Watching City Hall #423 (1-27-06)

MUNI grabs surprise 3-0 lead on Cops

(on pace that could kill 50 pedestrians)

The Mayor is right about Muni.    Absolutely right.     Many, many of their drivers are thieving, ex-con thug drug addicts.      I had a driver I was getting high with a few years back tell me:  “You almost can’t get a job with Muni unless you just got out of prison.”.

I was amazed at the dude.     I was smoking pot and chugging Budweisers but this guy was free-basing up to a grand of cocaine a day (it’s much cheaper & better quality now).     He was paying for it with a check for over 50 grand that he’d gotten from Muni for getting injured on the job (it was a scam too).     I was an assistant manager at a big apartment complex in Pacifica at that time and I used to stop by the driver’s crib on my daily maintenance rounds.     While I slaked my thirst, he’d purify his drugs and make huge pots of gumbo and tell us how drivers avoided doing their jobs.

Tales of shuffling buses to avoid their turn in line, heavy sex & drugs in the middle of the night at isolated turnarounds in the BayView and at the Ocean … how to disable a tracking device by breaking off the antenna and blame it on ‘kids’ … stuff like that.

Their union is second only to Gary Delugnuts’, POA in shielding its membership from paying the Piper for anything from murder to sandbagging.     Hey, if your union can’t beat a murder rap, why pay dues?

Solutions

Privatize both of these dysfunctional City giants at a rate of around 10% a year.     Return the jitneys and   start re-chartering neighborhood Special Police patrols.     It is the only way.    These are shameless unions filled with rogue members capable of anything.     The fact that both of them have asked for personal apologies from the Mayor within the past month or so simply reinforces what we at the Bulldog call:  ‘The Duane Baughman factor’ (in honor of the cowardly SFSOS hack who got a Republican judge to make Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval pay for a flyer they made and distributed calling him a Nazi).     Yeah, made Sandoval pay to be smeared.     That’s kind of like SFSOS raping your girlfriend, then having a judge charge you for their rubbers.

Wonder how much the cops will sue Gavin for?     I mean, he did ruin their reputation, right?     And, the cable car drivers?     I’ve stood in a driving rain at the end of the Hyde street turnaround at Fisherman’s Wharf with a hundred or so people for over an hour while a half dozen cable cars refused to move.     Yeah, you got it right, Gavin.     Don’t apologize to the pricks.    Use your Homeland Security cameras to keep track of the drivers and how they meet their schedules for a couple of months, then fire a couple of dozen to get their attention.

Incidentally, I’m pissed because a friend called last evening to say she’d just come close to being run down by a cable car that ran a stop sign without slowing down.    Cops (Sgt Canning @ Central & Dispatcher Donna Chimono @ Dispatch), of course, covered for the Muni drivers who ran the stop at 11:45pm at Hyde & Broadway.     They repeatedly either hung up on my friend or referred her back to Muni which, far as I know, doesn’t give traffic tickets.    This, despite the fact that a very nice grandmother was killed by a cable car just days earlier and only 10 blocks away on Mason.      You want to get their attention, Gavin?     Start making inquiries as to what it would take to start bringing back the jitneys.

Greens get down with Benfield

(A.D.D. afflicted Central Committee shocks critics with good time)

“So, will you write that!?!”     That’s what Green Central Committee member, Susan King said when I said that the entertainment at the Committee’s hoedown was better than that at the Gonzalez event the previous week across the street at Slim’s.     Actually, it wasn’t even close.

Google Garrin Benfield.    Flyer says he’s with ‘Zacksongs Music, SF’.    Guy’s a cross between Jonathan Richman and Jimmy Hendrix.    I mean, there were like, twice as many people at Matt’s event the previous week but I left after 3 hours and we still hadn’t had a chance to rock.     The Sue Vaughan driven Committee event kept the speeches short and seized the audience with Krissy Keefer’s, Dance Brigade featuring Tina Banchero, Lena Gatchalian, Debby Kajiyama, Sara Bush, Karen Elliot and one more voluptuous nubian beauty (what, like I’m not gonna notice?) whose name isn’t on the ‘Babes in Warland’ poster I have on my wall  …  the precision, tightly cast Taiko drum hammering troupe had my buddy, Jens in tears.    Literally.     Then, came Benfield.

I’m guessing this latest Green flap is over and I’m sorry for that.    That could mean half the parties at twice the size and fewer conflicts to parody.     Oh well,   I guess I can always go back to sorting through Willie’s trash.    In the meantime, keep an eye out for Benfield.    And, keep the other one open for cable cars.

Other tidbits

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East Village Opera Company at Great American

This Tuesday evening, January 31st

$15 to see best new band since Mozart died

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Bulldog Chat Room opens tomorrow

www.sfbulldog.com/salon/

Meet at noon & bring a topic

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Regular friday Salon today @ 1pm

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“I am who am.”

(who said that?)