Posted this morning outside my Dumpster: Plain as day. -- Marke B.

Who is Kay Gulbengay, you ask?
The most knowledgeable person, legislatively speaking, at City Hall, judging from the accolades she received at the Jan. 9 Board of Supervisors meeting, which was dedicated to Gulbengay in honor of the 35 years that the soon to retire deputy Clerk of the Board has served at City Hall, with Board Chair Aaron Peskin also declaring January 13 as Kay Gulbengay Day.
Gulbengay is also, “a wonderful karaoke singer,” according to Sup. Tom Ammiano.
“An awesome power-walker,” according to Sup. Bevan Dufty, who admitted to having crawled back to the relative safety and comfort of the gym after accompanying Gulbengay on one of her many high-speed forays up and down Market Street.
“You didn’t get to know what it’s like to get in her crosshairs and your stuff goes to the bottom of the pile, that’s the story that won’t get told,” Board Chair Aaron Peskin told Sup. Ed Jew, who, as the newest member of Board hasn’t yet had the opportunity to get his legislative knickers in a twist.

Turns out Gulbengay is also a very funny speaker, as witnessed by the crowd of wellwishers that filled the supervisorial chambers to pay their respects.
“I’m touched, but I’m not speechless,” began Gulbengay, adding, “It sounds like I’m dying,” as she began to recall her years at City Hall in the past tense.
“At times you made me feel like a Mother Superior,” said Gulbengay, who is threatening to launch a TV series called Desperate Retirees, along with Clerk of the Board Gloria Young, who is also set to leave City Hall very soon.
“I’ve seen the make-up of the Board got from 11 men, to 10 men and I woman to 9 men and 2 women, to 8 men and three women (which I consider perfect.”
Thank you—and I will be watching.”

By Steven T. Jones
The Burning Man world has been roiled by a legal fight among its three founders: Larry Harvey, Michael Mikel, and John Law -- the latter of whom left this event in 1996 but this week filed a lawsuit seeking millions in compensation and/or the placing of Burning Man's name, logos, and associated trademarks in the public domain. Laughing Squid broke the story yesterday and has lots of great links to Law's suit and the discussion threads on Tribe and Law's blog. You can also find M2's lawsuit, which was a precursor to the current fight, here.
(although you might need to go here first to get the plug-in).
I've been talking to all the principles today and will write about this in our next print issue, so I'll reserve comment for now. But suffice it to say this is a fascinating story that illuminates the roots of Burning Man and could have a major impact on its future. While some have cheered Law's suggestion that "Burning Man belongs to everyone" and that placing it in the public domain returns it to the people, the reality is that it could lead to the commercial exploitation of the event by any heinous corporation that wanted a little counterculture cache.
BTW, tickets for this year's event, with its hopeful Green Man theme, go on sale next Wednesday. See you in the long cyberline.

Scribe

By Sarah Phelan

No, this isn’t my secret recipe for surviving life in the city on a tight budget. Instead, this is my not-so-secret recipe for helping get wild birds out of spaces they’d rather not be in—like trapped in the bay window of Farley’s coffee house on Potrero Hill, which is what happened last week when I was having lunch in the famed establishment and a pigeon flew through the door, then tried to escape, but hit the window, instead.

Understandably, everyone panicked at the sight of a pigeon flying into a window. People screamed, customers ducked and it looked like things could rapidly turn nasty, especially for the pigeon.
At which point I surprised even myself by standing up, picking up my ratty old black jacket which was hanging on the back of my chair, instructing those sitting in the bay window to “Move!” and swiftly throwing ratty jacket over the bird so it was completely engulfed.

Immediately, the bird stopped moving, and I was able to roll it up, in one gentle move, thereby transforming bird and coat into a pigeon burrito, in which the bird was the filler and the coat was the soft shell. With the bird firmly secured, I walked to door, opened my coat and, the bird immediately spread its wings and flew up and away, over the rooftops of Potrero Hill and towards the Bay, like my soul escaping its body.

To my embarrassment, everyone clapped and a man who was sitting on the bench that wraps around the tree outside Farley’s shouted, “You’re a hero!”

So, next time you see a bird trapped, surprise yourself by stripping off your coat, sweater, shirt, or whatev, and making a bird burrito. You’ll be glad you did.

By Steven T. Jones
This morning, one of the countless thoughtless motorists making an illegal right turn from Market Street onto the Octavia Boulevard freeway on ramp rolled over a 28-year-old cyclist -- and kept right on going. She's in the hospital with severe injuries, but fortunately, the cops caught him. Unfortunately, they determined that he wasn't guilty of hit-and-run because he wasn't aware that he hit her. Amazing!
Thanks to SFSU professor and bicycle activist Jason Henderson, who brought this to our attention and had this choice assessment: "What investigation? You basically had an officer ask the guy if he knew he hit someone. That to me does not seem like an investigation. This seems like someone told the officer he did not see the cyclist, did not feel a bump, and sped away up the ramp in oblivion. Sounds like a lie to me. This is gross negligence."

BY Sarah Phelan

10,000? 30,000? 100,000?
If you guessed 32, 952 rooms, you're correct--and must be digesting the same economic reports that I’ve been calling bedtime reading this week.

According to a report fresh out of the Controller’s office, the lowest point, in terms of filling all those rooms, was the winter of 2001-2002, when 50 percent were vacant. (Remember, that was the grim post 9/11 moment, when people were afraid to fly to the USA, in case they ended up being flown into a hotel high-rise, instead of staying in one.)

The highest point? June 2000, the height of the dot-com boom, when occupancy peaked at 91.7 percent.
“These numbers suggest that it is practically impossible for a visitor to be able to find a room in the City on any given day of any given month,” the report observes, the kind of observation that just begs to be contradicted...

by Sarah Phelan
Today was the first official Question Time at City Hall and, since Mayor Gavin Newsom was not in town, being tied up, among other things, at economic forums in Switzerland, Board Chair Aaron Peskin asked Sup. Sean Elsbernd, who Newsom has appointed as Acting Mayor in his absence. if he wanted to address the policy questions, instead.

“I’m not sure how hard I should laugh right now,” sputtered Elsbernd. “If we took this logically, I could stand up here and have a conversation with myself.”

“Most substitute mayors don’t exercise the full mayoral powers,” interjected Sup. Chris Daly. “Though there are some notable exceptions,” he added. Daly was of course referring to his own October 2003 surprise, in which he

By Steven T. Jones
I was glad to see both the Chronicle and SF Weekly this week give some ink to the story I wrote last week on the lawsuits among the three founders of Burning Man. Or at least I would be happy if the Weekly's Matt Smith was such a sneering, bitter, deceptive tool. I've never understood the disdain Smith has for San Francisco or why he'd want to live somewhere he so abhors. And I've never been terribly impressed with his skills or integrity as a journalist. But it was still surprising to see him reduce Burning Man to a cult worshipping Larry Harvey (half the people who go have never heard of Harvey, and most of the other half still goes in spite of him rather than out of some vague sense of reverence), although it was certainly convenient to the ridiculously illogical straw man argument that he makes (although I'm still baffled with his conclusion of trying to equate Cachophony Society culture jamming with opening the Burning Man name and icons up to corporate exploitation). And just to destroy any last shred of credibility and respectability that Smith might have retained, he had to equate Black Rock City with Nazi Germany, lying about the event's supposed columned boulevards to make this ludicrous point. Puh-leeze.

By Sarah Phelan

If you’ve read the 196-page study of fiber-to-the-premise that landed in the City the same week that Mayor Gavin Newsom was whooping it up in Davos, Switzerland, you’ll know that the report concludes that municipal fiber-to-the-premises is the most visionary way for San Francisco to go, and that the city should build a pilot network in the San Francisco Enterprise Zone, which is a 12-square mile economic development area that includes Bay View, Hunter’s Point, South Bayshore, Chinatown, Mission District, Mission Bay, Potrero Hill, South of Market, Tenderloin and the Western Addition.

“FTTP is the holy grail of broadband, a fat pipe all the way into the home or business,” states the executive summary, “but in the near future is only available for a privileged few located in the limited areas of private-sector deployment.”

Noting that private sector networks aren’t meeting this growing demand for bandwidth and speed in an affordable manner, the report states that “in this context of private sector disinterest, municipal FTTP would rank San Francisco among the world’s most far-sighted cities—by creating an infrastructure asset with a lifetime of decades that is almost endlessly upgradeable and capable of supporting any number of public or private sector communications initiatives.”

According to the report, fiber allows “numerous competitors to quickly and inexpensively enter the San Francisco market and offer competing, differentiated broadband services and access,” facilitates “democratic and free market values,” “affordable access” “economic development” and enhances, “the City’s reputation for visionary and pioneering projects; promoting major development initiatives such as revitalization zones.”

The report also notes that fiber “provides a highly reliable, resilient backbone for existing and future wireless initiatives,” supports current and future public safety and government communications systems, saving the City enormous unending cost of leasing circuits from telephone companies, and provides a higher quality, higher capacity, more reliable, more secure transport for key city users such as law enforcement, fire, emergency management and public health.”

In other words, it’s the kind of system that would be a life saver following a major earthquake.

None of which means that we shouldn’t be doing wireless, just not the
flawed Google Earthlink deal that Mayor Gavin Newsom is pushing.

by Amanda Witherell

Hey Mission residents: there's a public hearing tomorrow morning at 9 am, Room 400 in City Hall about street cleaning. The city is planning on having a lot more of it in the neighborhood, which means more sweeping up of newspapers and broken glass, but also more moving of your car and more getting of parking tickets. It affects everyone from Cesar Chavez to 19th Street and everything east of South Van Ness. If you have a Department of Public Works poster saran-wrapped to the street pole or tree in front of your house, they're talking to you. You can double-check here, and roll down to City Hall tomorrow morning to give your two cents.