Will the Chinese Own Governor Gav?

Hometown hero Gavin Newsom officially announced his candidacy for Governor of California on April 21st, flaunting his technical savvy by simultaneously championing his cause on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. Not being as cybernetic as most of my peers I was forced to enjoy the video spectacle and was once again struck by how embarrassing it is when our supposed leaders pander to the people by utilizing shitty resolution for the sake of networking. Show a little class and stream your own videos.

There’s nothing particularly striking about his pep talk, aside from my being struck with uncontrollable laughter as soon as his well manicured mug appears. San Francisco is hailed as the nation’s leader in universal health care, ecological innovation and retaining teachers amidst grievous budget cuts. He repeatedly uses the term “we” instead of the political assertion of “I”, which has become something of a hallmark in all of his communiques. He is not running for governor so much as we are all being invited to run for governor. I guess this means I’ve been traveling the state with an SFPD escort all this time. The message is that San Francisco is doing better than California and the allusion is that it’s because we’ve had Gavin Newsom at the helm, single-handedly steering us into calmer waters as the rest of the world drowns in a fiscal tempest. The “green economy” is our guiding light, as evidenced by happy laborers installing solar paneling. Voters and the Board of Supervisors, advocates and PACs are not invited to share in the glory of our solar panels.

The elections won’t take place for another year but this never prevents pollsters from harassing the recluses and bored housewives who generate public opinion. If Jerry Brown and Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who are both assumed to be entering the race, run then Newsom places third. If Senator Dianne Feinstein throws her hat into the ring he drops to fourth, but he has commented that if she does he will bow out– as long as she announces her candidacy early enough. In an effort to court less slick Democrats Newsom has been spotted meeting with under-enlightened prospective voters in traditional hicktowns San Diego and Stockton where he plans to replace their images of gay marriage with his successful chain of yuppie eateries and wine bars.

So will the San Francisco model work the length and breadth of a state as large and diverse as California, and more importantly can Newsom convince skeptics he can handle the responsibilities given his track record? Are solar panels the key to economic solvency and can his experience managing lifestyle businesses trump the fact that China owns our collective asses? Perhaps we should examine a little bit of recent history wherein out intrepid leader laid down and allowed a foreign government full reign of policing the streets of San Francisco.

 

Parks & Rec

Concrete is not soothing to the soul, and as the population gravitates towards urban centers I wonder what happens as people become less connected to nature. While I’m no child of the soil I was fortunate to have grown up in a house with a backyard which was a constant source of amusement. There was work to be done, of course, but my family’s high hopes for a well groomed garden never lasted particularly long after planting and it was soon left to grow wild, unmolested except for my father’s periodic moments of zen with the hose.

Most city-dwellers rely on parks for their periodic fixes of grass and trees, and San Francisco has a pretty good distribution of manufactured spaces to take the kids. Although I live in the center of town I have three parks which I can walk to in under five minutes. The closest and most accessible (because it’s not uphill) is Duboce Park, which we used to call Dogshit Park because its main use seems to be for pet-owners to neglect their responsibilities in public. There’s also a basketball court which is under renovation and a little sand lot they filled in with rubber and a play structure they filled in with plastic. The second closest is Alamo Square, a hulking hilltop copse of trees buffeted by constant ocean winds with sharply angled, grass-covered slopes and meandering walkways. The furthest is Buena Vista Park, the largest and most unkempt, which rises high above the neighborhood as the hills climb towards Twin Peaks. This is the hinterlands of my neighborhood parks, dark and menacing like a good fairytale.

At some point you’re supposed to be too old for swings and mudpies but I always found myself in parks. We would sit in the dark of Esprit Park drinking, or in the dark of McKinley Park drinking, or the dark of Dogshit drinking and huffing butane. I once wandered through both Stern Grove and Golden Gate Park on acid in the same night which was an awful lot of walking. Some people may be weary of parks at night but they were always safe havens for me and my friends, isolated pockets of quiet usually safe from the prying eyes of cops or hooligans.

 

The Future Is La Antigua Guatemala

La Antigua Guatemala is a small city which enjoys a robust tourism industry and hosts innumerable Spanish language schools for foreigners. Buried in the colonial architecture (which earned the city status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site) lies all the trappings of modern civilization. The relative wealth of La Antigua amidst the poverty and violence of Guatemala has afforded the city opportunities to modernize, and the government seems open to all ideas which may propel La Antigua into the 21st century as assuredly as any western nation.

Towards the end of last year the municipality introduced a free wireless zone in its central park, earning it status as the first digital city of Latin America. The novel concept of free wi-fi for all has been championed by consumer advocates the world over but in San Francisco the process has been bogged down by negotiations with competing providers and to this day there is no such service, but in La Antigua they just decided to roll up their sleeves and make it happen. When one thinks of Guatemala they probably don’t imagine internet cafes and people using their laptops in the park, but access is available to all who would wish to make use of it.

As encouraging as that development is the people of La Antigua are preparing to lay the ground-work for another first, and possibly becoming the first city of its kind in the entire world. According to Rudy Giron’s excellent La Antigua Daily Photo, a group of dedicated people are busy laying the framework for an alternative fuel project for the city. Biopersa organizers went from restaurant to restaurant collecting spent cooking oil with the intention of reprocessing it into biodiesel for municipal vehicles and the local hospital. If the initial steps are successful and the idea takes hold La Antigua Guatemala could be the first city which operates its city vehicles entirely on reprocessed biodiesel.(See bottom for an update.)

 

Gav and the Gays

On March 5th the California Supreme Court met to hear arguments concerning the constitutionality of Proposition 8, a hateful ballot measure which was passed by a narrow majority of voters banning same-sex marriage. Opponents of the measure held a march and candlelight vigil the night before and I’m proud to say that I know the one person arrested during the speeches. The official version of the story has the detention as a drunk and disorderly but just because “we don’t march before cocktails”, doesn’t mean that storming the stage and screaming “bullshit” in a fit of rage is a drunken or disorderly act.

Many things have happened five years after San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom galvanized the bigots and last week’s court hearing is in many ways the rambling result of his unique sense of political activism. On February 12th, 2004, gay couples descended upon City Hall to take part in the National Freedom to Marry protest and were shocked to find city officials handing out legal certificates. The gears had been set in motion several days prior when Newsom announced he wanted the city to explore ways of allowing gay couples to be wed, possibly in response to Massachusetts overturning a state ban on gay marriage. Word spread that homophobic organizations were planning on appealing to the courts to block any attempts by the city to marry gays. The county clerk’s office prepared gender-neutral applications under the watchful gaze of attorneys while phone calls were made to a select few gay and lesbian rights groups. Just past eleven in the morning the city’s assessor-recorder Mabel Teng performed the first ceremony between Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon who had been together for fifty years.

Alleged Christians were sickened to see genuinely loving couples who had been long treated as second-class citizens exchanging vows but their crusading efforts to file an immediate injunction were blocked as the state courts were closed in observance of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. Eventually lawsuits were filed against San Francisco to halt proceedings and Lambda Legal, The National Center for Lesbian Rights and the ACLU stepped in to represent the couples who had been, or simply wanted to be, married; meanwhile two couples in Los Angeles sued the city demanding their basic human rights be recognized. By August of that same year the courts invalidated nearly four thousand marriages stating that Newson, acting as mayor, had overstepped the boundaries of authority as marriage was governed by the state.

 

I Went to an Art Opening

Until very recently the prospect of enjoying art was as frightening to me as going to the dentist. While I always enjoyed historical or natural science museums, corridors of paintings and sculptures invoked claustrophobia and headaches. My last real participation in an art class was during fifth grade when I suggested to our teacher that we do something to incorporate marketing which, upon reflection, seems to have been a front for showing my design of an orbiting burger joint heavily influenced by my undying adulation for Space Quest III. The only time I recall ever voluntarily going to an exhibit was at the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum and I was probably disappointed because most of Art Spiegelman‘s work doesn’t mirror Maus.

When I wasn’t paying attention parts of my brain matured. Several years ago in New York I faced my fears, spending several hours wandering the Metropolitan Museum completely enthralled; several hours later when we had to leave, I wasn’ t done. Sure, I may have been drawn more to the historical displays and the furniture than many of the paintings but I saw plenty of pieces which grabbed my attention.

Still, I never think of going to a museum on my own, or even when people are in town and expecting to be entertained. It’s so far removed from my world that making a day of art is beyond my comprehension. However I’ve watched people go through art school and I’ve seen the progress they’ve made and I’ve talked about things I didn’t ever expect to understand and learned to appreciate things I never expected to respect. And as San Francisco’s art-school reject population grows I’ve been invited to attend openings which, out of obligation, I try to avoid with really good excuses. But I’m not perfect.

Several weeks ago my downstairs neighbor surprised me with a flyer for his show at Adobe Books; I wasn’t even aware that he did anything other than surf. The opening began after I was off work and Adobe’s a quick walk from my house which made it an easy event to swing by and, as I was practicing my leaving the house skills at the time, the idea appealed to me. I wasn’t at all sure what the art would look like and I realized it really wouldn’t matter. The San Francisco art opening has never been about anything other than hanging out and drinking and trying to impress the people around you by acting like an idiot, dressing like an idiot or talking really loud about idiotic things. My knowledge of how it works made this a particularly challenging test.

 

Vive Boulange de Cole!

As I’ve bitched about in the past I’ve been getting pretty cranky about the collateral damage which occurs when I buy food staples. While I may talk a good game the progress on liberating myself from the acquisition of plastic containers and bags has not been fought as aggressively as your standard Marxist guerrilla war. Okay, I make salsa and I reuse produce bags but, really, is that all there is?

Tortillas drive me nuts but the process of grinding cornmeal into pancakes and then cooking them so they maintain a good shape, width and texture seems daunting. Potato chips? I thought I could use a vegetable peeler for slices and fry them in oil but someone said that was a recipe for a charred mess so I’m compelled to investigate the matter further. Bread was especially aggravating because I’ve always been a miserable baker even under the best of conditions. My parents have a proper house with a proper oven that heats evenly, they have stairs that collect heat where dough can rise unmolested except for the occasional acting up of one or more pets, they have a butcher’s block where the dough can be rolled out and kneaded. My excuses are plenty but the alternatives seemed few; I can only bake extremely dense bread that dries out very quickly and tastes like nothing. I like a lot of the local bakeries but they don’t have stores, at least not in town, so I rely on their daily deliveries to stores where you’re forced to purchase their loaves in paper bags printed with the bakery name and brief descriptions. It’s not plastic but paper waste is still waste, and the bags aren’t even worth reusing.

One of my longstanding complaints about San Francisco has been a real lack of small bakeries where you can buy bread. Growing up I lived near a doughnut factory and they had a small storefront that was only open from 6am til’ noon or so with really shitty coffee and a wonderful array of arterial lining snacks. Doughnut shops abound here, many of them 24 hour operations which have offered refuge over the years, but none of them offer anything resembling bread to take home and use. You could wake up early and trek down to the farmer’s market but many of the vendors have their wares already bagged in the appropriate bag before you arrive, and I do need to sleep. When I had friends living in Olympia I would make a twenty minute walk every morning to the San Francisco Street Bakery. They made their own savories and sweets, had a small lunch counter for sandwiches and a small assortment of tables inside and out. It was a great place to go, and they provided bread to many of the Olympia stores, but I’ve never seemed to find anything remotely similar here regardless of how trivial the concept.

 

Sunday Night on Haight: A Mystery

My roommates were stepping out for pizza and ice cream while I was thinking about smoking half a cigarette. Peeking out the window I couldn’t help but notice the five squad cars taking up the eastbound lane with a small army of uniforms amassed in front of 555 Haight. Not too long ago I found myself wondering how long it’s been since they yanked a body out of that flophouse so I grabbed my camera and headed to the roof.

 

Passport Hacking

Back in 2006 the Department of Homeland Security initiated a program utilizing Radio Frequency Identification in new identity papers, especially passports. These RFID chips store numbers which can be read by a remote antenna and were originally developed for commercial use to help stores track inventory. The DHS’s interest in implementing the chips for their Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, so far as they say, is to expedite frequent travelers through border crossings to save time. Alternately this could also be used to prevent passport forgery or to keep tabs on people’s comings and goings. Or both.

Leave it to an Englishman living in San Francisco to show the world how easy it is to steal these passport numbers from thin air. Using prefab, on the market devices, Chris Paget rigged his car and drove around San Francisco for half an hour, collecting ID numbers. As he says the numbers themselves aren’t really useful unless someone tumbles it into a new passport; the real potential threat is that someone could also be scanning for any RFID enabled credit cards which do have personal information of them, marry the info to the passport number, and then they have your identity. Anyways, watch the video because it’s pretty interesting. Then do as my friend Tai said years ago– smash your passport with a hammer.

Thanks to Pete of Prison Photography for sharing the posting by Engadget which sums it all up.

 

Care Not Cash Revisited

In honor of Gavin Newsom’s exploratory campaign for governor I’ve decided to try and figure out what he’s been worth as mayor. Frankly I’ve no real clue what the guy does all day but he’s a few high-profile moments. The first time Gavin percolated into the public consciousness was as he was just starting out in politics.

Way back in 2004 Gavin Newsom was just another City Supervisor overseeing the rough and tumble Marina district, a neighborhood which he had invested heavily in as owner of some boutique wine shops. Having aspirations for the throne, warmed by Willie Brown’s sharply-dressed touche, he threw his hat in the ring by proposing drastic changes to the way that San Francisco provided services to the homeless. His proposal received the Hallmark moniker of Care Not Cash and the basic premise seemed painfully simple: instead of issuing cash grants to people on the city dole why not provide housing and various health services? On the surface it’s so common sense, tackling vagrancy by giving vagrants a place to live, but the mechanisms behind the ballot measure were not so simple.

Politics played a large role in the creation of Care Not Cash, both on the local and Federal levels. San Francisco has always had a large homeless population and various mayors had attempted to deal with this in various ways. Art Agnos decided to let the homeless camp unmolested on the lawn of City Hall and the adjacent park figuring that we shouldn’t hide a problem we couldn’t fix. Frank Jordan, a former lawman, sent squads of police out into the city to roust camps and move the undesirables along to less desirable districts. Neither predecessor to Willie Brown had any sort of measurable impact on the population; in fact the numbers continued to climb. As San Francisco, always a tourist destination, saw business shift further from light industrial to service and as an influx of proto-dotcom assholes began to migrate into town the eyesore of panhandlers and drug-addled lunatics began to be perceived as a political threat; after the internet bubble burst and the stock market took hit after hit, the pressure to stave off the less attractive city landmarks grew. Meanwhile President Bush’s homeless policy was threatening aid cuts to cities who were not changing policies to represent an emphasis on housing before all other services.

 

Slicked Back Hair, Pockets Full of Cash, Skies the Limit

My power and prestige precede me, which allows access to inside information not intended for you plebes. Just the other day the mayor, Gavin Newsom, sent me a quick e-mail about what he’s been up to. I guess the cat’s been let out of the bag so it’s safe to say that he’s considering a run for governor when Arnold Schwarzenegger gets termed out. There’s an exploratory commission at work, feeling out the mood on the street, seeing what chances our native son has at ascending into the hallowed halls of Sacramento. Newsom himself has been on the move, spending less time at City Hall in lieu of places like Washington DC where he witnessed Barak Obama’s swearing-in (part one) and sat through a two-day Mayors conference. Now he’s in Switzerland and, after a quick four-day stay in Paris with his wife, Newsom has joined the global economic elite at the Davos forum.

Who’s footing the bill for this assessment of gubernatorial aspirations? That’s a good question and according to Chronicle muckrakers Matier & Ross the trip to DC, because of the Mayor’s summit, was a city expense that included whatever accommodations deigned appropriate for Newsom and two staff members, but the tally has yet to be made public. Private funds have sent Newsom and wife abroad, but what work isn’t being done while our mayor rubs elbows with the high profile talking heads of high finance? There’s no accounting for that sort of thing, but it is known that he has a member of SFPD keeping an eye on things overseas. In addition to world-class events Newsom has also be galavanting around the state to shake hands with commoners and possible squeeze dimes from their wallets. This is presumably handled by whatever campaign fund Newsom has already amassed but, as a sitting mayor, he is escorted to many places by our own cash-strapped police department.

But it takes money to make money, as evidenced by my very personal e-mail received from good old Gav. Using his life-altering experience of watching Obama being sworn in as a segue Newsom begins to rattle off his hopes and dreams of what can be done sitting in Sacramento; each bullet point is accompanied by a link asking if you’ll join us. Regardless of whether you’re into universal health care, climate change, schools or the economy the links all direct you to a sign up sheet so you can begin to receive personal pleas for contributions to purchase the sensation of participating in democratic change. That’s what this is all about, he summarized, we have made San Francisco a laboratory for change and he wants to take this experience state-wide.