Watching City Hall #379 (6-18-05)

"So, how do you keep from fucking everybody in the room?"

(Rachel causes me to rethink an invitation to a rave)

I don't have to make this shit up folks. My friends are a series of one-liners, one after the other. The above came from a conversation at D5 Supe, Ross Mirkarimi's monthly art opening. Not about the group we were with although they're certainly all hot hunks & hunkesses. I'd asked Rachel if she wanted to accompany me to a rave with a couple of friends and heads turned all around as advice was given. "You have to do ecstasy and it's nothing but watered-down MDA." ... "It makes you like people that you hate." ... "You'll love it." ... "You'll hate it." Then Rachel tossed out her concerns. All fell silent and more heads turned to give her the once, twice and thrice over. The party produced several other great stories.

Happy birthday, Aaron!

Board President, Aaron Peskin stopped by for a visit and a glass of two buck Chuck on his birthday (42nd I think) and he had a great story:

"It was last Wednesday night and I'd had a rough day and was ready to unwind witha martini. Dennis Herrera gave me a call inviting me over to a bar where he wasrelaxing with a colleague. I came in and had a drink and started talking to Ken Bruce(one of Harvey Rose's lead analyst). We had a couple and the bartender came by andsaid: 'You should know that there is a tsunami alert.'. I didn't really believe him andwent on chatting. A few minutes later, I realized my cell phone needed attention. Ichecked it out and found I'd had four 4 messages within the past 5 minutes. The Clerk of the Board had called. The police chief had called. The fire chief had called. And, the Director of emergency services had phoned."

"That's when it hit me."

"There really was a tsunami alert!" (it is the job of the people who'd called, to assemble City leaders in such an emergency)

"And, with Gavin in Chicago, I was the acting Mayor!!"

Acting Mayor needs car & a cop driver

Luckily, we didn't get hit. Personally, I was watching channel #26 when they flashed the alert over the top of the screen. I changed to a mainstream station and was on the fire escape outside the 4th floor window of my Civic Center SRO at 9:23pm when the wave was scheduled to hit or not. I can see out McAllister all the way to USF and figured if I saw da big one, I'd start climbing toward our 8th story roof. If the friggin' wave is higher than that, God wants me to die. Fortunately, I was drunk and stoned and would have hardly suffered.

Aaron was OK. The guy has a hallow leg and I'm sure he drove just fine. He said he'd just reached the Emergency Center when they called an 'All Clear'. But, the more I thought about it (I was a firefighter for 5 years) ... the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the event had exposed a hole in our defenses. Put simply, you need the Mayor or his/her stand-in at the City's Central Emergency Communications Facilities as quickly as possible. That's covered with the Mayor when he's in town because he has 24 hour cop coverage. But, they don't extend a car & driver to the acting mayor. That should be corrected. You need a 24/7/365 cop with open communications links, a siren & lots of flashing lights. If the Mayor has a problem with lending his limo, they can let Aaron borrow one of Arnold's humvees (that's the ONLY time it's OK to drive one).

Save Joe & Eileen & Bruce & Doug

Unfortunately, the Mayor has launched a serious attack on 4 key Progressive community leaders who have been appointed as minority representatives on the Ethics Commission and the Sunshine Task Force. His political consultants want them removed. Three of the four are gay. Two are disabled. All are intelligent, open-minded and independent. They, in fact, provide just the kind of counter-balance to the usual hack, rubber-stamps usually appointed by the Mayor (there are exceptions) ... just the kind of loyal opposition the voters endorsed when they overwhelmingly passed the propositions crafted by Matt Gonzalez & Tony Hall only a couple of years ago.

Why pick this fight now?

I'm thinking the Mayor's people are feeling that the preliminary victory by Nazi baiter, Duane Baugham (handed by a Republican judge) over Progressive D11 Supe, Gerardo Sandoval meant that it was going to be OK to go after sitting commissioners likely to rule against the kind of racist, fascist garbage put out by Donald Fisher and Dianne Feinstein and Warren Hellman and Richard Goldman and Duane Baughman and Richard Blum and Walter Shorenstein (he's the one who fired a bunch of his janitors for Christmas last year - in San Francisco!). Just watch. These people are the new nazis and that is one hell of a remarkably amazing fact. Rich plutocrats who seize control of a government by publishing and preaching appalling lies that appeal to the most base instincts of the electorate (unsuccessfully, thus far). I mean, everytime I think I've got the crown for biggest scum bag in town secured ... here comes Donald Fisher (hate-filled exploiter of native slave labor ) grabbing it away. These people are human garbage. Don't let the tuxedos and awards they give each other fool you. These animals would chain their employees to their sewing machines in the U.S. if they thought they could get by with it. They bribe politicians and journalists and every manner of public official.

Bottom line here is that if you think that the hateful literature passed out by Baughman's late night storm troopers (3-4am) targetting Jake McGoldrick and Gerardo Sandoval were bad, just wait. ... No, don't wait. We can respond.

What can we do? Well, Donald Fisher wants Gerardo Sandoval's house. Where does Donald Fisher live? Anyone know? I'd think that his house and all of his other holdings (have y'all heard of 'the Gap'?) are certainly fair game for some really fun protests. Now, I'm not advocating violence. Sending thugs out in the middle of the night is what Fisher's henchmen do. It should be possible, however, to legally interfere with the Feng Shui of the domiciles and businesses of 'the Four Horsemen' and their flunkies.

That's a last resort. In the meantime, we'll need a counter to the attack. That could begin in the form of ammendments to the Mayor's legislation before the Board of Supervisors. I think, for instance, that if the Mayor feels that it's not proper for someone who has run for public office within the last 4 years to serve on a commission (this neatly nets Eileen Hansen), it should be extended to catch Brenda Richardson who heads the Civil Service Commission. For starters. Who else? I haven't even begun. I'm sure the public would smile upon excluding developers or their employees. Retroactively, of course.

This move looks stupid on the part of the Mayor. But, I know that the people who designed this strategy for him and passed it through the likes of Ken Garcia and Michela Alioto-Pier are not dumb. They already control the Ethics and Sunshine bodies and yet they feel compelled to further weaken the voter ordained minority representation. What's up with that?

Odds & ends and odd ends

After Mirk's party (provocateur, Katz who crashed my kids' party was there - I'll publish a pic of him next month) ... we headed out to find Jens & Leona. It was the party after the party as it were. Or, if you count my weekly friday lunches with my own brain trust, it was the party after the party after the party. This town will get you down if you let it. ... But, don't let it. Just take Jens' advice to Charles Kalish:

Jens: (passes a joint to Charles who's already well lit)

Charles: (holds up a hand - needing a break, jokes) "I'm trying to quit."

Jens: (looks around for a moment, nods, then offers the joint again) "Well, until you do."

Charles: (nearly rolls on floor with laughter and accepts joint)

Randy Shaw, a study in prick

He outed Kelly Cullen when the good brother opposed his power grab (Shaw is THC & Cullen was TNDC) ... when Cullen opposed him on a project (Cullen was an ally for years before this). Then, he lied in print (under his own name) ... he accused Matt Gonzalez (another former ally) accused Matt of censuring appointees he made to the DBT when they opposed a Shaw nominee. He turned on Joe O'Donoghue (another long-time ally) when it became certain Joe couldn't swing the Director's position to Jim Hutchinson. You seeing a pattern here? He's done it again.

Much like myself, you can't believe anything that Randy Shaw tells you. Unlike me, you particularly cannot believe anything that he tells you that someone else told him. Put succinctly, the motherfucker is a liar. This time, his victim was Rich Hillis, a Project Director for the Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development (headed by Jesse Blout). Shaw's methods are getting slimier.

I went to cover a meeting of the Mayor's Arts Joint Task Force on Wednesday and Shaw was there. I figured he would be. He considers himself to the 'Sir Randy of the Tenderloin'. Any project that happens in the TL has to grease his palm with cash or real estate (he co-owns the building that houses THC through a straw party, lives in a mansion in the Oakland hills and is the ultimate poverty pimp) ... subject at hand was Mid-Market revitalization. The Mayor wants developer taxes to go through Redevelopment where it can be leveraged through long term bonds. Shaw wants the money to go to the General Fund where the funds cannot be leveraged. But, Shaw has a stronger base on the Board of Supervisors (which disburses a tiny fraction of the yearly budget) ... he figures that he, personally, will make more money.

Due to the nature of the existing Mid-Market commercial building stock, it is a haven for artists. Thus, both Shaw and the Mayor have made pitches to the artists for their support. Shaw is losing and he's lowered his aim. To the point of twisting some of Rich Hillis's comments from the Wednesday meeting. And. ... Now, get this. We're used to him lying about what someone actually said but usually he at least signs his own lies. This time, he put the name of Casey Mills, a fine young writer on his distortions and published it in beyondchron.com. Mills wasn't even at the meeting. Shaw is simply hiding behind him. What a snake. Let me finish this cause I'm having dinner with Rachel Falmouth and Eileen Left and her guy, Frank Webster and Bulldog columnist, Alexandra Jones. Thinking about Shaw just plain pisses me off. He a back-stabbing phony and you cannot believe anything he says.

Close with a Jensism

h.: (I was raging over Shaw's attacks) "Has he never heard of principles!?!"

Jens: (taking a toke of hashish) "Aren't they Prince's back-up singers?"

this is just temporary: