Meanwhile, a rally had been called by San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi's Office on the steps of City Hall requesting that Caltrans use local labor in their huge Doyle Drive freeway project.
The majority of people at the rally were black San Francisco residents, most of whom looked like they were dressed for church.
Mirkarimi's heart is often in the right place but much of his legislation seems to be nothing more than grandstanding. The recent hearings on public access television ended with a toothless request to Comcast and the State of California to provide more money for local operations, and included a raid on San Francisco's budget so that the incompetent general manager, Zane Blaney, and a few of his associates could continue drawing a salary this year. Meanwhile, the producers actually creating content have been all but locked out of the Market Street studio. Similarly, Mirkarimi's attempt to close the Sharp Park municipal golf course in Pacifica has been a misguided attack on a beloved working class recreational center in a town that doesn't particularly appreciate the intervention.
Mirkarimi's latest resolution is equally toothless, "requesting [that] Caltrans and its contractors and subcontractors actively participate in San Francisco Workforce Development Programs when hiring for projects to be constructed within the City and County of San Francisco." I certainly hope that this resolution is coupled with serious lobbying in conjunction with San Francisco's representatives in Sacramento, who might actually know who to persuade at Caltrans. Otherwise, it's just another song and dance, and poor black people will only get shafted again.
No, this post is not about upper crust San Franciscans Dede Wilsey, Jeannene Przyblyski and Alexander Lloyd resigning as San Francisco Art Commissioners recently, after new financial reporting regulations were enacted for city film and art commissioners.
I do have to admit finding the story hilarious (click here for Heather Knight's SFGate account), particularly when Ms. Przyblyski (who is married to local political fixer Eric Jaye), whined to society columnist Catherine Bigelow at 7x7 that she was being unfairly targeted and accused Supervisor Daly of behavior that "bordered on gender discrimination."
I'm not sure where young venture capitalist Alexander Lloyd fits into that equation, but Przyblyski was probably referring to her fellow commissioner Dede Wilsey, San Francisco society's Queen of Mean Stepmothers, whose resignation looked amusingly like "only little people fill out financial disclosure forms."
No, what this post is about is the San Francisco Art Commission sculpture, "The Upper Crust," by Patrick Dougherty in the Civic Center Plaza, which has changed aspect with each season.
Right now the leaves and twigs from the sycamores are turning brown with fall, which means that the sapling sculptures are almost indistinguishable from the trees themselves.
The tentative date for removal of The Upper Crust is at the end of November but it may stay up until the sycamore trees are brutally pruned for their winter hibernation.
Korea's first big-budget disaster movie, "Haeundae," opened in San Francisco at the Metreon multiplex on Friday, and most of the audience at the matinee consisted of former Industrial Light and Magic employees (above) who worked on the film for the Marin County film studio Polygon Entertainment.
Haeundae is the name of a huge beach resort which is part of the South Korean city Busan, where there are literally a million people on the beach every August.
The movie follows the Western disaster film formula of introducing over a dozen loosely related characters, including a trio of star-crossed lovers, before a "mega tsunami" hits the shore.
It opened in Korea in July where it was a "mega blockbuster." The movie is fascinating on all kinds of levels, especially for a foreign viewer where important class distinctions and inside jokes fly over one's head even though you can infer they exist.
Korean films tend to indulge in broad, slapstick physical comedy no matter what else is going on, and "Haeundae" is no exception. In the middle of serious scenes, characters would be slapping, punching, falling, and getting drunk, and the effect was bizarre and wonderful.
The young actors, some of them Korean pop stars, were directed to overemote and scream outrageously during their "Titanic" style dramatic disaster scenes, but that was fascinating too.
What really gives the film resonance is the memory of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which killed over 200,000 people throughout Asia. It's part of a flashback sequence in the movie, including scenes of people staring slack-jawed at TV screens throughout Korea when it was happening. Though the event doesn't have the local resonance of 9/11 or Hurricane Katrina, it was a bigger disaster by many orders of magnitude.
The state-of-the-art tsunami special effects were created in the Bay Area, and they are extraordinary. I haven't been this thrilled by a mixture of campy drama and Grade A disaster since "Earthquake" appeared in Sensurround in the 1970s.
Carl Miller, Tony Hurd, Erik Krumrey and David Dranitzke (from left to right above) have every reason to be proud of their work.
