Watching City Hall #374 (5-30-05)

“Do you know where your mother was when you were born?”

(ever enigmatic Jens, tests 'drunk' questions)

When we drink too much (pretty much daily) my buddy Jens & I talk about times past, present and future just like you and your friends do. We just do it more often and you can just go and eat your heart out cause I don't care if you're jealous. ... Anyway, we were talking about what's going to happen to the old YMCA building on Golden Gate now that it's on the block and, as always I wanted to put in a bar I could run on the first floor (thus fullfilling my 27 year old pledge to open 'h. brown's West' someday). ...

Municipal Artists Land Trust #1

Let us agree that the classic Tenderloin 'Y' with its close proximity to City Hall, Hastings School of Law and the College of Culinary Arts should also be filled with students on scholarship.

From around the United States. Say, 200 of them from all 50 states. Everyone on a full 4 year scholarship in one of the arts. They work for room and board in the facilities below their dwellings. From cleaning the pool to cooking and waiting tables in the SF Online Journalists' bar on the first floor. OK, OK, I don't have to have a 100 year lease on the bar. Try the next project.

Municipal Artists Land Trust #2

"The New Mission Theater presents the opportunity to preserve a venue that seats from 300-1,900 patrons which is not present in the Mission."

(Krissy Keefer of 'Dance Mission')

Another case for the Mayor's Office of Economic & Workforce Development. This building was in the middle of a knock down/drag out battle between the Coomunity College District which wanted to destroy it and the community which hung on for dear life. The opportunity exists for the City to create another refuge for the arts. Keefer's Dance Mission deserves a permanent home. San Francisco deserves a permanent home for Dance Mission. This is the City that allowed 1,000 musicians to lose their (largest West of Mississippi) practice space to a dot com business that died in the delivery canal (the building remains vacant) ... make the building a dance/theater space for 100 years in a guaranteed trust.

Land Trusts are the answer. The Art Community can never guarantee a foothold in San Francisco any other way. Oh, you can elect a veto-proof majority of the Board of Supes and pat yourselves on the back. Problem with that is that Willie Brown will sue you and stand before a judge that he had appointed and guess who wins? Market rate developers and fuck everyone else.

Tying 10-15% of the City housing stock into 100 year land trusts that provide living, school and work space for the City's art community is the answer. We have to do this one building at a time. The two buildings suggested as a starting point can house and employ a thousand artists. It is time to stop the creative drain.

My week was better than yours

I am blessed with the most talented and enjoyable of friends. I mean, I don't mean to rub it in, but look at your friends. Jeeez. Is that the best you can do? My friends are taller and shorter than your friends. They are poorer and richer. They are uglier and prettier. Dumber and smarter. The only thing your friends have the corner on is prescription drugs. Let's take my buddy Matt Gonzalez as an example.

Y'all care more about Matt Gonzalez than anyone else I write about. I'm not stupid. I understand that. The girls all want to screw him and the guys ... well, lots of them want to screw him too but that's another story. Anyway, I came by his house Sunday morning to settle this rumor that he was thinking of running against Peolosi and to try and lock him into a party with a bunch of his old campaign workers.

It was 10am and I'd gotten started with the Irish coffees a couple of hours before. That, plus the new medicinal herb is Bubbleberry which shouldn't be consumed before operating anything with a motor or doing anything mathematical. So, ... I launch into why he'd be a dummy to run against Pelosi ("She's the highest ranking woman in the history of the the United States!" - she's still a capitalist stooge, but with a great front - ) Ran that at him plus the demand for a time certain for a party. I figured I was on solid ground with the party. Bunches of his campaign workers hadn't gotten invites to the party celebrating the opening of his law offices and I knew he'd want to set that right. I know, playing to his sense of responsibility was a cheap trick. The last party he threw was attended by over 4,000. Pressing the flesh with that many people 2 years down the line was impossible. I knew that. I also know that keeping the sargeants and corporals and lieutenants and majors stroked is important. I was counting on the top Green agreeing on that.

Matt's best pal and law partner, Whitney Leigh was there along with Gonzo girlfriend, Kat Rauschenberg. "You'll be seen as attacking women!" I yelled that one. "Plus, you'd be a 40 year old freshman with no power. 535th in line, not counting governors."

Kat agreed with me. Leigh pushed the congressional idea. Ever the thoughtful warrior, Matt listened and committed to nothing. I stumbled off down through the sunshine flooding the trendy Hayes Valley street waving dismissively behind. I got nothing. No assurances he wouldn't waste his future in the car bomb of a Pelosi challenge. Not even a friggin' party appearance guarantee. Yet another argument against negotiating while drunk. I determined to go and discuss the matter with Jens, who's my own personal version of Yoda:

h.: “I guess I shouldn't expect much from politicians.
After all, they're only people like the rest of us.”

Jens: “Even less!”

I was depressed Monday about having attacked the kid. It got me nothing. I wanted to heal a rift and only made it worse. May have burned my bridge to the brightest light in the American political Left. I went home and watched the Giants. They lost too.

“Call me. I have an idea.”

(gonzo)

I swear to God, it's things like this that make Matt's friends and fans so devoted. There's a message on the machine from Gonzalez. We hook up and spend 3 hours shopping & eating and drinking and moving art (the landlord has opened the ceiling above his bed and replaced the sewage line to the apartment above that runs therein - so, Mr. Powerful can lie in bed at night and stare at a black cast iron drain pipe - I ask myself absent-mindedly if Dede Wilsey would stand for this) and talking. He'd not only do a party. He'd do 30 of them!

“Marlina Sonn, come on dowwwnnn!”

Marlina turned Matt's '30 parties in 30 days' fundraisers into 174 parties in 30 days. Not bad. Now, Matt was not only willing to do a party to thank the old crew just in case anyone doubted he was still our love slave, he was willing to do another '30 parties in 30 days'. This string would be for the benefit of the new Lefty, S.F. Peoples (whatever they call it) organization that grew out of the gonzo mayoral run.

I phoned Bruce Wolfe first. Then, Richard Marquez. Talked to several more people who don't like to have their names used. And, finally, left a message for Marlina, the ex-dominatrix whom we refer to as 'the Minority Whip'.

I realized that Matt resisted the birthday party idea because that would have been all about him and that ain't him, as it were. Corny as that fucking sounds, it's true. He'll do 30 parties for the cause but none for himself. I grabbed on the offer. If he's that stupid, only someone even dumber would pass up the opportunity to exploit him. I figured if I played this right, I could come out with another 10 lbs of cellulite and an extra spot on my longue.

Then, he gave me his radio

We'd shopped Amoeba records on Haight and I'd indicated the spot where I bowled an 87 when the place was a bowling alley and I was an inebriated teacher and he bought 'trane and miles On Green Dolphin Street' from 1960 recordings made in Swedon and Holland. We listened to cuts as we schlepped and wandered. He knows I have a soft spot for Miles who's from St. Louis as am I.

"You got a cd player?" He was giving me the cd at the end of the night. I was touched but my radio/cd player hasn't worked right since the meth-fueled floor sanding job 10 years back. I related same.

"You can have this one." It was his own personal boom box! From the top of his own bedstead. I was truly touched. I could listen to Coltrane and Miles and the radio probably even worked.

OK, nothing's perfect. Matt spent a couple of minutes explaining what parts of his personal bedside music system worked and which didn't and what buttons I should and shouldn't push if I didn't want to get hurt. "And, the one on the right eats tapes." ...

Odds & ends and odd ends

As Pat Murphy noted in last week's Sentinel, Ross Mirkarimi legislative assistant (neighborhood outreach specialty), Cheryl Brodie ... Cheryl left to accept a curator position for a private Minnesota art collector. She'll be back in 1-5 years with good behavior. New Mirk pack animal is Regina Dick-Idrizzi who worked with Ross years back in founding the California Green Party. Welcome to the feeding tank, Regina. You age in 'dog years' here. Bow wow.

I'm scheduled to do the Arthur Bruzzone show. Taping it in a couple of hours. Been up since before light working up the perfect buzz. Matt did the gig last week. 15 minutes of 'Charlie Rose' kind of format thing. Bruzzone had Gonzo and Wade Randlett back to back. I watched it a couple of weeks ago when he had Rachel Brahinsky and Ted Gullickson. This shit should all be free.

Really. The Mayor's show. Peskin's 'President of the Board' half hour. All of the Board's full and committee meetings. The Comcast contract is up. First chance to negotiate in 40 years. Personally, I don't give a shit what they charge for HBO and all that garbage. ALL government television should be free. Period.

'Queen bee', Angela Alioto was back east last week deposing tobacco execs in Virginia. Lord, I'd have loved to have seen that. Few know that the tea-totalling Sicilian fox once owned a bar ('The Tiddly Room') just west of da Hall when she was in her early 20's. A friend (Michael Moore) who worked security for the 'usual suspects' (tks Alex) tells stories of how Mel Belli used to sit with his back to the wall and teach SF Politics 101 to the likes to Willie Brown and Dianne Feinstein and the Burton boys. I've been hankering after running a bar near City Hall of late. Also kicking around the idea of launching a chat room online with Anthony Faber. What did Rob Anderson say? ... "So much bullshit. So little time."

That's actually enough for now. There's lots more to say. The UN anniversary preparations are going on beneath my window. Suddenly there are BART cops leaving their turf to hassle my drunken crackhead neighbors and the pirates in 'Pirate's Cove' are scattered for now. Rachel's teaching me a bunch of Buddhist shit that I should pass on to you. I heard other stuff and made up a few things that might amuse you. You can wait. For now, just remember to carry a camera for the rest of the week and keep it pointed at the cop nearest you.

Baum for Peace