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Port denies foul

This letter is in response to the Jan. 9 Bay Guardian article written by Savannah Blackwell entitled "Fish Foul: Port Chief Secretly Met with Developer."

For the record, Mr. Wong testified under oath that the Cincotta family approached the port in 1996 about changing the use of the Jefferson Street property from fish handling to a retail/hotel establishment. Mr. Wong and port staff advised the Cincottas that a hotel was an unacceptable use of the property according to the Waterfront Land Use Plan.

The story states that Mr. Wong met secretly with New York developers in June 2000 to discuss a proposal to build a hotel and shopping complex at the site of the fish company. This is completely false. Mr. Wong denies meeting with any developers to discuss the property on Jefferson Street.
Renée Dunn
Port of San Francisco

Savannah Blackwell responds: Doug Wong refused to comment our story, so we find it surprising that he is complaining now through a spokesperson. Last December, Wong testified in court that he met with Tishman Speyer Properties, a New York City developer, regarding a hotel-and-shopping-complex proposal for the property used by the Alioto-Lazio Fish Company, sometime between early August 2000 and June 2001, according to the transcript of the Alioto-Lazio case against the port. (We did err in stating that the meeting with Tishman Speyer occurred in June 2000.)

Newsom? Yuck

I can't tell you how fried I get anytime I read an article about the shenanigans of Mr. Gavin Newsom ["Tough Love or Tough Luck?," 1/16/02]. The thing that galls me most is that, rather than cop to his suburban upbringing, he tries to pass himself off as a fifth generation San Franciscan. As if that prevents him from being a fool.

By all statistics I should be a voter for Mr. Newsom. I live on Marina Boulevard, have a small business, grew up in the "conservative" Twin Peaks area, am a native (all the way back to Noe), and a past junior member of the Olympic Club. I work with the opera and dearly love my girlfriends who were charming debutantes at the cotillion. My family has owned small businesses in this city and San Mateo since 1780. Rather than feel that Mr. Newsom is a scion of "ours," I find Mr. Newsom absurd – a total clown, Burton-machine style. The wonderful thing is most of my friends do too. Yuck.
Larry O'Connor
San Francisco

Bomb the homeless!

I doubt if Gavin Newsom has ever experienced pangs of hunger or slept on the sidewalk on a cold January night. How could he know poverty is not a crime? True to his class, Newsom doesn't have a clue that the homeless bums of tomorrow are the nice people being laid off today. At a time when Ford has cut 35,000 jobs and 30,000 more homeless people have appeared at shelters in New York City since the World Trade Center debacle, the policies of both liberal Democrats and Republican conservatives prove there is simply no difference between the two. With the success of the Bush war drive, I would like to suggest a policy of bombing the homeless. We can give the Pentagon another $30 billion, and everyone in Pacific Heights can feel secure they won't be bothered by unsightly panhandlers.
Ronnie Burk
San Francisco

Quality of life for whom?

I'm confused. When certain politicians refer to "quality of life" crimes, are they concerned about the quality of life of people like me, who have a warm home, comfortable bed, and three meals a day? Or do they share my concern about the "quality of life" of poor people who can't afford San Francisco rents and try to survive on the street in the cold and rain, often without food?
Catherine Rouse
San Francisco

For the record

In the Dec. 26 issue we erred in reporting the results of the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee's endorsements for public defender. Fifteen members of the committee voted for incumbent Doris Ward, and 12 voted for former supervisor Mabel Teng, giving Ward the official local Democratic Party endorsement.

Due to a misplaced quotation mark, a comment in the story "Internment Again?" (1/2/02) was misattributed. The statement "Personally, as a fourth-generation Japanese American whose father, grandparents, and a dozen relatives were interned in concentration camps, I feel there's a close link between the anti-Muslim backlash and what my dad and grandparents experienced" was made by the author, Kenneth Masaki Tanemura, not by Bao Phi. Kenneth Masaki Tanemura can be reached at ktanemura@aol.com.