A Long, Weaving Road

August was an interesting month, weaving all over the place.



There was a visit from an old friend from Long Island, who works in Republican politics because it's the family profession, but is in his every essence a beach-boy leftist hippie.



I took him to the peace vigil in front of the Federal Building on Thursday afternoon...



...and he was completely amused.



There were Friday lunches at h. brown's Burrito Salon...



...where his beloved Krissy Keefer often shows up, in between campaign stops, as she tries to unseat the loathsome, war-mongering Nancy Pelosi from Congress.



Ms. Keefer has smartly honed her messages to three simple soundbites, at least according to her website (click here), and they're all inarguable: "US Out of Iraq, Impeach Bush, and Stop Global Warming." Congresswoman Pelosi has already put Bush's impeachment "off the table," she's been a hideous AIPAC war-mongering cheerleader since early in her career, and she hasn't done diddly to change the corporate structures that spell doom for the planet.



Guess who I'm voting for.



At the Lone Star Saloon on Saturdays, we told everybody about our ascension in economic status with the purchase of California real estate...



...while listening to the oracles around us.

Food Chain Mural, Part 2

I walked under a dark double-decker freeway that cuts through the South of Market neighborhood, below a fairly obscene Bacardi Mojito billboard planted in somebody's front window...



...to see how Brian Barneclo's "Food Chain Mural" was coming along.



It's going up on the side of this monster FoodsCo discount grocery store...



...which stupidly has chain-link fencing around its parking lot, so that these local pedestrian shoppers were handing their groceries over the fence...



...rather than hauling them halfway around the block.



The mural itself is being filled in at an extraordinary pace...



...and is becoming more vibrant...



...with each passing day.



Brian, the artist, liked the photos I posted on this blog last week.



"Lots of blue sky, and anything looks good," he commented.



"The trick is to also have it look interesting at night, which is one reason I put in the night sky up there on the left..."



"...and it's also got to look good in the fog."



"Those are just a few of the things I've got to keep in my head while creating the mural."



His assistant Justin looked thoroughly absorbed...



...creating life out of paint.

From Pussy Power to Kiddie Art

On the way to San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi's monthly art party...



...we ran into a protest in front of City Hall.



There was a rap group singing away into a sound system...



...and a contingent from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence...



...along with strippers from local sex clubs...



...who were protesting the obscure but well-funded City Commission on the Status of Women...



...who had decided that "private booths" in sex clubs needed to be shut down to protect poor, defenseless sex workers.



Those same workers had been speaking in front of The Entertainment Commission, telling them that the proposed ordinance would seriously cut into their monthly income if it was passed.



The only person speaking for the ban was a former dancer who claims she was sexually abused inside the private rooms. In a quote in the Chronicle, she said, "I, as a dancer, was making fine money without a private booth. I have been sexually assaulted in these booths."



The former dancer's name, by the way, is Daisy Anarchy, which brought to mind the late, great Anna Russell's line, "I'm NOT making this up, you know."



Inside City Hall, the building was in a frenzy of preparation for a huge sit-down dinner party...



...for some corporation's fiftieth anniversary.



On the second floor, at Supervisor Mirkarimi's office...



...the art show was in progress...



...and it turned out to be kiddie art from the Booker T. Washington Summer Day Camp in Mirkarimi's District 5.



There were masks...



...and pretty pictures...



...and lots of kids clowning around.



On the way out of City Hall, we saw the remnants of the Sex Workers Protest jumping onto a motorized cable car...



...which was taking the group to their next stop, The Mitchell Brothers Adult Theatre on Polk and Geary.

Brian Barneclo's Food Chain Mural

A huge new mural is going up in San Francisco this month...



...on a 200 foot by 25 foot white wall on Shotwell Street between 14th and 15th Streets and Folsom and South Van Ness.



The wall is to the right of a brutal, industrial-style parking lot...



...that fronts a large discount supermarket.



The artist is a young Indiana transplant named Brian Barneclo...



...and he's a wonderful painter.



In addition, he may be one of the fastest and most prolific artists I've ever witnessed.



At an earlier, stunt-like group show at the Tenderloin's Shooting Gallery, a batch of painters were invited to create a painting in one day with onlookers watching their progress, with a party following the art creation later that night.



I stopped by the gallery at about noon, and saw a couple of dozen people working laboriously upon their various canvases, most of them with only sketched-in outlines.



When I asked where Brian was, they pointed out an area with a large, completed, accomplished painting and said, "He went off somewhere for lunch."



Partly because of his speed, Barneclo is an ideal muralist. To check out his other work, particularly the great Bay Guardian mural he completed on Potrero Hill, click here for his website.



Brian and his assistant Justin ("he's the best!")...



...started work on the mural this Monday, so what you're seeing is four days into their labors.



To get to the "Food Chain Mural" website, click here. It has an address where you can donate money to help pay for the thing, since Brian is essentially doing this huge piece for free.



Or even better, just stop by and watch the muralists at work, and slip them some cash directly.



Part of what is so exciting about this mural is that it's not a derivative, watered-down version of the great Mexican muralists (Rivera, Siquieros, Orozco, O'Gorman) like so many other murals in the Mission.



Brian has his own style...



...and it's extraordinary.

Chicanos

On the same afternoon as the Civic Center protests, the Van Ness entrance to City Hall was being used to set up a catered wedding inside.



Society events in San Francisco could hardly exist without legions of Spanish-speaking labor to assemble and then tear them down quickly.



It has always struck me as bizarre that Americans, thanks to our mass media, know just about every news detail that concerns postage-stamp-sized Israel across the Atlantic Ocean, while there is literally never any news about our huge neighbor to the south, Mexico, which is currently going through as interesting and ghastly a political time as the United States.



This made it all the more surprising that a huge, ambitious exhibition opened recently at the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park called "CHICANO."



The bulk of the exhibit opened in San Antonio in 2001 and has been traveling around the country ever since.



The first section is a collection of paintings that are mostly from the collection of Cheech Marin, the Chicano half of the Cheech and Chong pothead comedy duo who made a collection of funny, wonderfully terrible movies and comedy albums in the 1970s and 1980s.



Marin has gone on to character parts in a long line of movies, a famous "Nash Bridges" TV sidekick part, and has been playing with music, children's books, and just finished directing "Latinologues" on Broadway.



He also buys "Chicano" art, and the collection is just smashing.



The paintings are in every possible style...



...from photorealism...



...to surrealism...



...to impressionism...



...to neo-pre-Raphaelite.



What they all seemed to share in common, besides their often extraordinary size...



...was the fact that not a single painter was afraid of color.



There is quite a bit of humor in the exhibit...



...and the brightness of vision can get psychedelic...



...as if you're wandering around on marijuana brownies.



That may be why the museum spectators all seemed to be having a marvelous time at the show.



The second section of the show had been put together by the museum itself and San Francisco's Mission Cultural Center.



Unfortunately, the exhibition was politically correct, pallid and dull...



...especially after the rooms of wild paintings preceding it.



I was stopped by a security guard from taking any more surreptitious, non-flash photos when I got to the third section of the exhibit, which is a wildly surreal set of multimedia exhibits that is immensely fun.



The security guard was sweet and sympathetic when I told her what the photos were for (you, my dear readers), and since she was so kind, I promised to stop snapping. So if you're in town, go see the show instead. It's great.

Another Day, Another Demo

While taking a Muni bus on the afternoon of Friday the 11th...



...we paused briefly to let a small, noisy demonstration against Israel's invasion of Lebanon pass...



...as they marched by astonished tourists in the shopping district on Market Street.



This was presumably a warmup for a larger protest march that started off in Civic Center Plaza at noon on Saturday the 12th.



On Saturday, there were also hundreds of counter-protestors...



...standing across the street in front of City Hall.



One gentleman had both a rainbow flag and an Israeli flag wrapped together.



It wasn't clear whether or not he was a Proud Gay Zionist...



...or if the rainbow flag was the Italian "Pace" ("Peace") flag.



There are innumerable admirable qualities to Jewish culture...



...but "peace-loving" isn't one of the adjectives that immediately comes to mind, particularly with middle-aged suburban ladies holding signage that essentially excuses the murder of women and children.



The crowd on the other side of Polk Street in the plaza...



...was unfortunately having to listen to one screechy speaker after another.



Why does the A.N.S.W.E.R. group have the most annoying, preaching-to-the-converted orators around?



They are simply awful and detract from the serious peace activists who have a serious message.



Most people ignored the speakers, however...



...while preparing for the actual march downtown.



Some people were using the occasion for electoral politics...



...including this Green activist who was passing out Krissy Keefer for Congress flyers in her attempt to unseat the increasingly unpopular Nancy Pelosi.



My favorite signage was on a low-lying bike warning California's version of Joe Lieberman that her turn was next. We can only pray.

Josh Wolf Rules

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors had a Rules Committee meeting on Thursday morning where the first order of business was to pass a resolution supporting Josh Wolf, a young freelance journalist who was put into federal prison a couple of weeks ago for not turning over his raw video footage of a Mission District Anarchist march on July 8, 2005 where a policeman was injured.



There were a parade of speakers in support of the resolution...



...including Ben Rosenfeld, one of Josh's lawyers.



Each member of the public had three minutes to speak to the committee...



...and they were an impressive bunch...



...ranging from the National Lawyers Guild, the Grand Jury Resistance Project...



...and various local publications such as the reactionary San Francisco Sentinel, who didn't agree with Josh's politics but who were supporting him in principle.



Even Bruce Brugmann, the venerable publisher of the old leftist weekly, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, made an appearance saying he often goes around the country trying to get journalists out of jail but was astonished that this had happened in San Francisco.



Marc Solomon wanted to know who had federalized the case in the first place since it was completely a local matter, and under California's reporter shield law, Josh Wolf had no obligation to turn over his "notes" or his unedited video footage to the local authorities.



The great polemicist h. Brown delivered a wonderful speech in his three minutes, naming names and calling the local police liars. The next day, he sent out a bulletin to his friends and enemies about the hearing that amplified his remarks, along with stating his contempt for how the committee meeting had progressed.

"The Rules Committee hearing was a lame tease. Reason I say that, is because the hearing was poorly organized, shallow and played as a one-shot press op for Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi. While the issue should have been continued to every Rules agenda until Josh Wolf is released from prison, Mirkarimi chose to send the incomplete package to the full Board where it will receive a meaningless endorsement on a 10-1 vote next week."

"Plus, the cops and feds were no-shows at Rules hearing. The cops can argue they weren’t given an opportunity to speak because, first, they weren’t invited and, second, they were at a funeral for a cop killed in the line of duty. Mirkarimi left the committee open to that charge when he denied Sean Elsbernd’s request to continue the matter until the committee could hear from the cops and feds."

Committee member Tom Ammiano was perfectly willing to continue the matter, but yielded to Ross. Thus, in a move that can only be called stupid, Mirkarimi has allowed the cops to play victim and no one can argue with them. If I were Aaron Peskin, I’d hand the gavel to Ross for Public Comment next Tuesday at full Board, so that Ross can be the one telling Gary Delugnuts and his thundering herd of police that they can’t speak about the matter anymore because they had their chance but weren’t invited and were at a funeral anyway.

Parenthetically, whenever a law enforcement worker dies while on duty, there are public funerals that draw just about every one of their colleagues in the Bay Area.



This particular traffic jam occurred on Franklin Street a couple of weeks ago when a funeral for a San Francisco policeman at Grace Cathedral finished.



The ensuing procession along Golden Gate Avenue stopped everything dead, and people started wandering out of their cars trying to figure out what the heck was transpiring.



The funeral last Thursday was for a CHP officer in Oakland, which meant that nobody from the San Francisco Police Department was supposedly available to testify in what should have been a rather important matter.



Back to h:

"Of course that won’t happen. Peskin will announce early at next Tuesday’s meeting of the Full Board that: “Agenda item ‘xxx’ will be returned to committee to give all sides a fair chance to respond.” Or, something like that. Question is, where does he refer it? I think that if he wants a substantive hearing, he refers it to Budget and Finance. For several reasons."

"First, the feds say they’re able to enter the picture here (violating press freedom and arresting Josh Wolf) because SFPD gets money from them through Homeland Security. That has to do with the budget as far as I can see. Second, while Mirkarimi carried a gun and badge for years and was president of his class at the Police Academy, Daly (Peskin’s chosen Budget chair) has been assaulted by the cops. I trust Chris to run a more rigorous investigation."

"Free Josh! The next meeting of the Joshgate conclave needs to extend invitations (would that they could subpoena and jail for stonewalling) should extend ‘invitations’ to:

Sgt. Neville Gittens
Locking Josh up is just the latest in a series of local and federal attacks upon local press freedoms. Did you know that the SFPD says that Sgt. Gittens has either suspended or refused to reissue press passes for hundreds of reporters and photographers over the last several years? On his own authority? Yeah, he says he’s been doing it because Chief Earl Sanders told him there were too many press passes out there. Says none of the chiefs who have followed Sanders told him to stop, so he just keeps removing press access as he personally deems fit.

Now, if you believe that shit, you are either institutionalized or should be. The Daly investigation should execute Sunshine requests beginning with the first order Gittens says he got from Sanders. I’m assuming they write this kind of thing down. Every chief and related command officer and their advisers should be called to explain their own relationships with Sgt. Gittens and the Department of Homeland Security. Have they shared files on dissidents such as Wolf or, God forbid, me? And, what of cooperation with other federal law enforcement agencies? That’s certainly related."

Captain Tim Hettrich and Sergeant Marty Halloran
These guys work for the federal government but are paid by the City and County of San Francisco. They’ll tell you that. These POA thugs are not bashful. Hettrich is in charge of the SFPD narcotics unit and Halloran is his point man in the SFPD’s efforts (on behalf of the DEA) to infiltrate, then bust individuals in the network of growers, distributors and patients who constitute the San Francisco medical marijuana community. They work hand-in-glove with the DEA every day and will tell you up front that they disagree with the local pot laws and will enforce federal regulations whenever possible. These assholes take your money, then ignore local law.

Every cop and anarchist on the scene and with knowledge of what transpired between the cops and the anarchists in the Mission after the G8 demonstration on July 8, 2005.

I don’t believe a friggin’ thing the cops say. For good reason. They’re a bunch of fucking liars, for starters. Remember a month or so back when they trapped some poor kid in an attic, then shot him to death? Their first comments were that the guy had a gun and shot at them and that they had recovered the gun. Turned out they were lying sons-a-bitches covering their own asses and trying to beat a manslaughter charge. As usual.

Recall when they shot Cameron Boyd to death? First cop reports out of that described a running gun battle during which Boyd weaved through Western Addition streets firing at pursuing police units? They said at least one of their units was hit by Boyd’s murderous gunfire. However, they were lying again. Yeah, not just me, but lots of mainstream press people tried to get pics of the bullet-riddled cruiser. Cops kept putting us off while keeping the car under wraps. Cause it didn’t have any bullet holes in it.

Hell, every cop involved in the Mission confrontation should speak and the Anarchists themselves should be called to testify about the G8 demonstration. Given the cops’ track record, I also want to hear a doctor say the cop did have a fractured skull (that story changed too) and, if so, how he got it. The only ones in the video I saw who were swinging clubs were the cops. It wouldn’t surprise me (nor you) if one of them took a wild swing and did a little ‘collateral’ damage. Remember, the second story the cops told in the attic murder was that one cop had shot the other one by accident. Yet another lie.

City Hall Building Manager
This guy’s a real dickhead. He gives cover to the Homeland Security (‘Media Security’) operative (Eric Steinberg). Gives him full run of the building. Control of cameras. Talk to Steinberg and his new assistant. Where’d they come from? Who hired them? What’s his role with the press? All I’ve seen the new guy do is sit in the press box at City Hall and give dirty looks to reporters. What the hell does a ‘Media Security’ person do at City Hall? They saying the Sheriff’s deputies can’t handle security there? They did OK for the last 150 years. Toss in the SFGTV staff. How much access does Steinberg have to their footage? What are their views of what he does?

"Fact is, your local government has sold out your safety and freedom to the federal government. It’s getting worse and a thorough investigation is warranted."

At the end of public comment, there was a discussion on the matter among the three supervisors on the committee, with the deeply reactionary Supervisor Sean Elsbernd doing his typical "Gotcha!" debating tactics that in context were deeply offensive. "Did you invite the U.S. District Attorney's office to this hearing? Well, did you?"



Supervisor Chris Daly appeared at the end because he was sponsoring a hearing on the next agenda matter, about the recent Mexican federal election of all things, and he signed onto the resolution as a co-sponsor with Mirkarimi and Ammiano.



Elsbernd insisted on a number of amendments, and then voted against the resolution anyway, which passed 2-1 before going to the full Board next Tuesday.



In the meantime, there are various fundraisers in the next couple of weeks for Josh to help him continue paying his rent, including one at Dance Brigade at 24th and Mission on August 19th at 7PM.



To find out more about the case, you can go to Josh's website/videoblog called "The Revolution Will Be Televised" (click here). Visiting privileges at the federal facility in Dublin (the East Bay) for the present moment are only for biological family and lawyers, but you can write him a note here:

Federal Correctional Institution - Dublin
Joshua Wolf 98005-111
5701 8th St. Camp-Parks, Unit J2
Dublin, CA 94568

Josh would probably get a kick out of lots of mail.

Palm Springs Life

The most beautiful time of day in Palm Springs is at dawn...



...as the sun slowly illuminates the San Jacinto mountains to the west of town...



...making the entire place look as if it's being lit for a Terrence Malick movie.



The reason for a visit in August was to look at real estate, a subject that has always bored the heck out of me while obsessing most of my California contemporaries.



This in turn was because my Domestic Partner was being forced by the odd tax laws of this country to invest money in something/anything after the sale of a house in San Francisco's Mission District.



The cause of that sale was the death without a will of his ex-lover three years ago, which plunged my partner into a three-year maze of funeral arrangements, probate court, Michigan in-laws, a tenant with either AIDS dementia or a carefully tended facsimile of same, and a volatile real estate market that was looking ready to crash at any minute.



A couple of weeks ago, everything was finally settled, and since buying anything in San Francisco was prohibitively expensive, we looked elsewhere for a place to put his small stash.



The Central Coast area around San Luis Obispo was considered, but that also turned out to be insanely pricey, and after a week around my parents and siblings there, I remembered once again why I'd fled from family at as early an age as possible.



So, like seemingly every other gay person of a certain age in San Francisco, we decided to check out buying a Palm Springs condo, most of which are fairly depressing.



However, unexpectedly, we scored.



In the fanciest part of "Historic Old Palm Springs," a block from the Palm Springs Tennis Club and the San Jacinto mountains...



...we were taken by a retired San Francisco real estate dude, Forrest Ryon, to a small, beautiful complex with good vibes where there was a listing for a fairly inexpensive one-bedroom place.



The offer was made, accepted, and a question was asked by the sellers.



They had already rented the place out for January, February and March to snowbird tenants who visited every year.



They were charging a monthly rent of [insert outrageous sum here], and wondered if the arrangement could continue.



"Uh, yeah," we replied before jumping up and down in happiness.



In an earlier post, I wrote rude things about San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty and referred to myself as a "non-A-Gay." One of my commenters, Albglinka (click here for his blog), wrote "And I always thought you were an A-Gay!" Gosh, I now may be guilty as charged.

SF Connect 3: Brought To You By...

George Bernard Shaw, in a musical review of "Charity Concerts," wrote the following:

"Like all persons in sound mental health, I hate charity, whether as giver or receiver, asker or asked. I have no patience with the people who think that social evils can be cured by a little gush of sympathy and a dip of their hand into all the pockets within their reach."

His clear-eyed cynicism was a bracing corrective while watching "SF Connect" and its corporate sponsors...



...along with its ridiculously slick signage which obviously cost a pretty penny to produce.



Wells Fargo was the most determined sponsor in terms of its signage and branding everywhere you turned.



Here's a secret I learned doing propaganda for close to 30 years for Wells Fargo Bank.



As a monstrous corporate entity, they absolutely don't give a shit about you or your community or the world around us.



They care about your SOW (Share Of Wallet), period.



Also throwing up a banner was that other private corporate utility that has been gouging the citizens of California with a rigorous hand for over 150 years.



I think it would be instructive to know exactly which San Franciscans profit the most through their ownership of PG&E stock in exploiting their neighbors. That's one list the local media has never printed.



The only counterweight to this huge fraud was a gentleman passing out info about a petition drive to save Bayview/Hunter's Point from the Redevelopment Agency and their totally corrupt "friends in high places" who will use Redevelopment's eminent domain powers to do whatever the hell they want.



They need another 20,000 signatures by the end of August. Click here to get to their website and offer to pass around a few petitions.



The most charming moment of the evening was on exiting, where I saw a bicyclist and a wheelchair dude get tangled up together in a narrow space.



The lady cyclist started giggling infectiously, and none of us could help it. We all started giggling too.

SF Connect 2: We're Doers Not Critics

Citizens of San Francisco were invited by their mayor to Bill Graham auditorium in the Civic Center to launch a new volunteerism program called "SF Connect."



For some reason this event, unlike the peaceful protest, was actually underpoliced.



In the lobby, if you had not signed up already, there were plenty of either employees or volunteers to get you "connected" onto their new website which had been officially launched that day (click here to get there).



The crowd inside the auditorium was huge.



Though it mostly consisted of what one would have called yuppies in another time...



...there was a smattering of poor people in attendance...



...who were free to enjoy the lovely free hors d'oeuvres along with good wine and soft drinks.



Onstage, Supervisor Bevan Dufty was droning on endlessly about how he came from a poor background in New York, and how he wasn't just Irish, he was really Jewish because his mother was Jewish, and he used to volunteer to help Holocaust survivors read ballots, and how poor he was when he was young, and so and so forth until I wanted to yell, "Shut up, you phony, and kiss my non-A-Gay ass," but I didn't.



Dufty was followed by the retired Reverend Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Church in the Tenderloin who uttered a seemingly endless number of banalities about how "diverse" San Francisco is and how we know how to help each other out.



It's interesting that somebody who has created such a large empire and made a small fortune accepting public dollars to help the poor wants everyone else to do the same thing for free.



Finally, Cecil announced that our host, Mayor Gavin Newsom himself, wouldn't be able to join us this evening, but that he would be speaking to us live from Long Beach where he was accompanying the Poodle Prime Minister of England, Tony Blair, on his California tour.



Newsom's short, televised address was followed by a not very inspiring speech by Alex Tourk, one of Newsom's deputies.



"We're Doers, not Critics," he proclaimed...



...before the curtain behind him went up on the evening's entertainment...



...the Booker T. Jones Band...



...who looked profoundly bored at having to play at this event.



The audience didn't much look interested in them, either, to tell the truth and the crowd thinned out immediately.



The beautiful blonde above, who works with Geek Entertainment TV's Eddie Codel (click here to get to his website)...



...noted the mass exit with this remark...



"All the gay guys and the 30-plus women left immediately when they realized Gavin wasn't going to show."

SF Connect 1: Protest Detour

Early Tuesday evening, August 1st, on the way to San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's "Launch Party for SF Connect" at Bill Graham auditorium...



...I stumbled across a small protest march...



...that was being hemmed in to the sidewalks by the cops, and forced to obey all the street lights.



As is becoming usual at these affairs, there seemed to be as many police as protestors present, which is sort of creepy.



The protest seemed to be an amalgamation of all kinds of leftist causes...



...but the majority were protesting Israeli's latest misbehavior...



...with their many neighbors.



The group was mostly charming except for the young woman above with a megaphone and a ridiculous chant.



I'm sure she was an undercover policewoman who had been elected leader of the anti-zionist organization after two hours, and she was actually using her annoying voice in order to discredit the group. (A variation of that scenario actually happened in Oakland recently.)