By Steven T. Jones
The Chronicle's Matier & Ross would have us believe that Critical Mass riders went nuts on Friday and started attacking a poor innocent family. I was on the ride and know how ridiculous that story was so I wrote Andy Ross (a colleague of mine on the City Desk NewsHour cable television program) the following e-mail. I'll let you know how he responds.

Intern Sam Devine snuck into Al Gore's recent local event. Here's his report

On Tuesday night Former Vice President Al Gore appeared at the Nob Hill Masonic Center in an event sponsored by City Arts and Lectures and the California Academy of Sciences. He spoke in discussion with John McCosker, Chair of Aquatic Biology at the Academy, on the recently championed topic of global climate change.

Copies of Gore’s books, including “An Inconvenient Truth”, were for sale in the lobby. A few minutes after 8p.m. the lights went down in the sold-out Masonic Auditorium. Greg Farrington, Executive Director of the California Academy of Sciences, gave a brief introduction; noting that the Academies’ soon-to-be Golden Gate Park building will be one of the first publicly owned “green” buildings in the nation.

Gore and moderator McCosker took the stage and sat down in the artificial living room habitat – cushy red chairs and a round wooden coffee table with tulips. Gore wore a blue suit with the standard democrat blue tie and choice Tennessee footwear – cowboy boots. It’s safe to say that no one can recall the clothing McCosker wore -– his black-and-white Wicked-Witch-of-the-West socks eclipsed all else.

Ranting Gore
Photo from uglydemocrats.com

By Steven T. Jones
Do people really praise a company for polluting the planet and local ecosystems, exploiting indigenous people and propping up corrupt regimes around the world, and making $17 billion in annual profits in the process? People do, and those people write for the business pages at the San Francisco Chronicle, which has just named Chevron its company of the year.

This is astonishing beyond words and surely a sign that the Chron doesn't hold anything close to San Francisco values, which extend far beyond just corporate bottom lines. Consider that Chevron is a company that helped get us into the disastrous war in Iraq. It is a company waging economic warfare against people around the world. It is a company that has gouged American consumers to reap record profits and spend them against the public will.
This is the best company in the Bay Area? It's closer to the worst.

By Steven T. Jones
When the How Weird Street Fair last month barely survived the city permit process to get the OK for one final gathering on Howard Street on May 6, I warned that they were likely to have a hard time with the cops. After all, Southern Station Capt. Denis O'Leary, the guy charged with setting their police fees, had come right out and sided with the handful of neighbors who were trying to kill the popular event. O'Leary promised to be fair. But now, How Weird organizer Brad Olsen tells the Guardian that the cops have more than doubled his fees, demanding $17,700 for beefed up patrols. That's despite the fact that this year's event ends two hours earlier than last year (another city demand), has never had significant law enforcement problems, and it's fee last year was $7,700. O'Leary hasn't yet returned my telephone call asking what this is about, but it doesn't sound like he's living up to his comment to me, "I'm very fair." Meanwhile, the newly formed Outdoor Events Coalition is pushing City Hall to ease the administrative crackdown on street fairs. Stay tuned.

By Steven T. Jones
How Weird Street Faire's fate got even worse since my last post, with the San Francisco cops now saying the organizers need to cough up $23,833 in fees, to be paid before the May 6 event. What is this, a shakedown? Somebody call a cop. Or maybe someone at City Hall should call off the cops.

Unfortunately, the city's punitive approach to its most beloved street fairs and festivals only got worse last night when Recreation and Park Department staff convened members of the Outdoor Events Coalition to say they're recommending substantially increased special event fees, so big that events like Bay to Breakers, Love Fest and other events could cease to exist. Rec and Park, an increasingly incompetent department that has bungled its way into a $2 million budget deficit, say they need big bucks to cover their costs and wipe out the red ink. Their proposal calls for charging $50,000 to use the Golden Gate Park polo field, $25,000 for Civic Center Plaza, and $12,000 for Mission Dolores Park. And on top of all this, the city has banned booze from the Haight Ashbury Street Faire of all places. Last year, we warned that fun in the city was under siege. Now it's starting to look comatose.

by Amanda Witherell

We just got a letter from Tim Westergren, one of the founders of Pandora, the supercool website that builds you a radio station by tracing the musical genes of song or musician you like and connecting it to others with similar aural DNA.

Tim says Washington's cracking down and wants to hike licensing fees for internet radio sites to unfair and scary levels for this little Oakland-based music genome project. He's worked up a petition and needs some signatures. A word from Tim to all rabble-rousers, after the jump...

by Guardian intern Sam Devine

While watching Land use & Economic development committee meeting on SFGTV the other day, I caught a bit of public comment on the whole Healthy Saturday thing and had the thought: “Maybe this is more about providing public transportation to public places than it is about bicycles.”.

At the meeting, parents said they couldn’t get to the museum for family programs, and museum staff complained about getting to work without being able to park on the street. The parking garage, at $3/hour, is cost prohibitive.

Nan Tucker McEvoy, granddaughter of museum founder M.H. de Young, spoke in opposition to closing JFK on Saturdays. “When my great grandfather gave the museum to the city, he gave it to all the people of the city, not just the ones who ride bicycles or can walk great distances,” she said

By Steven T. Jones
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (who happens to be a Republican) yesterday unveiled a bold plan to have his city become the most energy efficient and environmentally sustainable big city in the country.

C'mon, San Francisco, are we going to take that? Maybe it's time for Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Board of Supervisors to finally step up and go big (or to actually act on some of the big ideas that have been thrown out, from tidal power to a completed bicycle network to more solar rooftops) . At the very least, we should support Sup. Jake McGoldrick's plan for a congestion pricing system for those driving into the downtown core, which London has done successfully and Bloomberg is now proposing for NYC.

By Steven T. Jones
Despite the article's deeply flawed premise, it was nice to see the Chron's Matier and Ross promote this Friday's Critical Mass ride.
After the duo whipped drivers into an ill-informed frenzy earlier this month and caused the SFPD to double the promised police presence, we bicyclists will need big numbers on our side to keep the mass moving and show that we won't be shamed or threatened into abandoning this important social protest event. And from what I'm hearing, people are more committed than ever to Critical Mass, creating the possibility that this Friday's event will be huge and fun. Personally, I can't wait.

Yet it's too bad the M&R keep getting things so wrong, such as when they say Mayor Gavin Newsom "has a lot riding on this event...the basic question being whether he can control the city's streets come Friday night.." That's bullshit. On this issue, Newsom has been wise enough to avoid taking the Chron's bait and calling for a Critical Mass crackdown. He never promised to "control" Critical Mass and therefore has nothing riding on this Friday's outcome, unless the police get aggressive and cause problems. The only test we'll see this Friday is of M&R's mass-gone-mad fable, which are like to be shown for the one-sided, self-serving sensationalism that it was.

By Steven T. Jones
It's a beautiful day for a bike ride! And San Francisco's daily newspapers are helping set the scene for the biggest Critical Mass ride in years. The latest promotion was the screamer headline on the cover of today's Examiner, "Critical Mass veterans make push for civility." The article was far better than the Chron coverage has been, although it did erroneously note that CM intends to stop at red lights, which has never been part of the deal. All that would do is slow the mass down and place cars in the center of it, which isn't good for them or us (remember, the woman who got her car window broken last month freaked out over being "swarmed" by bikes, which would happen over and over again if a crowd of thousands of bikes kept getting broken up by stoplights). My only concern tonight is with the anger being expressed toward CM among online commenters in places like SFist. But I and others will be out there documenting what happens, so check back to this blog to see how it all went.

By Steven T. Jones
Last night's Critical Mass was big -- a population that was also swelled by way too many cops -- but other than that, it was pretty normal. As usual, there weren't any major incidents. As usual, the atmosphere was festive. As usual, the only aggressive behavior that I saw came from overentitled car drivers. These basic, predictable facts seemed to surprise the writers at the Chronicle, who apparently actually believed their own bicyclists-gone-wild bullshit. So once they finally went on a ride, we were rewarded with the headline "Critical Mass pedals politely through S.F."

Yet the real problem remained, the one the Chron still hasn't been able to comprehend. My friend Tim got his bike run over by a car last night simply because it was in the path of an impatient motorist who was trying to drive into a crowd of bikes. And as usual, despite the 40 cops on the ride, the police refused to take a report or get involved. Critical Mass is many things to many people, but one of those things is an assertion of our rights to the road, which we're legally entitled to whether or not we have the blessing of the Chron, the SFPD, and the rest of this city's power structure.

By Tim Daw
teedaw@hotmail.com