Watching City Hall #372  (5-19-05)

"I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."

(Marc Anthony's coup speech)

Some people burn their dead. Others bury them. Some eat them. Politicians stand on top of them to get a better view of the crowd. Or, hide behind them to take cheap shots at their enemies. The last one is what the morning Chronicle chose to do and you gotta be impressed by their chutzpah.

The Chronicle went after Angela Alioto on behalf of the gang of inbred, inplanted, lipo-suctioned, botox-injected, trust fund fueled, pretentious, no account assholes who own and run their newspaper. Their vehicle was an obituary for an old friend of hers. The Hearsts and their gangster management are a bunch of rich losers and that's what these people do. When they can't match the talent, intelligence, looks and energy of their opponents, they try to bring them down with slander.

I know all about that kind of shit. I am, in fact, the most prolific local practitioner of this particular black art. Just ask Warren Hellman. Or, the mayor. Gary Delagnes is a new friend. And, of course, there's Comcast. I swear, if I had a larger readership, these people would be in real trouble and so would I.

Whatever, everyone dies at least once and we bottom dwellers at the Bulldog and on the Wall and over at the Chronicle will not hesitate to use the death of any notable to forward our own political agendas. ... Remember Terry Schiavo? I was reading some of Joe O'Donoghue's poetry the other day and was inspired to write a few lines in praise of one of my favorite 'Swells':

(Sung to the tune of 'Betty Davis Eyes')

Couplet for Dede Wilsey
"She's got a Terry Schiavo smiilllle.
It lasts for mile after miillle!
...
And, Betty Daaavis eyes."
(hum the song and see if she stops smiling)

Odds & ends & odd ends

I got to talking to some people over at DPW about Mohammed Nehru the other day and they were anxious to share a few tidbits about the chief henchman of Downtown's black political muscle.

h.: "How you likin' working for Mohammed Nehru?"

Worker: (surprised but immediately energized) "That fucker's crazy! Everyone's scared of him. He went after one of Ed Lee's assistants and they sent him to anger management. Now, he's not even allowed into any of their meetings. No one knows what he's supposed to be doing."

h.: "I reported that he's rebuilding his squad of con goons from SLUG and they're going to get hired and paid through the Urban Forest program."

Worker: (shakes his head) "He don't need to. He brought em all over to DPW with him last year. There are some mean ass ex-cons all over. Three of them have been killed in the last year. They laid off a bunch of good workers to put these guys on. The guys who got canned went to the Board of Supervisors to complain but they ignored them."

It's good to hear that Mohammed is keeping busy. It's hard to keep a guy down who strikes fear into the hearts of hardened convicts.

h.: "Doesn't all the noise bother you?"

Jens: "Huh?"

(typical cocktail hour at Nielsen's)

Pot Club debate on wrong track

I was talking to my buddy, Arthur Evans at the methadone clinic the other morning and was surprised to hear how much we're in agreement on the direction the hearings regarding medicinal marijuana are headed.

That would be, the wrong way. I noted that giving the Planning department any control whatsoever over the development of our marijuana sector is idiotic. Zoning Director, Larry Badiner is more compromised than Monica Lewinsky and is already announcing that he's ready to start closing down the retail outlets and that as few as 2 of the 40 or so clubs may survive.

Dr. Evans & I agreed that the solution is to concentrate on the product and not the outlet for the product. We agreed that medicinal weed and other 'soft drugs' (Arthur's term) should be available through properly licensed pharmacies, bars or liquor stores as is appropriate. We reached a consensus that the vetting process for the licenses for all such establishments is sufficiently rigorous to shut out the 'criminal' element of concern to all.

I floated the idea of keeping everything as simple as possible. Issue a 'Medicinal Marijuana Outlet' permit to each of the owners of clubs open or in the pipeline when the original moratorium took effect. Make the permits mobile and permanent (subject, of course, to good behavior) and restrict sales to premises holding the aforementioned credentials.

That's simple. Instead of taking years designing an independent distribution system, just hook into the existing 'stress reduction' network. Let this original 2 score of pioneers take their permits and shop them around to real businesses with real ADA compliant doors and toilets and ... the upshot will be that these permits will be worth pretty much whatever the City decides. Were the City to maintain the present moratorium for, say ... 10 years, ... the permits will easily be worth a million bucks apiece.

(OK, Arthur wasn't at a methadone clinic and neither was I but it made a better lead.)

New bright light at Planning

(Matt Franklin running scared)

Where the hell did Marshall Foster come from? Just when you figured that Gerald Green and Larry Badiner had strangled all the healthy puppies and left us with a new generation of flatliners like Dan Sider, here comes this kid.

He looks like a Kennedy. He can't be much over 25 years old. Fucker dresses like the ever impeccable Newsom. He combines the total subject command and comfortable ease of MOED's, Rich Hillis with the solemnity and directness of Budget Director, Ben Rosenfield. It was something to see and the funniest thing was watching the kid turn his doubles partner, MOH head, Matt Franklin into a ball boy.

The subject was the array of 'Blade Runner' height luxury condos already pretty much cleared for ground-breaking on Rincon Hill. The kid, Foster had all of the answers and Franklin only got older and grayer each time he elbowed the precocious newcomer away from the podium.

(Message? This Foster kid is a monster. Remember the name. And, ... sell your Franklin stock.)

Shit for brains journalism

Better to write nothing than to write half of the truth. Of course, that would leave the Chronicle with Rachel Gordon, David Lazarus, Joan Ryan and the Sporting Green and the Examiner with J.K. Dineen, P.J. Corkery and Doonesbury. I'd be feeding pigeons in the park and Warren Hinckle would be drinking in a New York bar. Which is all pretty much the way it is, but I'll finish the story anyway.

Joe Cassidy's Hunters Point Ripoff

I wanted to give Examiner newcomer, Justin Jouvenal the benefit of the doubt when he totally blew the story of RBA heavy, Joe Cassidy's complex hoodwinking (we hope) of the entire City bureaucracy in his land grab of a big chunk of Bay front property adjoining the eastern slope of Portrero Hill.

Wrote the guy. Told him it was Pat Murphy's story. Pat & his publishing partner, Luke Thomas of the SF Sentinel and that he should get on their web site and see a Pulitzer level treatment of the ENTIRE subject.

Hopefully, it was Justin's editors who decided to run about 10% of the story. Hopefully, he realizes that what was served to the public with his byline was a skewed pile of steaming dog dung. The follow up story came out. It was worse.

Jouvenal ignored the mechanizations Cassidy employed to get the property at a fraction of its true value and the complicity of RBA lawyers in the process. The Ex took a different route.

They chose to hype the 10% of the true story as a front and editorial page attack upon historical preservationists.

"What time should I report for work tomorrow?"

Ackerman closes in on Broad butt-kissing award!

(insiders say she's a lock)

"Test scores not everything." That's a paraphrase of billionaire Broad's traveling mouthpiece, Tim DeRoche. I'm sure he meant to relate that what really counted was if a District was willing to allow old Eli and his equally decrepit buddies (Warren Hellman, Donald Fisher, Richard Goldman & Richard Blum - the 'Four horseman' - toss in Walter Shorenstein and you've got a straight worth flushing) ... if you let them pick your superintendent (Hellman picked Ackerman), your Chief of Facilities (David Golden), your Chief Financial Officer (I forget), your school principals. ... If you have a record of losing track of hundreds of millions in school bond money. If you live in a town where the major newspapers do not report the hundreds of millions you picked off from L.A. Unified in crappy projects a few hundred miles south of here. ... You can see how SFUSD seems to have a sure thing here.

To their rare credit, the Examiner ran a companion piece (no attribution) that noted that old Eli doesn't believe in democratically elected school boards. (Probably cause he first bought the L.A. board, then lost it in the next election when the people got onto his ass.)

"And he's broad where a Broad should be broooaaadd!"

People, Hellman and Fisher and Broad are megalomaniacs playing 'Sim City' with real cities. Now, much as I'd like to be doing the same, it ain't right. SFUSD taking an award from these pricks is like the SFPD winning a 'Heinrich Himmler Crowd Control Award' from the Aryan Nation.

How to beautify U.N. Plaza

Everyone looks better naked. Well, at least they look more intriguing. ... That's better than repulsive, huh? Well, I was walking through U.N. Plaza this morning on the way to cash my welfare check when I realized how Mayor Newsom can turn the big negative of the hundred or so junkies, drunks and crack heads who call the plaza home. ... I was watching City crews trying to beautify the area while students from the adjacent Art Institute and drunks watched them. I noted the chained off fountain 'sculpture' (that's too generous) with all its careless flat slabs of granite and it hit me.

Hire the homeless for minimum wage to pose nude for the student artists!! ... I mean, shit, you can bring in more artists from the Institute and the Academy of Art, a couple of dozen pedestals for the crack heads to lounge upon in the raw ... let naked drunks lay all over the slabs in the fountains.

It will be a regular Dionesyian paradise. We can even solve that most tacky of all problems by having Stanlee Gotti disguise a few camp toilets with old tree stumps. Then, when the little tourist kids say to their mommies: "Mommy is that man taking a dump?" ... Mommy can say: "No honey, he's posing for a copy of Rodin's 'Thinker'."

OK, you could have done without that last bit.

Maybe all the rest too.

But then, what would I have done all day?

leave me alone at: