Bulldog 2007-Article 85

(5-27-07)

I fuck up again

No, Matt’s still an asshole, but I must restate an assertion about the Art Agnos administration and apologize to Art and all of his friends and family.      Mea culpa for a misstatement in Article 84 yesterday.

I said that Agnos lost to Jordan because his ‘Camp Agnos’, a homeless encampment he allowed set up across from City Hall was there for 3 years.      This was false.

The encampment was there for 9 months and Agnos didn’t promise to ‘end’ homelessness.       He was trying to aid the lowest income SRO residents left in the street by the ’89 quake and refused help by the Red Cross  … trying to keep them in the public eye.     Art’s Downtown opponents spun the thing and the false perception has carried on for almost 20 years.      Eventually, an Agnos lawsuit forced the Red Cross to return funds they’d collected from San Franciscans to house these people, back to San Francisco.

Let me make a point here

There’s a difference in making a mistake and fabricating an out and out falsehood.       I should know, cause half of my columns are peopled by imaginary people and events who gain entry to my work through the poetic license called ‘satire’.       However, I’m right about 90% of the time when I toss back another slug of bourbon and start typing.       When I’m not, I make corrections quickly.      They are heartfelt and subjects generally come off better off than before the exchange occurred.       In this case, Agnos will get coverage from my buddy, Luke Thomas over at Fog City Journal where the distribution is much wider, photos better than words, and accuracy supreme.      Unlike, say for instance, Phil Matier.

Matier printed a retraction today for saying that Chris Daly charged into a meeting Mayor Newsom was having with a foreign official and that Chris was in jeans and a  T shirt at the time.       Now, the intent of the remark was to further lower Daly’s credibility as a representative of the people of SF.      For all their bullshit about the D-6 supe, they don’t discount him at all.  They fear him.

Or, rather, their bosses fear him/  They spend a lot of ink, telling many lies about Chris Daly.  While admitting that they lied (Daly was wearing a suit and tie), they didn’t apologize.  They corrected their error, but they didn’t apologize.

Congrats to Luke Thomas for getting at the truth on the Daly smear by Phil Matier and Andy Ross.

Luke is also the original ‘Plus One’

Luke’s current squeeze is the lovely Elaine Santore who hangs her Mac-10 at Sfist.       She described him in a piece as her “Plus One’ which was a term I hadn’t heard.      I asked her about it and she said she got it from dealing with waiters and box office folks for years.      You know, when you aren’t certain if someone you invited will show for some reason or other, you list them as “plus one�.

I do believe the girl has contributed to the lexicon of relationship vocabulary.        I’m serious.  Arabic has 23 different words that translate into English as ‘love’.       They are different stages of the same feeling as it transitions from spark (crush), through conflagration (passion) and finally, into the not so sexy, ‘spouse’.

I’d say that Elaine has added a bridge along the highway of love.      A word to fill that awkward silence when friends or perhaps, an asshole like Phil Matier (no retraction will be needed for that)  …  when they’ve seen you with the same person more than once or twice and they tie you up and start torturing you to find out the nature of the relationship.

“Why, Ms. Garchik, Luke is my Plus One.�

(said brightly to gossip columnist)

“Mom, don’t get upset, he’s just a Plus One.�
(when the listener doesn’t like online editors)

I could go on with this and so could you.      You could use it in any instance where you get too drunk to remember your date’s name (like, tell me that’s never happened to you).  And on.  And on.

Southern’s Capt. O’Leary mocks Fong

I try to read as many of the PD’s precinct weekly reports as I can because you can learn lots about the attitude of the force and their leadership as they see things from the ground.

Keep in mind that a precinct captain with a grudge can drive someone out of business if you’re small. They can even make a big time poverty pimp like Randy Shaw shake in his boots from time to time. That’s why Randy speaks so highly of the Tenderloin’s Gary Jiminez whose knuckles drag when he walks.

If the captain is worth a shit, the conduct of his officers in their interactions with the people in their precinct will reflect his or her attitudes.

On the next level, the competence of the SFPD police chief can rightly be used to measure the philosophy and strength of that chief. If the captains respect the chief, they pass down the chief’s orders and their officers follow policy set at the top.

That’s why it was disappointing to see Chief Fong make a promise to not pursue pot as a crime (particularly felony) a week or so go and have Captain Denis O’Leary of Southern Station bragging about a sting operation for pot that he was running after presumably, being ordered by Fong to back off.

Reported in his district newsletter that he had 5 cops (imagine them on foot patrol) working a sting in Hallidie Plaza (already covered by BART cops) and arresting 4 people for felony pot sales (this smells of Kamala looking for high conviction busts to parade in November – these guys plead out and we’re supposed to forget the murderers she won’t prosecute).  If he’d sent his officers up the street to my hood, they could deal with real problems.  But then again, it’s lots more fun to do your steroid act in front of tourists.

Fong told representatives of the medicinal pot community she’d have her captains follow SF law in making pot the lowest priority.  Either she lied, or O’Leary doesn’t listen to her.  Probably a bit of both.  Officer in pot sting: Ryan, Razzak, Buhagiar, O’Connor and Yick.

I gotta go get high on pot.