Golden Gate Park totally dissed

Last month's issue of California Home and Design listed Mission Bay Park as the Number One park in San Francisco. That park looks like this:


Ah, California Home and Design: catering to folks who really don't know much about anything outside of the home. Remarkably, although one of my favorites, Dolores Park, made the cut at #2, Golden Gate Park wasn't even mentioned. Golden Gate Park! Where botanical gardens abound, two major museums of the Arts and Sciences await, playing fields and tennis courts run aplenty, windmills...like, sit there...and buffaloes roam! Yes buffaloes!

This caused a major sensation at my workplace a week ago, as our office windows overlook the little slice of the Mission Bay Park, with its imported greenery wedged between a toxic inlet off the Bay and the industrial no man's land that is the outskirts of the UCSF Mission Bay Campus.

Hey California Home and Design, why don't you make lists about stuff you know, like all things domestic and inside of the home!

This is what a stupid apathetic hipster looks like

Walking around Dolores Park a few hours after an anti-Prop 8 demonstration at city hall.
(Sign reads: OMG WTF SRSLY?)

Way to go, San Francisco Examiner!

So the daily newspaper, a city rag once serving my fair city with shining brilliance from such luminaries as Hunter S. Thompson, Mark Twain and Jack London, has actually come out with it's endorsement of presidential candidate John McCain.

Why on earth would a paper that reflects and reports upon one of the most progressive major cities in the known universe do such a thing? Two words: Phillip Anschutz. The Examiner's owner, who ranks as Forbes' 31st richest person in the U.S., is also a known crusader of Christian causes. Instead of reflecting the city's best interest, the paper has chosen to reflect the values of its non-resident owner. This act definitively represents everything that is wrong and unethical about media ownership deregulation in this country. Here's a link to the endorsement, which I'm afraid is too disgustingly asinine to copy into my blog.

But I will, however, copy some of my favorite comments:

Ana: "That's a pretty ballsy stance in the age of decreasing readership. Was this suicide? Indeed. I'm also deeply embarassed for your newspaper. What a shame."

cmhockeygirl: "so much for the examiner being the "local" paper - no pulse on the city..while they are free to endorse anyone they wish the "in our face" endorsement is a bit much..they obviously could care less about their readers but about this city as well"

City Native: "Guess who owns the newspaper? A conservative Christian named Philip Anschutz, who lives out of state. My question is why would the newspaper want to alienate itself? People, if this offends you then do not pick up another copy. They will get the picture when their news stands go untouched. Examiner, why don’t you go be a painfully simple tabloid somewhere else….like Alaska. The Anchorage Examiner…."

m@: "April Fools!! Wait, what? This is for real? You're supposed to represent San Francisco! WOW... did you see McCain on the View? How about Palin with Katie Couric? How can neither of those two things worry you?!"

Chloe N.: "this is the WORST endorsement I've ever read. Is the Examiner trying to be controversial so that their circulation will go up to, like, five for once? McCain and Palin hate The Examiner, and all things San Francisco related. What a disgusting pathetic gossip-rag this once reliable publication has turned into. I feel sick."

rxday: "This endorsement represent view of it's 'conservative christian' owner. His other papers are now also endorsing the republican ticket. So why doesn't he just write an opinion and have it published under his name. That way everyone will know who's opinion they are reading."

The Racist Tendencies of Wikipedia

Most San Francisco natives are aware that the Bayview/Hunters Point neighborhood, located far out along the outskirts of the southeastern region of the city, is a ghetto. They also know that it is the only predominantly black neighborhood in the city, impoverished and rife with gang violence and toxic waste sites. And perhaps they are even somewhat familiar with the history of the place: how thousands of blacks migrated there for job opportunities with the city's naval shipyard during the Second World War. (For an award-winning investigative piece on daily life in Bayview/Hunters Point along with a brief history, read the article "What happened to black San Francisco" from San Francisco Magazine.)

When I recently took a look at the Wikipedia entry for Bayview, I found this map of San Francisco:


Notice the blood red shaded districts in the lower right-hand side. The red is meant to represent the concentration of African Americans. Now I can understand why, from an anthropological perspective, highlighting the presence of blacks in this particular area is key in defining the character and cultural landscape of the area--it's true that there is a stark concentration of this demographic in comparison to the surrounding areas. But my gut reaction was one of shock; I felt that it was included as a means of warning to those interested in the area that "Hey look out! Lots of colored folks in the neighborhood!" I mean, if this map is such a key component to the description of the area, then why wouldn't other San Francisco neighborhoods have similar maps? The presence of Italians in North Beach has, by all outward appearances, diffused over the years. To me that's pretty interesting--why is there no map in the North Beach wiki entry on their whereabouts? And what if I want to know just how Chinese Chinatown really is? There's no map for that either.

I just can't help but to look at this map and question the motives behind such a thing. I feel like its inclusion implies a sense of "otherness" that the creators of the entry must have thought the average reader would feel towards the black community. I'm boycotting Wikipedia...until I get lazy again and need to feign knowledge of an obscure topic in a half-ass fashion.

How The Other Half Gets Stimulated

Big news today on the front page of the SF Chronicle--it seems the "economic stimulus" rebate checks that were meant to help mid-lower class income groups pump more money into the economy aren't doing the job so well:

An unscientific survey of Chronicle readers found that about 3 out of 4 respondents said they had already spent all or part of their rebate. Travel, regular bills and, ironically, tax payments were the most common uses for the stimulus money.

In effect, the stimulus payments and high gas and food prices cancel each other out. If gas stays above $4 per gallon nationwide for the rest of the year, "that will raise direct costs to consumers by about $90 billion, offsetting almost all the stimulus," the Treasury Department's [Phillip] Swagel said.

That leaves the economy treading water rather than setting itself up for renewed growth.

But hey, good news for wealthy San Franciscans who were holding out on purchasing that second Cartier watch, or $800 Christian Louboutin heels! Now they can easily throw down on some luxury goods with money that would have gone to a few meals at Michael Minna.

7X7 Magazine, the go-to lifestyles magazine for the bored and vapid that like to look at pretty things, or read about pretty people buying pretty things while at the spa, had it's own "man on the street" reportage on the stimulus checks.

Props to my friend Enthusiastic Sean, who was sporting an Obama t-shirt and said he would be donating his money to the Obama campaign. Watch him trying to keep the enthusiasm down to a minimum, he's adorable.

Watch the video here.

War times are hard.

Family History of the Hallinans

Since my most recent days have been spent confined to an office with an unsavory totalitarian IT department that must censor all things fun, I have developed a love for Wikipedia and whimsical, unwarranted research.

Above: Terrence

Today, as I informed my former journalism advisor Conn Hallinan, I have been stalking his family history.

Conn Hallinan is a very special mentor to me and several--perhaps nearly all of--his former students from UC Santa Cruz. He meets with me whenever I have a career crisis, and has been a guiding light for several of my peers who value him greatly. He gave profoundly inspiring lectures on the value of journalism that nearly brought me to tears in my college days, usually dispensed while dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, jeans and cowboy boots.

He very rarely gave me any positive comments on my articles for his classes, which I completely respected. He did for my college newspaper work--but rarely for class assignments. One positive critique was about a gonzo peice on the life of a student reporter, and one was a commentary on a Wall St Journal article that I wrote as Karl Marx. I hung those assignments on my wall for nearly a year.

Conn also happens to come from the most amazing family in San Francisco history, perhaps even the country.

While I don't have enough time today to list all of the baffling things this family has accomplished, I can quickly list some of my favorite tidbits about Conn's family:

Father: Vincent Hallinan

-Vincent was a San Francisco lawyer who once tried to sue the Roman Catholic Church for fraud, demanding that it prove the existence of heaven and hell.
-He received 140,000 votes as the Progressive Party candidate in the 1952 Presidential Elections. His wife ran his campaign as he sat in prison for contempt of court for defending a longshoreman union founder named Harry Bridges, who was facing charges of lying about being a communist.
-He referred to one prosecutor as the greatest incompetent "since Caligula made a consul of his horse," and he would settle in-court disputes with opposing lawyers outside the courthouse, claiming to have won 23 such fist fights.
-Later he was jailed for 18 months on tax evasion charges, where he became chairman of the inmates' council and fought for integration in the dining hall.
-He is in Ripley's Believe It Or Not! museum for playing on a rugby team at age 73.

Mother: Vivian Hallinan

-Vivian wrote an autobiography about the family, "My Wild Irish Rogues," in 1952. J.Edgar Hoover called it, "A flagrant employment of the Communist Party line, including references to racial discrimination and vicious attacks on the U.S. government."
-She once led an anti-Vietnam War demonstration of 5,000 women in DC,and headed the SF chapter of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
-At one point she began investing her husband's earnings into real estate, which helped her husband become a multi-millionaire. She also rented and sold homes to African Americans at a time when the civil rights movement wasn't quite felt in San Francisco.
-She opposed U.S. foreign policy in Central America, met with Fidel Castro, and was tear gassed in 1986--at age 77--during a protest in Chile against human rights abuses.
-The horse mouth of J.Edgar once called her marriage to Vincent: "A case of one warped personality marrying another."

Brothers: Terrence and Patrick Hallinan

-Terrence called himself a "gentleman farmer" and served as San Francisco's district attorney for eight years.
-In 1965 the California Bar Association rejected him, claiming he did not have "good moral character"--this was based upon several prior arrests of civil disobedience. In college he was beaten or arrested 16 times during civil rights demonstrations in both Mississippi and the Bay Area.
-In 1967 he took the CA Bar to the state Supreme Court and was granted acceptance.
-His boxing name is "Kayo."
-He was the only district attorney in California to openly endorse Prop 215 (legalizing medical marijuana), and wrote several letters to attorney generals nationwide to change discriminatory language in domestic violence statutes that don't protect same sex marriages.
-Patrick was a prominent defense lawyer and accomplished archaeologist. He was involved in a very scandalous, high profile drug smuggling case which had the DEA after him. There is a very juicy PBS Frontline transcript on it.

Conn and Other Hallinan Brothers

-Conn has three other brothers, but I can't dig anything up on them.
-His boxing name is "Ringo."
-Conn is an amazing person on a personal and professional level. He currently serves as a board member for the Concerned Listeners of KPFA, is a contributing writer to Foreign Policy in Focus, is writing a novel about Roman history, and continues to serve as a great influence to many aspiring writers.

C'MON BAN KI-MOON, TALK ABOUT GAY PEOPLE!

This video, taken at the World Affairs Council at the Fairmont Hotel here in the city by the bay just the other night (side note:San Francisco is also the site of the very first UN conference in '45), made me side split it did. Not only did I LOL, but boy did I ever ROTFL (roll on the floor laughing, for those of you not familiar with the hip new lingo). Activists Michael Petrelis and Hank Wilson, yelling at the top of their lungs and totally drowning out UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, shout "WE CAME HERE TO TALK ABOUT GAY PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD! TALK ABOUT GAAAAY PEE-POOOLE!"



I had a flashback to my super-serious student reporter days, when I attended a city council discussion to pass a resolution to bring back the troops or impeach the president, one of the two. Regardless of the topic at hand, a librarian-esque withering lady with frail features and wiry gray hair slowly made her way up to the podium and announced to a flood of patchouli-infused activists and crusty professor-looking city councilmembers, "There's all this talk about the war and the human devastation in Iraq...but what about all the flora and fauna? What about all the wildlife and trees that are being damaged or outright destroyed out there?"

Instantly I equated the absurdity of the local Santa Cruz political scene to what appeared to be another bit of the absurd at the UN meeting. But these chants, as humorous as they sound when one perceives them to be out of context, don't seem so LOL funny when one considers the UN's relationship with the LGBT community.

As of one week ago, the UN had not given any LGBT or sexual minority group consultative status, which is the only way that a non-governmental organization (NGO) can be legitimately recognized, consequently then able to participate in UN meetings, submit written statements, host panels, and gain access to UN buildings. In January of 2006, two of the largest LGBT NGOs were summarily denied status without appropriate consideration or review.

But just last week, United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) delegates finally allowed the Coalition gaie et lesbienne du Québec and the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights (RFSL) consultative status.

Why should the UN become involved in gay rights around the world? Because if no one in this country, or in any of the other western industrialized member states like the French Republic or the United Kingdom, will set an agenda acknowledging the persecution of sexual minorities as an obvious and base obstruction of human rights, the atrocities inflicted upon LGBT communities will go on, and all the pie-in-the-sky ideals about maintaining social progress, human dignity and the like will be lost in the UN.

From a Human Rights Watch article, on its site, in 2006:

As the U.S. government acknowledged in its 2004 country report on Iran, Iranian law punishes homosexual conduct between men with the death penalty. Human Rights Watch has documented four cases of arrests, flogging, or execution of gay men in Iran since 2003. In its 2004 country report on Zimbabwe, the U.S. government noted President Robert Mugabe’s public denouncement of homosexuals, blaming them for “Africa's ills.” In the past, Mugabe has called gays and lesbians “people without rights” and “worse than dogs and pigs.”

Hank Wilson, one of the protesters heckling K-Moon, said,"The United Nations never fails to speak out against injustice and human rights violations as they happen, but they are criminally silent when it comes to the murders of lesbians and gay men."

I salute Petrelis and Wilson. As San Francisco Bay Area residents and members of the LGBT community, their brand of political activism and expression is not limited to prancing around in a leather daddy parade in a vile attempt to create a public sex spectacle that only stigmatizes their community even more.

BUMMER OF LOVE

Over the weekend I came across an insightful Summer of Love retrospective article in the Guardian Monthly, published in the UK in June but arriving at my local bookshop a few days ago. Having read a piece in the SF Chronicle a few months back, with its micro-interviews with top "movers and shakers" of the era that offered, at best, a scant contextual account of the movement, I was relieved to find that someone had written something decent to mark the 40th Anniversary of the Summer of Love.



The Guardian didn't paint a rosy picture of some kind of a cultural renaissance spurred by mad visionaries hellbent on starting a revolution, one acid tab at a time, but instead gave a thought-provoking account of its social relevance--and lack thereof--without sounding prescriptive and preachy. The amazing interviews featured here consisted of talks with Country Joe McDonald ("And it's 1-2-3, what are we fighting for?"); Stanley Mouse, whose Greatful Dead illustrations of skulls and roses will forever be associated with hippie culture; Steppenwolf frontman John Kay; and--most notably--Barry Melton, the "Fish" from Country Joe and the Fish. Melton was NEVER interviewed by the flurry of local press given to the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love. Too bad, because I thought his quotes went above and beyond what anyone else had to say in terms of grasping some sort of perspective of the counterculture. Oh, plus, he's like, one of the very few people with some social relevance in the modern day city of San Francisco, as Melton is now a Chief Public Defender for Yolo County, as well as President of the California Association of Public Defenders.

As such, Melton says:

I like all these goths and kids with tattoos, bandanas and dreadlocks. Ninety per cent of the kids who dress like that are not in gangs, it's just a 'Fuck you' thing--like us having long hair was a 'Fuck you' thing, and what I do now is a 'Fuck you' thing.

Sam Andrew, guitarist for Janis Joplin's Big Brother and the Holding Company, gave the best quotes, summing up the darker side of the entire movement in one fell swoop:

There was the Monterey Pop festival in June, and all the kids came up to fill the Haight. With them, the vultures moved in. What we had done was commercialized. People moved in who wanted to make a buck out of it all, especially the drugs. Hard drugs arrived - speed, meth, cocaine, heroin. The drugs became tiring and boring. And free love? Women were raped - it became a perversion of what it had been before.

The SF Chron said:

The Summer of Love resonates in strip mall yoga classes, pop music, visual art, fashion, attitudes toward drugs, the personal computer revolution, and the current mad dash toward the greening of America.

Wow. Strip mall yoga classes. Thank god for the hippies and their brazen ideologies! Once again, the San Francisco local press really shines through, offering top-notch cultural analysis.

It seems that just last week, even Mayor McDreamy jumped on the nostalgia bandwagon, proclaiming that September 2 will be "Summer of Love 40th Anniversary Day." A free concert will be held in Golden Gate Park to celebrate the day, featuring too many beats and hippie peeps to mention. Go here. Maybe you can catch yourself a good old fashioned rapin'.

PICTURES FROM MY SECRET SPY PHONE (and SF political roundup)


Oh look kids, here's a picture I shot at the Asian Heritage Festival a few weeks ago, which was right around the corner from where I live in the SOMA. The tall cracker in the center is not a Steven Seagal stunt double, but none other than San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom! When Gavin's not initiating sexy policies like free wi-fi and gay marriage for all, or sleeping with his co-workers' peers or b-movie actresses or underage Republican models, apparently he can be found posing with Asian beauty queens! (Yes, I am bitter because he won't be my boyfriend, despite all the love/stalking I have shown him).

In other local San Fran political news, Supervisor Ed Jew, who is not a Jew but actually Asian, is also not authorized to represent the Sunset District, as he was found guilty of lying about his current residency. He was arrested this morning but is now out on bail. He basically used his mommy and daddy's address as his own--ooh, and the authorities only checked his "home" because they were investigating him on extortion charges. What kind of moron performed the proof of residency anyways? I bet it would be easier for me to falsely represent a district than open a video rental account. I digress...I don't want to be a Jew.