’d spent together began to come back to me. ... I recall him meticulously arranging his backpack and food as he prepared to return to the road. Like so many San Franciscans, he was a homeless couch-surfer whom you’d have never taken to be enduring the brunt of the gentrification age. Ted was an intensely political Green Party member and a musician.

When I first saw him, he was wearing his signature outfit. Jeans, a Hawaiian shirt and a straw field hand’s hat.  And, ... playing his banjo! Singing about how the cab thing or suing or being sued by your landlord (he wrote everything, of course) ... or to be a Green. He played my fund-raiser when I ran against Newsom in District #2. I’m hoping he’s somewhere on the film Rich Hillis and Courtney Haslett shot of the event.

Why’d he do it? ... I can only begin to imagine. It had been at least a year since I saw him. I was back to house-sitting and surfing and we were talking about where we could go if it became impossible to stay in San Francisco financially. I suggested Harbin Hot Springs and he headed up that way.  I personally declared that I’d decided to NEVER leave the City. I’d resolved to go ahead and enter the Care Not Cash program and scrounge until something broke. We went our separate ways. ...I guess that, in the end, Ted decided to never leave the City either. RIP strolling minstrel of politics. Send me a dream about what it’s like to play with Woody Guthrie.

“Ain’t it funny how the night moves with Autumn closing in?"

(Bob Seger)

The local political scene has been alive in the week I’ve been incommunicado (which can be a nice place sometimes) ... It’s a mess to sort out alone, so Rachel Falmouth agreed to help out.

h.: (finishing a final bowl of good green bud & sipping a noonish glass of Merlot) “What’s the most important thing that happened locally in the last week?”

Rachel: (stretching out her self-described ‘Sherpa body’ before the fireplace ... a hard rain is falling across the pastures and hills stretching out from our windows and we’ve stoked a blaze. Rachel glows in the light and I fear that her wild locks with the white streaks might catch fire - no danger, the energy from her yoga exercises settles the entire setting - she sits in a near split and reaches for the heavens with her arms to stretch the powerful muscles of her torso - she speaks) “Well, nimrod, your son whom you haven’t seen in 31 years is coming to visit tomorrow. I’d say that should be at the top of your list. Where are you gonna take him?”  

h.: (hands to head) “I’m at a loss. (Looks out over the swimming pool where sheets of rain are creating a million tiny white caps) He’ll stay with my daughter and we’ll just play it by ear. ... I’m thinking the Board on Tuesday for sure and the Police Commission on Wednesday night. Lunch with Adriel. Matt sometime in the week. Jens, of course. Dinner with Charles & Susan Kalish.”

Rachel: “Don’t get him arrested! There are some memories we can do without.”

h.: “Yeah, yeah. He may not even want to spend much time with me. We’re pretty much complete strangers. ... That’s too personal. What about politics?”

Rachel: (removes the top of her warmups, stripping down to a tank top that reveals some serious cleavage and begins forward stretches, still from the seated position - snorts - but it is the only sign that she is multi-tasking our conversation with her workout. Her moves remain fluid.) “Like you don’t get personal with the political folks around here?  OK, we’ll drop that.  You’re ready to go see the cops Wednesday night. That’s a good move. You understand the irony of what’s happening there?”

h.:  (nods) “One week after the Board and the Mayor censure Joe O’Donoghue and his Residential Builders for their confrontational approach before public forums, the cops are threatening to bring a couple of hundred guys with guns to the Police Commission to intimidate the body that is supposed to regulate them.  Explain to me how this is different than what the RBA has always done?  According to the mayor’s new instructions to his commissioners, they’re supposed to have the Sheriff’s deputies toss out troublemakers. Well, won’t that be interesting? Four or five deputies against 200 cops. Wellll, tickets are nothing and thrills are free.

“Yeah, I understand the cops real well. They want as little danger and work as possible and no responsibility for anything they do. There are more of them than there has ever been. They are paid higher than they’ve ever been paid. And, ... they’re doing the worst job they’ve ever done. (Check the numbers, they’re all correct.) They refuse to obey orders or admit wrong. They won’t walk beats, ride the buses, man kiosks or fly in a helicopter.

“They reserve all of their energy for threatening politicians, the public and anyone else who gets in their way. And, it used to be worse! Imagine if  you were a member of the police commission and the head of the POA had announced he was going to put 200 heavily armed Irish cops into a meeting room at police headquarters where the commission met? Thank God, at least now they meet at City Hall and we should be able to get a few people in there to counter them. The mayor should follow through on his threats and send a resolution condemning Delagnes and the POA for their demagogy. He should have it ready for the Board’s approval without reference to committee at their meeting Tuesday. Just like he and Peskin did with Joe Dough. I know words and reason aren’t much against guns but they’re all we got. If the medicine fits O’Donoghue, it fits Delagnes. ”

Rachel: (now stripped to shorts and tank top, rolls to balance on her shoulders and neck and do alternating bicycle and stretching exercises for her legs which make a flashing array of shadows above the hearth) “I hate to be the one to tell you this, cowboy, but you supported the cops on the issue they’re  protesting.”

h. (smirk and shrug) “Yeah, still do. I’d never last with a badge. I’d  be just as light on the trigger finger as I am on the keyboard. ... What else?”

Rachel: “Push Lynn Woolsey and the Gonzalez connection.”

h.: “Yeah, yeah. I couldn’t get online here but I did some politics. Gonzo spent some time in D.C. this week with the congresswoman and is supporting her for re election. Daniel and Becky said they were interested in throwing a house party for Woolsey once the campaign gets going. They’re my best friends and it will be their deepest foray into national politics. That’s a good thing. They got to spend an evening with Angela Alioto and the mayor of Napa last year. I’ve always wanted to get Gonzalez up here to meet them and their friends. After 20 years of suburban networking & soccer-parenting, they know a thousand people. We can help Woolsey and once we drag Matt into the race for governor, it will help him too. ... Then, later in the race for president. I love getting my friends hooked on political activism.”

Rachel: (standing now and stretching to put palms of hands on floor without bending knees) “Tell em what Krissy said about healing divides on the left.”

h.: (brightens) “You like her?”

Rachel: (pauses in routine & looks quizzingly) “Well, she could be my body double. What’s not to like?”

h.: (looks away and speaks quickly)  “She says it is time to make some serious efforts toward healing the rift between the Ammiano and Gonzalez people. She thinks a run for governor by Matt would do it. ... (turns back toward her, swiveling away from the computer)  What else?”

Rachel:  “Comcast & City Desk.”

h.:  “Yeah. They’ve given up any pretense of fairness in their political coverage. Last week they had a panel of 4 Chronicle reporters plus Barbara Taylor. It was pitiful. Taylor is now the lefty of the show if you can imagine that. Even Rachel Gordon caught the Downtown fever when she noted (and quickly backtracked) upon the suggestion that the reason there were 800 fewer people on welfare since Care Not Cash kicked in was that the people who were coming in from out of town to get illegal benefits had left. Now, this is simply not true and Rachel remembered it after a second, but it was already out there. City Desk is like watching FOX News only you insert Newsom for Bush and you’ve got a duplicate radar signature. ... Then, they bring back the Arthur Bruzzone Show. Last I looked, he was the Chair of the local Republican party. They must know something we don’t know cause it sure seems stupid to completely shut out the political viewpoint that controls the legislative body to which you must gain approval if you are to maintain your local monopoly. And, Rachel, those 800 people didn’t ‘drop off’ of welfare. They were pushed off the rolls and while some did leave town in frustration, most of them stayed. And, at least one of them jumped off the bridge.”

Rachel:  “R.W. Beck and Gloria Young.”

h.:  (Nods) “After the new Board took power in 2000, they moved quickly to get a Public Power initiative on the local ballot. They needed a study as to the feasibility of purchasing PG&E’s assets. The Lafco created for the purpose (chaired by Gonzalez, who sided with Young in the coming controversy) ... purpose was to come up with a ballpark figure. Lafco chose a self-employed former PG&E engineer (23yrs) named E.W. Simpson to do the work. They gave him something like 90 days to do the study.

“As far as I can figure, I’m the only one in the City who read his report. PG&E sent their people after him and they uncovered an instance of double-billing (honest mistake he said) and passed the info on to Young who is the Executive Director of Lafco and has consistently delayed moves toward Public Power. She went to Gonzalez with the information and they dumped Simpson.

“Director Young then steered Lafco toward a firm called R.W. Beck. That was 3 years and a million or so ago (Simpson billed the City under a hundred grand). At the last Lafco meeting, Young informed the commission that not only could the Beck study not be completed for at least another couple of years but that when it was completed, it would have to be revised immediately at additional cost because given how long the process had been drawn out, the numbers would no longer be good. She then, remarkably, noted that Lafco might want to dump Beck and start all over. And, she closed by saying that, should they decide to keep Beck working, it was going to take at least another 1.2 million to complete the report that would then have to be done over. I’m not going to sit on my hands waiting for people to write and tell me how right I was on this issue way back when. What do you think?”

Rachel: (toweling herself as she sits cross-legged before the fire) “You’re too hard on Young. She takes the best advice she’s given. It just comes from PG&E  people. The real roadblocks here from now on are Herrera and Leal. Dennis won’t enforce the Raker Act (why’s the Guardian not challenging him on this?) And Leal is strictly a PG&E stooge. ... On another front, I think the issue of who controls the stables in Golden Gate Park is interesting. That’s another one you called. Remember when you screamed that closing the stables after 150 years was a political ploy to hand it over to the rich? Now, on 4/26, the Examiner runs a full page of photos of the local ‘Swells’ who are having a party to raise funds to reopen the public stables as a private, non-profit. Just over the last 3 years they’ve taken over the golf course and the art museum and all of the parking. They already grabbed the zoo.  Everything that was free will now cost you and you’ll be giving your money to the richest people in town who will pay nothing from their own pockets and control everything. What else have you noticed in the last week or so?”

h.:  (grinning with pride) “Did you read Tommy Craggs’ piece in the Weekly on Wednesday?  He called the Chronicle’s new publisher a ‘cocksucker’ and a ‘motherfucker’ within the first couple of paragraphs of his profile and his editors not only printed it, they made it front page.  I like to think that I’m a little bit responsible for the bar coming down to that level.”

Rachel:  (turns and looks sadly, shaking her head) “Go wash out your mouth.”

It’s  Mother’s day and there’s never enough time. I should thank Pat Murphy for his classy retraction on the Gonzalez hatchet piece and wish he and Luke the best. Their pictures are the best new happening in local political journalism. I should note to anyone who has written me over the past 10 days or so that I haven’t had access to my mail for a variety of reasons and I’ll get back to you soon as I can.  Or, maybe never. Also, I want those of you who sent me money to know that I didn’t get it and you should send more.

It get’s better