By Steven T. Jones
First, Mayor Gavin Newsom tapped his buddies at Google (in partnership with Earthlink) to build a citywide wireless system that would be free to city residents. It was a move that was done without full sunshine and it pissed off some information activists like Media Alliance, but the Department of Telecommunication and Information Services has since conducted a more open and diligent negotiations process with the companies. That caused Google to grouse to the Chron that the city was dragging its feet. So Sup. Jake McGoldrick decided maybe the city should be looking at doing a municipal wifi system instead, which he's having the budget analyst study (if the board approves study this week) and report back on by the end of the year. That's also when DTIS expects to have a final deal with Google/Earthlink -- and when a consultant's study on municipal broadband (that's fiber rather than wifi) is due back. Well, with all this possibility swirling, Google and Earthlink have now announed a series of town hall meeting from now until the end of the year. Game on! Their press release follows:

Ok, this may have nothing especially to do with San Francisco particularly -- but what a Halloween treat, courtesy of Martha Stewart herself. My new email buddy DJ Bus Station John has dived into Martha Stewart Living magazine and come up with some fabulously entertaining entertaining tips from the Big Blonde Jailbait. These, I suspect, are meant to be ghosts.

But come on!

but I'm a gay alcoholic pedophile who was molested by a priest when I was 12. On the moon. In pink knickers. With bunnies on them. If I donate $100,000 to your reelection cookie jar, can I have my AIM back? Oh Granny, your firewall's enormous -- but why such big glasses? ... --Marke B.

Oooh .. Granny's mad!!!

By Steven T. Jones
It's good to be reminded sometimes that San Francisco is truly an oasis in a desert of fear and ignorance. Yesterday's City Hall press conference on the terrible Court of Appeals ruling against same sex marriage was one of those moments, when we felt unified in our quest for justice and equality. Despite this disappointment on the way to the eventual California Supreme Court hearings, City Attorney Dennis Herrera said, "We are steadfast and couldn't be prouder to be at the forefront of this battle." And everyone felt it. Win or lose, we're doing the right thing. "We're making tremendous progress," said Mayor Gavin Newsom, who didn't mince words when describing the majority opinion that traditional marriage shouldn't be updated by the courts: "They made a mistake."
Both sounded notes of optimism. Said Newsom, "I'm confident we're going to get there, but today was an emotional setback." Yet Herrera noted that we need to be vigilant against the right wing forces that are trying to make judges fear doing what they must: "The threat to the independence of the judiciary by those screaming about judicial activism is a disgrace."

by Amanda Witherell

Did it ravish you, compel you, confuse you last night on the corner of 24th and Mission? That's what a 20x30 foot red banner, spontaneously unfurled around 8 pm from the rooftop of "Chinese Food and Donuts," was asking of many a surprised Mission hipster and inspiring the itinerant BART station population to look up and wonder why? As if the banner's inquisitiions weren't intriguing enough, the billboard, as dancer Jo Kreiter and Flyaway Productions are calling it, was merely an artful backdrop for an elegant aerial dance performance. Three dancers in boxes, suspended in front of the billboard, came alive like portraits caught in frames, pushing the edges of their tight parameters and the safety of their harnesses. A fourth woman, clad in shimmering red, lurched from the rooftop above the swinging frames, with graceful, raging footwork that oscillated between acquiescence and a suicide attempt. And I'd just been trying to figure out how to show my mother, visiting our dear city for the first time, that San Francisco is so much more than Fisherman's Wharf...

The show is the first public Flyaway production since 2002, and is called the Live Billboard Project. It was conceived by Kreiter when she was driving home one day and the Top Model billboard at the intersection of Mission and 280 caught her eye. "Sequined and stripped down, they were spilling out of the garish billboard," she wrote about the Top Models in a flyer advertising her show. "All hips, ass and titillation. Despite 40 years since The Feminine Mystique, despite the Guerilla Girls, and despite the activism of so many fed up women, the objectification of women's bodies in public space persists."

The free, live show premiered on Wednesday night, and ran through the weekend. It was lightly advertised because, as one organizer told me, they like the element of surprise to play a part in the experience. Don't be sad -- you didn't totally miss it. Another round is set for this Thursday, October 12 through Saturday, October 14, with shows at 8 pm and 9:30. Schedule your BART traveling accordingly for this must-see.

By Tim Redmond
Well, I'm a bit late on this, but Gawker had a great little item on how lame the Voice has become under its new management.

By Sarah Phelan
Former Biosphere 2 crew member Jane Poynter speaks with a endearing British accent, says “bloody” when she gets excited and believes the two-year-and twenty-minute-long project of which she was part, is “one of the most publicly misunderstood and undervalued projects” of the 20th century.”

Or 21st century, given that the impact of the project—a mini-version of Biosphere 1, or Planet Earth, involving four men and four women isolated in a three-acre glass and steel structure near Tucson—continues to elude people to this very day.

All of which add up to a whole bunch of reasons for heading out to Books Inc, 301 Castro Street, Mountain View at 7:30 pm October 13 or to Cody’s, 1730 4th Street, Berkeley, at 7 pm on October 14 to hear Poynter share what it was like on the inside, when she reads from her new book, The Human Experiment” Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2.

Poynter, who prepared for this two-year long stint by living in the Australian outback for six months and then on a research boat on the open seas, says Biosphere 2 was a seminal experience in which she quickly realized what is true for all of us, (but less obvious when your biosphere happens to be Planet Earth):

“Everything that I did daily affected my life support system, and vice versa. It made me realize how disconnected we are here in Biosphere 1, where technology keeps us comfortable and separate from the ravages of nature. In Biosphere 2, that separateness was broken down. I realized I was a cog in the biospheric wheel.”

One of her first priorities on remerging back into the regular world was to put her energies into a project that was big and positive, recalls Poynter of her decision, along with her crewmember/boyfriend and now husband, to develop an aerospace company.

“I’d done some reading and learned that some people who’ve been in isolation, like in Antarctica, commit suicide upon reentry, because they’ve had this seminal experience that no one else can understand and they’re also left with a ‘Now what?’ feeling,” she explains.

Faced with the specter of global warming, Poynter says it’s “very tragic that Biosphere 2 has been sitting empty without a mission for two years.” She now has fingers crossed that it will soon resume its role as effective research tool in the global climate arena.
As for why she decided to write her book now, Poynter says that for ten years her thoughts and experiences have been stewing inside.
“I wanted to put it all behind me, but when now I see misinformation about the project, out of its historic context. It irritated me. I want people to know that it involved an enormous amount of effort and intellectual prowess. It was a huge undertaking.”
It also led to a split in the crew, an event that, in hindsight, says Poynter, was predictable.
“One of the things that’s been shown to occur when people are in isolation and in small groups is that they split into factions. The folks at NASA say we were a textbook case. After a while, you run out of psychological energy and your inner values come to the surface.”

Those friendship rifts profoundly influenced how she runs her company in the present.
‘Taber, my husband, and I made a vow to make sure that the people we worked with got their fundamental needs met.”

As for comments that Biosphere 2 was Reality TV, before reality TV even existed, Poynter says, “On the surface, we were like Survivor, I guess, but we put hats over the camera lenses, we objected to having our private lives filmed, and we to some degree we were selected to get along with each other. In Reality TV, psychologists select people who won’t get along.”

As for the broken friendships she endured as a result of being on the inside of Biosphere 2, Poynter says she interviewed the crewmembers involved for the book and tried to be “very balanced” about what went down.

“I had a story, there were certain truths to be told, we didn’t all come out smelling like roses.”

As for the future, Poynter believes that Biosphere 2 “came bloody close to recreating Planet Earth. We showed it’s possible.”

She also believes that scaled-down versions will play a role in space exploration in centuries to come.

“It’s not necessarily about human destiny, but about life in general. Life sees a vacuum. Take Planet Mars. Maybe it once had life. Who knows? But now it’s waiting for more life to go fill it. Some people believe that it’s statistically likely that we’re going to destroy ourselves. But it’s probably a good idea to have back-up plan. Great things were learned from Biosphere 2. I really do hope it gets a third chance.”

By G.W. Schulz

Sure, street sports have become a cluster fuck for corporate sponsorships, but in some cases, that just means more money for punks with BMX bikes and less money for sleaze ball marketing execs who’d prefer spending it on tasteless furniture and bad hair.

If you haven’t been following the Mountain Dew Action Sports Tour, the final stop yesterday in Orlando proved to be a gruesome death march for nearly all of the competing riders in the BMX street finals. Almost no one managed to escape without at least a mild injury, but mostly the competition proved to be nothing less than brutal.

By Steven T. Jones
Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern was in San Francisco today to help christen SEIU Local 790's new digs on Potrero Hill -- and to give fiery voice to the prescription for national political reform that he outlines in his new book "A Country That Works: Getting America Back on Track" (all proceeds from which go to SEIU's political struggles, so go buy one).
He also dropped a bit of a bombshell on the capacity crowd (which included such notables as Mark Leno, Tom Ammiano, Chris Daly, Sophie Maxwell, Dennis Herrera, Phil Ting, and Bob Twomey): 790 head Josie Mooney will be leaving town to work directly for Stern. "I'm so sorry you're losing her, but it's a gain for SEIU," he said to a smattering of gasps. Actually, Mooney tells the Guardian that her departure has been in the works for awhile, but that she plans to stick around for at least a couple more months.
It will be a loss for SF, but to hear Stern outline his vision, Mooney could be a part of something with the potential to rescue the country from self-destruction.

By Tim Redmond

Sometimes you settle a lawsuit, and sometimes you roll the dice and fight.

Back in 2001, the San Francisco supervisors voted to cough up some $80 million in cash to pay off a group of big corporations that claimed the city's business tax was unconstitutional. It was a close call -- the city attorney warned that if the city fought and lost, the potential liability could have reached $500 million.

There were a few crazy dissenters -- Matt Gonzalez and me, and not a whole lot of others -- who said, in effect, let's take the chance: These assholes wanted to soak the city for a bunch of money at a time when corporate America was rolling in the dough, thanks in part to Bush Administration tax cuts at the federal level. Fuck 'em -- we'll see you in court.

But cooler heads prevailed, and the city settled with all but one of the 52 companies. One holdout -- Macy's (the greedy pricks) -- decided not to accept the settlement and to push the case and squeeze every drop possible out of the taxpayers. Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer ruled in Macy's favor, awarding the company $13 million. It looked as if the supes had done the smart thing settling with everyone else.

And then yesterday, the Court of Appeal overtuned Macy's award, saying that the $13 million refund was excessive. The giant retailer -- where I will never again shop, by the way -- gets only pocket change, a few hundred grand.

Of course, the court didn't re-instate the tax; this was only a small part of the case. But still, Macy's lost, big. Makes me wonder what might have happened if we'd never settled with any of the Filthy 52.