Chain Link Update



I went to City Hall, which is usually fun since there's always a wedding or two going on, and people who get married at City Hall tend to be in a good mood and not totally stressed out.

Right behind this wedding group was the Mayor's Office, which I walked into without appointment and where I was given the "are you a criminal or a crazy person" scan by the secretaries/aides who work in the fabulous anteroom. I went to one of the aides and explained the chain-link fence situation with David Best's sculpture and who in city government should I contact about the situation. She gave me an unpronounceable name and number for somebody in Park & Rec. "What do they have to do with any of this?" I asked and she answered, "trust me, they do."

At this moment, the door to the Mayor's office opened, and out walked an Asian delegation of three men along with Mayor Gavin Newsom and the scary Chief of Protocol, Charlotte Mailliard Schultz, who was having a coughing fit. "Are you okay, Charlotte?" somebody asked, and she replied, "I just need a glass of wine."



Then I stopped in at the smaller Supervisor's committee chambers where there was a fascinating meeting going on about LAFCO, the attempt by San Francisco to get rid of PG&E and run a public utility, and how to do it legally and sensibly.



It was being chaired by Ross Mirkarimi, who's not only a good-looking guy who exudes decency, but he also has the greatest baritone speaking voice outside of the San Francisco Opera. Check him out on Channel 26 Government TV some time.



When one of the public commentators at the meeting started boring me with her prepared speech, I wandered down the hall to Chris Daly's office and looked at a map to see which district the pagoda was actually in, and it turned out to be Mirkarimi's District 5.

I started explaining the situation to a young intern and we were finally interrupted by Boris, the brilliant senior aide who seems to run the office. He'd gotten complaints from constituents today so he'd spent the entire day on the phone being sent from one department to another with nobody taking any responsibility until he found the blockage, some bureaucat at the DPW (Department of Public Works) who had an agreement with a private contractor which was doing the work on the rest of the block-long park, and they had decided that the chain-link fence was going to stay until 15 tasks were finished and that would be "sometime in August." I'm not joking. August, which is when the sculpture is slated to come down.

C'mon, burning man dudes and dudettes, get out the bolt-cutters. This is ridiculous.