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On Guard: The story behind the Bay Guardian’s new ownership and the departure of Editor-Publisher Tim Redmond

steven — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:26:48 +0000

Tim Redmond's last day as the editor-publisher of the Bay Guardian was June 13.

Luke Thomas

[An abridged version of this article appears in this week's Guardian]

Longtime Bay Guardian Editor Tim Redmond left the newspaper last week in a dispute with its new owners over personnel changes and his autonomy within San Francisco Print Media Company, which also includes the San Francisco Examiner and SF Weekly.

Redmond led the Guardian newsroom for most of his 31 years with the newspaper and engineered last year's sale to Todd Vogt and a Canadian ownership team. As part of that sale — which Redmond cast to staff as saving the Guardian from bankruptcy and closure — Bruce B. Brugmann and Jean Dibble, the couple who founded the Guardian in 1966, retired from the paper, its Potrero Hill office building was sold, and the Guardian moved into the Examiner's downtown office in June 2012.

Redmond was the Guardian editor and publisher, the name at the top of our masthead and the person solely in charge of Guardian operations, and he told staff he had been guaranteed full autonomy by the new ownership, which was important to the Guardian staff. As such, he resisted Vogt's periodic efforts to control the newspaper, including early threats to fire City Editor Steven T. Jones for unspecifed reasons, which Vogt had mentioned to Redmond, directly to Jones, and to Guardian writer Rebecca Bowe prior to her return to the Guardian at the beginning of this year.

Nonetheless, Vogt did make some successful incursions on the Guardian's independence, initially by encouraging layoffs, later by interfering with Guardian endorsements in the November 2012 election.

On Oct. 26, 2012, without consulting Redmond, Vogt named Examiner Editor Stephen Buel to be vice president for editorial overseeing both newspapers, announcing that Buel would "oversee the editorial direction, content, tone and voice of our newspapers and web sites."

Shortly after the purchase of the longtime Guardian rival SF Weekly two months later, Vogt similarly appointed Weekly writer Erin Sherbert to oversee online communications at all three papers.

Neither Buel nor Sherbert directed or reviewed any Guardian editorial content prior to publication, although some stories from the Guardian and the Weekly began to appear in the Examiner's newspaper and website, often edited by Examiner editors but giving credit to their original source.

The Guardian's weekly revenues continued to remain flat or decline, at least partially because of the departure of two of the Guardian's commission-based advertising representatives, positions which remain unfilled. The San Francisco Print Media Company then instituted a new system in which ad reps would try to sell into all three papers, which particularly hurt the Guardian's bottom line during the run-up to the SF Weekly's large Best of San Francisco, published May 29. The Guardian's sales staff remains significantly smaller than that of the other two publications.

Vogt, Buel, and Chief Financial Officer Pat Brown began a conversation with Redmond about the need to cut expenditures, focusing on the newsroom, which until June 14 had seven full-time Guardian staffers and a part-time art director, who also works for the Examiner.

Redmond expressed a willingness to make cuts while also emphasizing the need to hire more ad reps to boost revenue, Redmond and Buel both told us. "He made it very clear that we need more salespeople," said Buel, who also told us that he supported Redmond's stance with Vogt and Brown that he should be allowed to choose where the cuts would be made.

"Todd and I were in the middle of difficult and ongoing negotiations for how to cut costs. My position is that it is entirely appropriate for the owner to ask us to cut costs, and then I would come back with a plan," Redmond told us.

Instead, on June 12, shortly before Redmond left the office to moderate a well-attended forum that he had organized on Plan Bay Area and San Francisco's long-term growth policies (see related story), Vogt called Redmond and Buel into Brown's office and demanded he lay off three specific people in the newsroom (ironically, not including Jones, whose work Vogt has come to publicly praise in recent months) as soon as the current issue is complete. That would have cut in half the number of writers and editors working under Redmond, making it difficult to put out a paper.

"To have me lay off three people by name is not acceptable," Redmond told us, holding firm that he would cut expenses but that he wouldn't let Vogt micromanage the Guardian in that fashion. Redmond informed Buel of his decision on June 13 and sought to meet with Vogt, who wasn't in the office that day.

"Tim told me in no uncertain terms that he couldn't do it," Buel told us. "He was civil and cordial and adult about it, but he was very clear he was going to leave the Guardian" rather than be forced to implement that decision. Buel then conveyed to Vogt that Redmond had offered to resign rather than making the cuts.

The next night, Redmond and Vogt exchanged a series of emails in which Redmond repeatedly offered to leave and help create a smooth leadership transition and Vogt repeatedly insisted that Redmond make the cuts and/or clarify whether he was resigning.

It culminated shortly before midnight with Vogt telling Redmond that his resignation had been accepted — to which Redmond responded the next morning that he hadn't offered his resignation — and that he was barred from returning to the office or speaking for the Guardian.

Vogt's explanation

Guardian staffers arrived to the office earlier than usual as requested, for a 9:30am meeting Vogt had called shortly before midnight, but Vogt was absent. The meeting commenced around 10:15am, with Vogt phoning in from Canada for his first meeting exclusively with Guardian staff.

"I've got a bunch of apologies to make," he began, explaining that he was flying to Canada for his six-year-old son's school assembly. "I'm embarrassed that I'm not there, but I'm more embarrassed that I contemplated missing my son's grade one graduation and school play."

He went on to describe his email exchange with Redmond the night before. "I accepted his resignation as editor of the Guardian, effective immediately," Vogt said. "I didn't ask for his resignation, I didn't want him to resign. But it was Tim's decision."

"For 12 months, we let — I let — Tim run the Guardian pretty much hands off," he said, allowing that on a few seldom occasions, "I actually made demands, some of which Tim listened to, some of which Tim disregarded." Vogt went on to say that he, Redmond, Buel, and Brown had been meeting to discuss "very serious and significant changes" at the paper, which would have included staffing cuts.

"Up until yesterday at 4:30, I was under the impression ... that not only was Tim on side with those changes, Tim had actually recommended some of those changes, both staffing and otherwise," Vogt said. "So I'm not exactly sure what occurred, but whatever occurred yesterday that made Tim have a change of heart is really irrelevant at this point. So, uh, again you all know Tim, and you have known Tim longer than you've know me, and whether you choose to believe what I just said, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter."

Vogt went on to say, "Last month, it became painfully apparent that we had to make some radical changes to the Guardian. Some of the changes ... were going to affect the editorial tone and position of the Guardian. We weren't going to do anything crazy, like Philip Anschutz the Guardian," referring to the Examiner's former right-wing owner, "but we definitely were going to look to make some changes, because obviously what we've been doing ... isn't resonating with advertisers, and I honestly don't believe it's resonating with readers."

He went on: "Whatever you heard yesterday with respect to layoffs, or freelancers no longer writing for the paper, all of those decisions that had been made collectively between Tim, myself, Steve, and Pat are off the table."

Going forward, he said, "I'm going to look to Marke [Bieschke, appointed interim editor], and Dulc [Vice President of Advertising Dulcinea Gonzalez], and Steve [Buel] to quickly come up with a plan of what we need to do ... to get the Guardian back on solid financial and, and sort of ideological footing, in the community. I know some of you heard that certain positions were going to be eliminated and there's likely going to be pissed off people and hard feelings, and for that I'm sorry. And I'm not saying... that there won't be layoffs. There may well indeed be."

Then Vogt opened up the discussion for "Questions, comments, you can tell me to go fuck myself. Whatever it is, now is the time."

Jones asked about how Redmond’s departure would be presented to the community, and what he meant by the change in editorial tone. "No disrespect to Bruce [Brugmann], but I think the editorial changes that need to happen at the paper need to reflect sort of, progressive — the new progressive — movement, the new progressive values," Vogt responded. "The feature that Tim wrote two weeks ago [on the future of planning in San Francisco], that's the kind of stuff that I think the Guardian should be. But if anybody around the table is looking or hoping that I'm the guy who's going to provide the editorial vision of what the Guardian's going to be, we're in serious shit. I've lived in the city for 18 months, and I'm the last guy who should be opining on what the Guardian ought to be."

Shrinking the Guardian

Guardian Culture Editor Caitlin Donohue severed ties to the newspaper shortly after the meeting. "I was just shocked that I was being told by intercom to disbelieve my editor and mentor of four years," Donohue said when asked for her response to the meeting.

In that meeting, Donohue accepted a voluntary layoff. "After the various idiocies of last week, I realized it was time to hit the ejector button, and started putting my energies towards building new media that actually had a chance of success," Donohue explained later via email.

With regard to Redmond's ouster, Donohue said, "Getting rid of Tim, and the others they told him were next, is part and parcel of the company's slice and dice attitude to their acquisitions. You can't run that paper after cutting nearly 50 percent of its editorial staff — or a good one, at least."

On Monday, Gonzalez also resigned from the Guardian, effective July 1, further reducing its advertising staff. She had no comment for this story, but Vogt called her departure “a huge blow.”

Vogt still insists that Redmond helped develop the plan to lay off two of the three people they discussed. Buel also said that particular staffers had been discussed in meetings among the four of them, although Buel said only supported two of the three cuts that Vogt insisted upon.

"He fully supported two of the three cuts until Thursday," Vogt said of Redmond. "Suddenly something happened on Thursday. I don't know whether it was a conscience thing, or a change of heart or mind."

Redmond denies that he supported any specific layoffs, telling us that he insisted on being the one to make decisions on who worked for the Guardian and that he wanted to broadly review the Guardian's expenses, including what the company was charging it for rent and printing the paper.

"Tim was simply more interested in the editorial side and the Guardian needed some business leadership," Buel said, noting that he conveyed that assessment to both Redmond and Vogt a couple months ago, not intending to be named publisher of the Guardian himself last week. "I said that not at all envisioning I would be the person to do that."

Redmond said that he was cut out of the loop on decisions that Vogt and other managers made to restructure the advertising sales team to have reps selling into all three products, which sources who have worked in the department say created dysfunction and diverted energies that hurt Guardian ad sales.

"They never asked me how the ad department should be set up," Redmond said.

And while Redmond and Buel both say he strongly advocated for more employees to be dedicated to selling the Guardian, Redmond found himself playing the same role he had played as executive editor under the previous ownership: reacting to the paper's financial fortunes by cutting costs.

The Guardian had seven full-time staff writers when Jones was hired in 2003, which Redmond whittled down to just one by the time the paper was sold, despite the Guardian winning a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against the SF Weekly and the chain that owned it, Village Voice Media, for unfair competition and anti-competitive pricing.

"I recognized in May that Guardian sales were down and I was not opposed to the idea that we had to cut costs," Redmond told us, later adding, "I came back with two plans. One, sell me the Guardian, or two, tell me how much I need to cut."

Vogt didn't accept either idea, insisting Redmond lay off the staffers that he had identified. Whether that final standoff is seen as a straight business decision, a personality conflict, or a question of the autonomy of Redmond and the Guardian, it's certainly true that it was the last in a series of conflicts between the two men.

Internal friction

Friction between Vogt and the Guardian's newsroom had been building for some time, centered around a couple of issues: payment of tens of thousands of dollars in debts to freelance writers that Vogt assumed when taking over the Guardian, and Redmond's authority as editor/publisher of the Guardian.

While the terms of the Guardian's sale to Vogt's group haven't been made public, sources say there were a couple areas of disagreement that delayed Vogt's acceptance of his responsibility to pay the freelance debt, although that was settled earlier this year.

Guardian staffers who work directly with the freelancers consistently complained about the unpaid debt and the difficulties it created in working with writers, and Redmond insisted that he was trying to faciltate payment but that there was nothing he could directly do to help. A plan was supposedly developed to pay the debts, but as of today, the bulk of the past freelance debt remains unpaid.

"We didn't have a ton of free money to pay the debt owed under Bruce's leadership," Vogt told us, adding that the company has been slowly paying off that debt, including expediting payments to key freelancers "when Tim said it was important."

Vogt also began complaining to Redmond about specific writers in the paper that he didn't like. "I had made demands about certain freelancers, 'I don't want so and so writing for the paper,' and they were still in the paper."

Redmond maintains that it was his decision what appears in the Guardian, not Vogt's, and that he resisted the owner's suggestions to fire certain writers, including L.E. Leone, the Guardian's longtime Cheap Eats columnist — who often departed from restaurant coverage to touch on an array of social topics, including her own MTF gender reassignment process — who transitioned into a sports columnist earlier this year.

"I think it was the coolest thing in the world that we had a transgender sports columnist who was one of the best writers in San Francisco. Todd strongly disagreed," Redmond told us. In the wake of Redmond's ouster, Leone resigned from the Guardian on June 15.

A perhaps more significant conflict over control of the Guardian came during the fall election when Vogt clashed with Redmond and Jones over the supervisorial endorsement in District 5. First Vogt opposed endorsing Julian Davis, but ultimately made it clear that it was the Guardian's call. After Davis was hit with new sexual misconduct allegations and responded badly to the developments, the Guardian revoked the Davis endorsement.

We then contemplated endorsing Christina Olague — who had regained progressive favor after defying Mayor Ed Lee on a couple of high-profile issues — but Vogt refused to allow it.

"He told me his newspapers would not be endorsing Christina Olague," Redmond said, a point that Vogt confirmed, explaining only that he didn't want to revisit the D5 endorsement after the Davis debacle.

Redmond said that Vogt then "threatened to fire me" for running a pro-Olague op-ed from longtime queer activist Cleve Jones, despite Redmond's explanation that the Guardian oftens runs guest editorials during election season supporting candidates other than those endorsed by the Guardian.

In fairness, Vogt wouldn't be the first Guardian owner to buck the newsroom on a political endorsement. In the 2003 mayor's race, Brugmann at the last minute overrode the consensus endorsement choice of Tom Ammiano, instead insisting the paper endorse Angela Alioto, although an apologetic Redmond allowed staff to print a dissenting endorsement in favor of Ammiano.

Meanwhile, both Vogt and Buel have issued public statements following Redmond's ouster pledging to keep the Guardian operating as it always has.

Buel insists that he and Vogt have both allowed the Guardian to remain an independent, progressive voice throughout their tenure — something that he said is clear from the Guardian's strong and critical coverage of corporate power this year — and they intend to maintain that approach going forward.

"I think its editorial independence has remained intact," Buel told us, assuring Guardian readers that would continue even without Redmond at the helm. "All I'm saying is keep reading and see if we live up to what I'm saying."

Tim's San Francisco

The day news of Redmond's firing hit the Guardian newsroom, the ousted editor created a website titled "Tim's San Francisco" on blogspot.com and posted a statement about what had happened.

"Hi, my friends, all the people I love and care about in this city. I'm sad to announce that after 30 years, I have left the Bay Guardian," he wrote. "I am proud of all the work that we did over those years, but sadly, it has come to an end."

After briefly explaining the details of his departure, he added, "The good news is that Blogger is free, and I will fancy up this blog in the next couple days, and I will continue to present perspectives and news about progressive San Francisco."

In the days that followed, online comments on Facebook, sfbg.com, and Redmond's new blog demonstrated an outpouring of support from community members.

"The Bay Guardian has been a venerable source for progressive talk (and organizing) in San Francisco and the Bay Area for years," Media Alliance wrote. "Despite the paper's shrinking physical presence, it maintained an influential role in City Hall politics and the Bay Area progressive movement, largely thanks to Redmond's editorial presence."

Christopher Cook, a progressive journalist and former city editor at the Bay Guardian, expressed his outrage over Redmond's ouster in a Facebook post and had issued a call to action, writing, "As the paper would say, let's give them hell." Later, he wrote, "Folks, a critical progressive institution has been bought out and now gutted by this aggressive media corporation. Where's the protest and uproar?"

Brugmann also offered this statement to the Guardian: "Tim came to the Guardian 30 years ago as a reporter, specializing in politics and investigative reporting. Tim soon developed, in my estimation, into one of the finest all around editors in the country. He was largely responsible for making the Guardian the major progressive voice in San Francisco, a major force in Freedom of Information and public access issues throughout the state, and a national model for the alternative press throughout the country."

Redmond said he's been engaging in lots of discussions with the Guardian's community in recent days, exploring whether Vogt may still be persuaded to sell the paper, or looking at ways to start a new media vehicle for the Guardian's community.

"I do have to give Todd credit for buying the Guardian and keeping it alive this year," Redmond said, adding that he was disappointed that Vogt chose to "basically destroy the newsroom" rather than taking him up on his offer to buy back the newspaper or explore other ideas for making the Guardian sustainable.

As Redmond told us, "I'm looking at my options for ensuring progressive, independent journalism is alive in San Francisco."

All eyes on us

admin — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 01:17:42 +0000

The NSA surveillance scandal is rooted in the Bay Area. Who was involved, when did it start -- and how can you protect your privacy?

rebecca@sfbg.com

About 500 people packed into Berkeley's St. John's Presbyterian Church on June 11, days after revelations of a massive National Security Agency electronic surveillance program had hit the news.

They were there for panel talk titled "Our Vanishing Civil Liberties," and the discussion revolved around Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former employee of NSA contractor Booz Allen Hamilton who leaked top-secret documents to reveal the scope of the massive NSA spying infrastructure, triggering a firestorm of public debate internationally.

The panel featured Daniel Ellsberg, a Berkeley resident famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers in 1971, and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, an Icelandic member of parliament whose Twitter account records were sought by the U.S. Justice Department several years ago due to her connection to Wikileaks, the whistleblower organization that published secret U.S. government cables leaked by Pfc. Bradley Manning.

"I have no doubt at all that Snowden did the right thing in revealing it," Ellsberg later told the Guardian in an interview, "at whatever cost he pay himself. He shouldn't have to pay any, very simply. In his case, given what he's revealing, he should not be prosecuted. But he will be, almost surely."

Within days of the revelations, a number of public responses had already sprung up, many originating in the Bay Area. The ACLU filed suit challenging the surveillance program as illegal, arguing that it "violates the First Amendment rights of free speech and association as well as the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment. Online communities mobilized too. As of June 17, more than 200,000 had signed onto an online petition launched by Stop Watching Us, a coalition of 86 civil liberties organizations who drafted an open letter to Congress and decried the surveillance operation as "a stunning abuse of our basic rights."

Mozilla, which has an office in San Francisco, played a key role in launching Stop Watching Us and called for greater transparency. "In the US, these companies are required to respect a court order to share our information with the government, whether they like it or not," the organization pointed out in a press statement. "Mozilla hasn't received any such order to date, but it could happen to us as we build new server-based services in the future." It also pointed out that "the Internet is making it much easier" for intelligence agencies to conduct electronic surveillance, because "There's a lot more data to be had," "the laws are written broadly," and "it's all happening behind closed doors."

Stop Watching Us coalition membership includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union of California, Boing Boing, the Center for Democracy and Technology, reddit, The Utility Reform Network, and other organizations with a presence in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, news of the NSA's massive spying endeavor sent shockwaves throughout Silicon Valley, catching some tech company employees off guard. Google CEO Larry Page, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the heads of other tech companies issued statements vigorously denying voluntary participation in PRISM, the program that vacuums up massive communications content flowing between the U.S. and foreign nations via the servers of Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple.

The question of whether leading tech companies were participating voluntarily, or were secretly compelled to do so, or if this data was being collected without their knowledge or cooperation altogether still seems far from settled. "I have my own suspicions — which I won't go into here — about what PRISM was actually about," Google+ Chief Architect Yonatan Zunger noted in a G+ thread the following day. "I'll just say that there are ways to intercept people's Google, Facebook, etc., traffic in bulk without sticking any moles into the org — or directly tapping their lines."

Meanwhile, nearly 40,000 individuals had signed an online thank-you note to Snowden, "for his principled and courageous actions as a whistleblower, informing the public about vast surveillance by the National Security Agency that undermines our civil liberties." That website, SupportEdwardSnowden.org, was set up by Roots Action, co-founded by Marin County resident Norman Solomon, author and president of the Institute for Public Accuracy.

Solomon was also a panelist at the June 11 forum, where he sharply criticized Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and former mayor of San Francisco, for publicly characterizing Snowden's leak as "an act of treason." When Feinstein's name came up during the panel talk on civil liberties, the crowd responded with boos and hisses.

"Where are the progressives of the Bay Area — beginning with San Francisco?" Solomon wondered later in a telephone call with the Guardian. "We should be insisting that she leave that job as chair of the Intelligence Committee. ... In the court of public opinion, she should be condemned. Because really. It's democracy at stake. To hear her talk and examine her behavior, you would think that the Fourth Amendment was ... mere advisory."

Meanwhile, activists who were already organizing in support of Manning had begun investigating what options might be available to Snowden, who, as of press time, was still believed to be in Hong Kong and hadn't yet been formally charged. Birgitta Jónsdóttir told the Bay Guardian that her organization, International Modern Media Institute, was ready to respond to Snowden's reported interest in seeking political asylum in Iceland.

"I'm quite concerned, because there are no direct flights to Iceland," she explained. "I'm just worried about the extradition process in other countries — if he needs to do a layover, or if we're not quick enough to grant him asylum. And, frankly speaking, one of the parties in the government in Iceland is never going to agree to support it. So, it's tricky."

Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, highlighted the similarities between himself, Manning, and Snowden. "The question that each of us faced was: Was it worth our lives, our freedom, and possibly our physical existence to reveal these secrets, which were wrongly held from the American public, in order to inform the public?" he said. "And each of us decided that it was worth, essentially, a life in prison and possibly death. And I think the decisions were right in each case."

Metadata nightmare

Technologists explain how to protect your communications from government surveillance

The bad news: You cannot effectively counter the government's ability to snoop on your communications unless you live out the rest of your existence under a rock (i.e., give up your cell phone altogether). The good news: There are some free software programs that can help you to shield the contents of your communications, should you feel the need to shield your privacy.

The domestic telecom surveillance program doesn't grant intelligence agencies automatic access to what's being said over the phone, but it requires major carriers, including Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T, to forward all "metadata" to the NSA. Metadata can be quite revealing. It can show that an elected official communicated with a powerful CEO just before casting a key vote, or whom a reporter spoke with just before breaking a significant national news story.

"The laws of physics do not let you lie about cell phone location," explains Chris Soghoian, principal technologist with the American Civil Liberties Union's speech, privacy and technology project.

Eleanor Saitta is a systems analyst with the Open Internet Tools Project and the International Modern Media Institute, working on an encrypted communications project called the Briar communications tool. "What's not clear yet, is whether [the NSA] is extracting full-time location information," Saitta notes, spotlighting a looming question about the domestic spying program with serious implications. This full-time information is automatically logged by telecoms anytime a mobile device is on.

PRISM is understood to be able to sweep in the contents of vast amounts of communication between the U.S. and foreign nations. However, Soghoian and Saitta note that some tools can provide a higher degree of privacy.

For web browsing, Tor (torproject.org) is free software that provides online anonymity by bouncing communications through a randomly distributed network. (Caution: Read up on it for some important do's and don'ts, like why you shouldn't log into your bank account while you're running Tor.)

Tor doesn't hide the content, only the location that a message is being sent from. But it can be run in conjunction with CryptoCat (crypto.cat), a web plug-in that supports encrypted instant messaging. There's also the option of using Off The Record (OTR) messaging with either Jitsi (jitsi.org) or Adium (adium.im), both IM clients.

For mobile devices, Saitta suggests looking into TextSecure for SMS messaging, and RedPhone for voice calls. For other ideas, visit the resource guide compiled by the Tactical Technology Collective (alternatives.tacticaltech.org). It features detailed information on alternatives that afford a higher degree of privacy, such as Duck Duck Go, a search tool that won't aggregate data about your queries; RiseUp, an alternative email provider run by a collective dedicated to security; Gibberbot, an open-source Android application that helps you manage IM accounts and uses OTR software; ChatSecure for iPhones and other iOs devices; Orbot and Orweb, to facilitate anonymous browsing on Android devices, and other programs.

It's important to remember that with any of these software options, as Saitta says, "There are no guarantees. This comes as close as we know how to get."

Nor do any of these options effectively shield mobile users from the collection of metadata. "The domestic program that is affecting most Americans is something that no one can effectively hide from," Soghoian notes. "And that sucks." (Bowe)

Timeline: NSA spying in Silicon Valley and SF

Summer 2002

Mark Klein, a technician at AT&T, learns of the existence of a secret room being built in cooperation with the National Security Agency at AT&T's San Francisco facility on Folsom Street.

December 2005

The New York Times breaks the news that the NSA "has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications."

January 31, 2006

Civil liberties organizations, including the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, file suit against AT&T for collaborating with the NSA, including technical documents provided by Klein as part of the complaint.

March 12, 2008

NSA collection of Yahoo data begins under PRISM, according to a top-secret slide leaked by Edward Snowden to The Guardian UK and the Washington Post. (Yahoo is based in Sunnyvale.)

June 20, 2008

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act passes in the U.S. House of Representatives, retroactively granting AT&T and other telecoms immunity from being sued for cooperating with the NSA.

January 14, 2009

NSA collection of Google data begins under PRISM, according to a top-secret slide Edward Snowden leaked to The Guardian UK and the Washington Post. (Google is based in Mountain View.)

June 3, 2009

NSA collection of Facebook data begins under PRISM, according to a top-secret slide Snowden leaked to The Guardian UK and the Washington Post. (Facebook is based in Menlo Park.)

September 24, 2010

NSA collection of YouTube data begins under PRISM, according to a top-secret slide Snowden leaked to The Guardian UK and the Washington Post. (YouTube is owned by Google, and based in Mountain View.)

October 2012

NSA collection of Apple data begins under PRISM, according to a top-secret slide Snowden leaked to The Guardian UK and the Washington Post. (Apple is based in Cupertino.)

June 6, 2013

The Guardian UK breaks the news that the NSA has access to the contents of communications flowing through the servers of Silicon Valley tech giants, through PRISM.

June 7, 2013

Google CEO Larry Page and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond release a statement saying Google has "not joined any program that would give the U.S. government—or any other government—direct access to our servers. ... We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday." The same day, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg releases a statement saying, "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers. ... We hadn't even heard of PRISM before yesterday." Other tech companies issue similar denials over following days.

June 11, 2013

The Stop Watching Us campaign kicks off as more than 80 civil liberties organizations, many of them based in the Bay Area, set up an online petition and open letter to Congress.

June 14-17, 2013

In separate statements, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple reveal that they had received 4,000-10,000 requests each from US government and law enforcement agencies in 2012 for information regarding up to 30,000 devices and accounts.

(Information from eff.org, optin.stopwatching.us, and guardian.co.uk.)

Panel sees Orwellian overtones in NSA spying scandal

steven — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 23:57:44 +0000

It is now public knowledge that the NSA has been spying on us (unless you’ve been living under a rock and, lucky for you, exempt from digital surveillance) thanks to the information leaked by Edward Snowden last week.

In the wake of this scandal, people crowded into St. John’s Presbyterian Church in Berkeley on Tuesday, June 11, to participate in a panel discussion titled “Our Vanishing Civil Liberties,” centered around the intricacies of government intrusion and spying in the age of the War on Terror.

Among the panel members were Daniel Ellsberg, famed leaker of the Pentagon papers; Birgitta Jónsdóttir, member of the Icelandic Parliament; Normon Solomon, activist and author; and Nadia Kayyali, a legal fellow with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

As Kayyali noted, we now know about the NSA’s capability of obtaining the metadata for all domestic phone calls in the United States, which can include the call length, who you’re calling and in some cases the location of the phone calls.

So is Snowden a patriot or a traitor? For the panel members, the answer was obviously in support of the former. However, for California’s own US Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose name the crowd constantly met with a crescendo of hissing, Snowden is a criminal, guilty of treason.

Solomon rallied against officials like Feinstein, who he believes should not be entrusted with the protection of our privacy. “What we discover is that the leaders in Congress, the leaders in the White House, the leaders in the courts unfortunately as well cannot be trusted with our lives and that includes our civil liberties,” he said.

Ellsberg spoke of the comparisons between Snowden and Bradley Manning, an ex-U.S. soldier arrested in 2010 for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, noting that Manning’s leaks dealt solely with issues “over there,” specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan, while Snowden’s case is inherently more domestic.

“The American people, like other humans, are unfortunately not that concerned about what is done to people over there,” said Ellsberg. “Especially when their leaders tell them that it is necessary to their safety. What strikes me about Snowden is that it affects us, you, everybody.”

However, the repercussions of Snowden’s leak are not solely rooted in America. Jónsdóttir informed the crowd that many European Union countries are concerned with the extended power of the NSA.

“Our leaders in the many different countries in Europe are so worried about this probing into the privacy of citizens of the EU that they are thinking of building a fortress around Europe to protect us against the surveillance and the invasion of our privacy from the United States,” said Jónsdóttir.

Our challenge now, as Ellsberg stated, is escaping the abyss of unchecked government surveillance. But can we do it? For this question, Ellsberg didn’t have an answer.

The panel raised intertwining issues of government overreach and public apathy, painting the picture of a United States embodying the Orwellian dystopia of 1984 combined with Aldous Huxley’s portrait of apathetic hedonism in Brave New World.

However, Kayyali appeared optimistic for the future, calling upon education and public discussion as the only potential to escape from the intrusive acts of the NSA.

“Never stop educating yourself,” Kayyali told the crowd. “Take everything that you’ve learned here tonight and share it with those around you. The only way we are going to see any change is if we have an educated populace, something that we are severely lacking right now.”

Without action, Ellsberg warned of the potential for a country in which privacy is nonexistent, or what he colloquially refers to as, “The United Stasi of America.”

In her closing statement, Jónsdóttir offered this coda in the form of a poem: “Now is the time to yield to the call of growth, to the call of action. You are the change makers. Sleepers of all ages, wake up now.”

Republicans are just plain daft, part 2

JohnnyW — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 21:45:57 +0000

DeNiro as Vito Corleone

theweek.co.uk

One of the most prosaic lines in film history is in 1974's Godfather II. When Vito Corleone (Robert DeNiro) is asked by Peter Clemenza (Bruno Kirby) if he checked out the package of oily guns Clemenza had left him as the NYPD was hauling Clemenza away, Corleone replies coolly that "I'm not interested in things that don't concern me".

At that point, we realize that the future Don was not a Republican.

Today's GOPster clown cultist is obsessed with things that do not concern them. Embryos and fetuses germinating in women they've never met. Same sex couples marrying thousands of miles from them. The well-being of the same plutocracy that do not pay them the same mind back in the least.

Conversely, when it is things that do concern them--Gulf oil spills, rising seas, warrantless searches of emails and phone calls, endless wars---oddly indifferent.

When someone prioritizes the irrelevant over the important, what else can one say?

They're fucking daft.

Q&A: Vela Eyes on passing out in the studio, taping merch to the car hood, and becoming 'a real band'

emily — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:36:45 +0000

Vela Eyes are smiling.

PHOTO BY PATRICK MCCRACKEN

Vela Eyes is a relatively new indie-pop act right out of San Francisco that combines a huge, spaciously synthesized sound with the personality and camaraderie one can only find in decades-old friends. It’s a perfect fusion of the rawness of punk influences with the technical proficiency and sampling-song mapping of a DJ set.

The group has been playing packed shows throughout the Bay since its inception mere months ago, most recently an album release party for its first EP, The Pleasure Sunrise, last week at the Elbo Room. Get to know Vela Eyes before the band's next local gig (you’ve got ‘till July 26):

SFBG So you guys don't have a van and had to come up with a crazy wacky maneuver to get your gear back from your record release show?

Julia Johari We had to make three trips to get all of our stuff there. But at the end of the night we realized we didn't want to make multiple trips to get our stuff back. So I just remember Nate being like "I'm going to tape the merch to the hood of my car!"

Ian Zazueta Luckily I brought that big roll of red duct tape. I knew it would come in handy.

SFBG Tell me about playing the Elbo Room for the record release show.

Jef Pauly I actually had the place in mind after playing there a few times. It's got a very intimate atmosphere and packs a crowd close together.

Nate Higley That's a P.C. answer. Truth is we knew we couldn't sell out Mezzanine.

JJ We knew we would be able to pack Elbo Room.

Florie Maschmeyer And the sound was really important, we've always felt we sounded really good in the Elbo Room.

IZ It's kind of a give and take. You want a location that's a good fit for you, but you don't want to sacrifice a good on-stage sound or the sound that's directed at the audience.

SFBG Where does your sound start?

FM We kind of conceptually write. For example, I would call and be like "I just had the weirdest dream, you want to hear me out?"

IZ And I would honestly take notes and stuff while she was talking and start coming up with some things. Then Florie would add some more and we'd build a song around it. Then Nate brings in a lot of creativity and musical contrast and intelligence to it. We're finally starting to develop our style.

NH Yeah, it doesn't take like a year to write a song anymore! [Laughs]

JP We're basically hitting phase two now that we're a "real band."

IZ Oh, you mean since you joined the band! [Everyone laughs]

JP Well, did you have any drummer before me?

IZ Yeah we did, it was called Logic Pro and it wouldn't talk back. [Everyone laughs]

SFBG So Jef, as a drummer, you always play to a click track?

JP Every practice, every show.

IZ For me, who creates a lot of our sequences and samples, having someone who can be able to do that adds so much more to our creativity and allows so much more potential for pushing our product. A lot of people would see playing to a click as being more rigid, but once we establish the right tempo to the song, in terms of manifesting a product, it gives us so much more freedom.

SFBG So any time I see you guys play live anywhere it will have the exact same tempo?

IZ Yep.

FM Especially because we have trigger sequences that happen all throughout the track.

SFBG The trigger sequences are something you've designed ahead of time to drop at a specific point with the metronome in the course of the song without physically having to push a button to turn whatever sound on?

FM Yeah, it's in the song already. So Jef gets the count-in and then the song starts.

JP There really is no room for messing up. There's just a count-off at the beginning and if I miss the start, it's all over.

SFBG On multiple occasions I've heard you refer to your music as "the product," what does this mean?

FM We refer to it as product because it takes our music and makes it a sellable package. That's what you have to do if you want to be in the music industry, you need to have a product, which means your image, your music, your presence. In the end that's what we pay for, that's what we record and what we sell. It's always important that we think of the product as a whole because we've got so many different songwriters in this. Egos can battle, but we always agree on what's good for the project. The music is a separate entity who's not one individual person. At different points anyone in the band might be leading the song, but it always comes down to what's right for the product, the band as the whole is separate from us individually at this point.

SFBG What, in one sentence, is the selling point for me to come to your next show?

FM It'll be a sexy kick in the teeth. I think you'll love it.

SFBG So let's close this out with another awesome rock and roll story, shall we?

FM Remember when we got all hammered and passed out in the music studio, sleeping on the floor, spooning? Then I pissed my pants.

IZ No, the funny thing is that she tried to blame me. Like, after she peed all over me. Florie's like "how do you know it wasn't you?"

SFBG Were you playing a show beforehand or something?

NH No, this was just a typical Thursday night.

Vela Eyes plays next July 26 at Bottom of the Hill, with the Orange Peels and the Corner Laughers.

The Performant 150: We are the 99% (gay)

cheryl — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 17:11:06 +0000

Copious laughs + cheap drinks = good times at Comedy Bodega, hosted by Marga Gomez (third from left).

Photo courtesy of Marga Gomez

Celebrating Pride Month in the the-ah-tah

We’re already halfway through Pride Month, but there’s no end in sight for the mad whirl of activities you could be availing yourself of. Proud or not, there’s no excuse for a blank social calendar at this time of year. Hate the club scene? Don’t overlook the très gay possibilities of a night in the theatre (Truman Capote wouldn’t). For starters, you might check out one of the ongoing shows over at the venerable New Conservatory Theatre Center, or one by queer theatre stalwarts Theatre Rhinoceros, but for campier fun, The Performant has a few favorites of her own to recommend (being gay not required).

What’s more gay than Marga Gomez at the Mission’s beloved Latino drag bar, Esta Noche (which thankfully seems to have staved off closing, for now)? It’s Marga Gomez at Esta Noche with a stellar line-up of out-and-proud comedians, a special Pride Month version of her regular weekly “Comedy Bodega” shows she’s entitled The 99% Gay Comedy Fest. I’m not sure who comprises that other one percent — perhaps some asexual socialite who’s slumming on the queer comedy circuit — but as laughter is a universal experience, they’d doubtlessly fit right in. Unlike most other comedy shows around town, Comedy Bodega is totally free, and although there is a one drink minimum (it is a bar, after all), well drinks are only $3.50, leaving you that much more money in your pocket to tip the performers. Everybody wins.

Speaking of wins, psychedelic-era, gender-bending performance troupe the Cockettes have permeated both sides of the Bay with the ongoing (extended to July 27) Thrillpeddlers’ revival of one of their outrageous stage shows, Tinsel Tarts in a Hot Coma, as well as an entire room of historical memorabilia at Mills College Art Museum as part of their “West of Center: Art and the Counterculture Experiment in America, 1965-1977” exhibition, which runs through Sept. 12. Also free to the public, the exhibition includes a June 26 screening of a pair of short films, Palace and Elevator Girls in Bondage, featuring key Cockettes including Rumi Missabu, Fayette Hauser, Hibiscus, and Miss Harlow.

Not free to the public, but always worth the price of admission, Tinsel Tarts is the fourth revived Cockettes’ show at the Hypnodrome, and it’s quite possibly the most outrageous one to date. In 1971, critic Rex Reed described it as “a spangled chaos of flesh, a seething mass of lurching bodies in lavish hock-shop costumes, doing their thing for freedom,” which well describes the Thrillpeddlers’ experience to a tee. If you’re lucky (as I was) you might get a chance to see not one but three original Cockettes strutting their stuff onstage: Missabu, Sweet Pam Tent, and fearless musical director (and “Chico Marx”) Scrumbly Koldewyn.

And on the subject of ongoing revivals, if you’ve yet to see Boxcar Theatre’s rambunctious revamp of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, now is the perfect time to remedy that. Not only has the show scored a float in this year’s Pride parade, but it just celebrated its 100th performance of its high-octane version of the John Cameron Mitchell/Stephen Trask musical, featuring an octet of sexy Hedwigs swarming the stage at the same time. Punks, trollops, glam girls, rocker boys, and soul singers, each more endearing than the last, no matter which performer lurks behind the wig (the cast rotates every few weeks). After numerous extensions, the show will close for good on August 10, so get proud, get drunk, and get a ticket while you still can.

Republicans are just plain daft

JohnnyW — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:19:40 +0000

Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference

secure.ffccoalition

What do you do when your party is getting clobbered on social media and among a demographic that is getting locked in to vote against you?

Why, adapt to the new thing, of course. In this case, the snarky, pithy and glib lingo of Twitter and FB posts. And what do you goof and eyebrow raise over?

Abortion.

I used to play in a pit band in a comedy club, '93-'94. Never heard an abortion joke. That and AIDS are generally right up there with "Holocaust howlers". People just don't think they're a crack up.

But the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference begs to differ. If they can just be side splittingly hilarious on the matter of pregnancy termination, the kids'll flock to them.

Sorry. It isn't funny. And mocking the women that have them or the people that don't believe the government should interfere with those women--hard to see where the yuks come from. I suspect it'll be typical "conservative humor", which is to say snide, condescending and holier than thou, ie not funny.

At this point, "Republican" is synonymous with "daft". Or "out of it", "antwacky", "loonytunes". Take yer pick.

The Performant: (Somewhat) lost in translation

admin — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 01:51:22 +0000

Csaba Hernadi, involing Maria Lukacs

PHOTO BY NICOLE GLUCKSTERN

"Infinite Closeness" was a little ways off

Reminiscent of Mission parlor-art space The Red Poppy Art House, Subterranean Arthouse in Berkeley, upon entrance, is a lot like entering the living room of an artsy friend. Comfortably mismatched chairs and a few scattered cushions, a kitchenette behind the stage curtains, inviting visitors to endless cups of tea, hardwood floors gleaming below a strand of primitive lighting instruments.

Just four years old as a venue, the Arthouse nonetheless gives off the vibe of a place that’s been around forever, lurking just below the radar, if not actually under the ground (unlike La Val’s Subterranean, it’s actually located at street level). In short, it’s about time I got around to attending an event there.

The piece, “Infinite Closeness” is a solo offering of Hungarian performer Csaba Hernadi, an entirely mimed evocation of the poetess Mari Lukacs, whose life spanned the horrors of the Holocaust, the communist regime, and the usual traumas and blessings of a life lived for poetry.

The stage is set with a few scattered props: couch, table, coat-rack, a cracked and legless mannequin. Some pieces such as a dressmaker’s dummy and what appears to be a kneeling refugee from a carousel menagerie lurk in unclaimed corners of the stage, perhaps conjuring the crowded edges of a mind in turmoil. Truthfully it’s not entirely clear what purpose they serve, which is presumably the point.

Clad in a modest high-collared blouse of cream and long black skirt that hangs just above unwomanly large bare feet, Hernadi “awakens” on his couch as a swell of sound, murmur and rushing wind, moves him forward. Stiffly seated at a “dressing table,” Hernadi as Lukacs brushes his/her hair and then takes up an onion, peels it, and presses it abruptly to his/her eyes, a visceral pantomime of grief.

Or at least that’s what it appears to be. Even more enigmatic than the unfamiliar strains of Hungarian would be are the broad strokes of silence that shield the piece from easy interpretation. My trusty theatre-companion V. gets restless. “There should be subtitles” he mutters near the end, though as the piece is silent, maybe he means inter-titles. I know what he means, though. Context is everything.

For just as art interprets us, so do we interpret art. And while we are by no means unwilling to follow Harnadi’s Lukacs’ down the various rabbit holes that turbulent times pulled her down throughout the years, lacking any prior knowledge of her biography makes extrapolating it from the raw movement onstage a challenge. Even the presence of a blurb in a program or a single line of her poetry would have served to round out our interpretation of the event in a way that Hernadi’s tender dances with the broken mannequin and an empty suit jacket don’t quite manage.

And while his reverence for his subject is evident and moving, ultimately the focus of the piece remains on him rather than her, as he is in the room with us in a way she is never quite allowed. Still, I’m grateful to Hernadi, and by extension Lukacs, for bringing me to The Subterranean Arthouse at last. I’ll be sure to not let another four year go by before I return.

Hey rock'n'rollers, the Burger Boogaloo is back

jackie — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 22:22:11 +0000

Burger Records is super excited for this year’s Burger Boogaloo. There will be fun outdoor events, DJs, special guests, contests with Burger Records prize giveaways, vendors from local Oakland eateries, and all the Burger merch you could imagine!

And of course, let's not forget the entertainment: Redd Cross, Johnathan Richman, Fuzz, Shannon & the Clams, Mikal Cronin, and much more. Get more info on the full, impressive lineup and buy advance tickets here. There will also be surprises, so stay tuned.

Saturday July 6 & Sunday, July 7 @ Mosswood Park, Oakl.

Ultimate solution

JohnnyW — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 21:51:00 +0000

Drowned in debt

foxbusiness.com

What would happen if all Americans simply paid cash for everything?

Can't afford it, don't buy it. And always pay cash for all day to day items so that your purchases do not go into a database.

You say you have had it with a power structure that puts you in debt and tracks your every move? And you don't wanna go through your life with a hook in your mouth and obligated to remain at a soul-starving day job you despise.

This would do it, wouldn't it? Of course, if you're happy being in hock, wage-slaving and a marketer's dream, carry on, by all means.

Tale of two cities

JohnnyW — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:57:58 +0000

LA Mayor, Eric Garcetti

angeles.sierraclub

Interesting piece in the LA Times a few days ago, Our new mayor, Eric Garcetti, wants to bring raves back to Los Angeles. After the death of a 15 year old that snuck into the Electric Daisy Carnival event at the Coliseum, the raves have gone to Vegas, where they're pulling in 100K in attendance. The mayor sees dollar signs in those numbers, not to mention OT for city employees that have been hurting the last five years from budget cuts. A sensible idea.

It got me to thinking, as these things do, about a more general policy of bringing lucrative businesses and events to LA. After all, downtown business rents are cheaper than New York or Tokyo and there is far more space here as well. The city's soon to be highest high rise will be a Korean owned hotel, so LA has already demonstrated a cooperation with Asian interests that cannot be matched. Not by New York or any other American city, even those on the West Coast. Like Seattle, Portland or erm, San Francisco.

If Garcetti and the city council decided to offer up better deals for high-tech than exist 390 miles to the Northwest, there is precious little Mayor Lee could do to match. LA has a lot more money and of greater importance, much more space. 49 square miles cannot compete with 480 square miles. And with the Internet making high tech jobs doable anywhere, why wouldn't tech start ups decide to opt for LA?

Let's face it, San Francisco has priced itself right off the grid. For all of Mayor Lee's tax incentives, the city is incredibly expensive to rent or buy in. It is still possible to find a decent 1 BR in Silver Lake or Eagle Rock or Highland Park for under 1200 a month--where is that in SF, Bayview (if at all)? And no 82K parking spaces or multi million dollar Manhattan sized condos either--for 3 million bucks, you can buy a reasonable property in the West Side's swankest hoods--what does that get you in Pacific Heights?

LA is a very expensive city to live in by dint of car ownership as necessity and driving distances. It's also nowhere near as pretty as San Francisco is. But as SF approaches Tokyo-like exclusivity, it would take very little to pry high tech firms south--where it's always warm, the beaches and ski resorts both near and best of all--the entertainment business and its attendant pleasures and power are nearby.

Let's face it, SF has screwed up--their biggest business for eons is tourism and that would never change were the city not so insistant on wrecking same with crack downs on clubs and "1984''-like scare tactics. Los Angeles--with its money and power can offer incentives that Mr. Lee and his cromies could only dream of--and with a forward thinker like Garcetti at the wheel, this may be inevitable.

Brighten your Monday with the awesome new trailer for "The Wolf of Wall Street"

cheryl — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 18:54:53 +0000

You just gotta watch it, and you'll agree: November 15 can't come soon enough. Can Scorsese do what Soderbergh couldn't and get Matthew McConaughey an Oscar nom? Plus: smarmy Jonah Hill in a polo shirt, a DeLorean (?), decadent yacht parties, DiCaprio cradling a chimp (and not uttering the words "Old Sport")...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iszwuX1AK6A

Crapitalism

JohnnyW — Sun, 16 Jun 2013 20:01:36 +0000

560K of real estate

Boston.com

Happy Father's Day! Be good to your dad (assuming he's alive/you know who he is) and enjoy your kids (assuming you have any/know who they are).

A remarkable story crossed my monitor this week. From back in the sacred Motherland of Massachusetts. Apparently, a pair of tandem parking spaces were auctioned off behind a toney Commonwealth Ave (Boston) condo for a whopping 560K--they're shown in the photo. That's over a half a million dollars in prime real estate yer gazing at.

Bid up from a sort of reasonable 42K and sold to a party that allegedly owns three spaces there already, this is the kind of story that makes one's eyes glaze over in amazement. As primo as the location is, that tiny and stained bit of asphalt you're looking at is not worth that price under any circumstances.

As that part of Boston is tightly zoned, it isn't like it was bought to expand a brownstone. Nope, this is conspicuous consumption run completely amok or as a friend of mine back there put it, ''this could only have happened to people for whom money has no meaning". (I suspect that the purchase was made as a "business expense" for a corporation, more to be revealed).

For 560 grand, you can still buy a modest home in Boston's most desirable suburbs (all of which have better public schools than Boston and are cleaner and not plagued with unbearable traffic). And the property is but ten minutes on foot from downtown and the business district, cabs and car services are plentiful, therefore, why bother? As a possible long term investment? (Not a great idea as you will see).

This neighborhood, the Back Bay, was the first place I had my own digs. Adjusted for inflation, that apartment should go for about 420.00. It is now a million dollar and up condo and what was it? One gigantic room, likely the dining room of a three story home back in the 1800's. And I still have friends in that neighborhood. Tellingly, all of them have been there at least 25 years and they could never afford it now.

By pricing all but the top of the top out of what once was an artist friendly neighborhood, the same neighborhood has the ripple effect of driving real estate values in adjacent neighborhoods past reason. Boston and San Francisco--joined at the hip by being the satellite cities to America's twin powerhouses--are now unaffordable.

A piece in the same paper that ran this story last year said it all. People aged 35-54 --which used to be an enormous demographic in Boston--no longer live there in large numbers. After university they just up and go because first jobs don't pay enough to raise the scratch for a down payment. When a slab of concrete not even big enough to be a bedroom in a rooming house goes for 560K, it says that "what the market will bear" is not applicable.

This isn't "free market capitalism", it's "crapitalism". The laws of supply and demand have been so perverted by so few having so much, they almost don't apply anymore. And my beautiful hometown--once a funky seaport with the best local music scene outside CB's/Max's--is now an overly exclusive playpen for folks that have brought back the Brahmin Age, only on 'roids. Same as in SF---two small peninsulas whose essential character is being clobbered by venal plutocrats. Crapitalism couldn't exist without tacit aid from the government--in SF, it's in the form of tax breaks, in Boston, tax free academia is swallowing their city whole, reducing the amount of living units and artificially raising land value. That isn't "supply and demand".

The utlimate irony of this ridiculous transaction is that the Back Bay, like the Marina, is atop a landfill. The Charles River already overflows its banks and floods the basements of these expensive edifices more than it used to--so the parking spaces in question may be useless a fair amount of the time (of course, crapitalism being what it is, MA taxpayers will surely be stuck for the bill of seawalls and the like).

Bailouts, cronyism, loopholes--instead of an economic boom, we have Marie Antoinette style madness in our major cities. Pretty pitiful.

Jerry Garcia Street

JohnnyW — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 19:19:00 +0000

Jerry "Captain Trips" Garcia

kozmikradiation.com

This spring, me and the missus brought our kids up to the City from LA for the first time, via Big Sur, Monterey and Santa Cruz. It was our best family trip ever--wild turkeys and great hikes in the Sur, hanging on the boardwalk in Cruz and finally, SF. Stayed a few nights in Japantown, climbed Mt Tam, watched the fog envelope the Golden Gate--touristy stuff (I passed on the cable cars, however--they loved them).

Naturally, we had to show our children where we once lived and as we'd been up to Twin Peaks already, the Haight was nice and easy. Plus, I had to make a stop at Amoeba to consign some music.

Our old neighborhood has changed since the middle 90's, but mostly in subtle ways. Still a bunch of panhandlers about (carrying banjos and ukes now as opposed to guitars), the wonderful Pork Store and the panhandle itself. The biggest change is the proliferation of parents--I don't recall many strollers back in the Clinton era, but there was much pram pushing down Haight Street (sorry, Mick) all the same. Saw lots of that in SoMa parks, too--kiddie city.

When I was dropping off the discs at Amoeba, me and the counterman started jawing about the changes underway and he shocked me by saying that a great deal of the shop's foot traffic was tourist based. People that came up to that neck of the woods solely for the history. And I got to thinking and I wondered--why is there almost nothing named after the area's most famous export and certainly its magnet, John Jerome "Jerry" Garcia?

The Dead and their compatriots made this little corner of SF the most famous place in the world for a spell and yet very little commemorates the fact. That they carried on for 28 years past the "summer of love" spreading their loping groove around the world means that the rest of the world (a lot of it) comes to SF to try and absorb a little of that long gone good feeling. In other words, more tourism and more business.

I wonder, wouldn't it be something if upper Haight Street--from Divisidero to the terminus at Golden Gate Park (I would say Cala Foods, but that too is gone) be renamed "Jerry Garcia Boulevard?" If Army Street can become Cesar Chavez, why not?

And please spare me the incoming crapola about "honoring junkies". Garcia's personal habits have nothing to do with his work and the idea that he represented the "corruption of youth" gives someone that eschewed being a role model way too much power.

There's already a "Joey Ramone Place" in the Bowery in NYC. As there should be. It's high time (no pun) that San Francisco did the same for the creator of its underground scene as well.

Donald Trump, mega-chump

JohnnyW — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 17:10:38 +0000

Donald Trump (R-NY)

nypost.com

The internet was all a twitter (pun intended) over the complete and utter destruction of one Donald Trump by one Danny Zuker. Trump, you know. Zuker writes for the show "Modern Family".

It's all here. Talk about a thing of beauty--with surgical precision, Zuker dismantles America's #1 dirigible. I may be be dating myself here, but this is Ali vs Quarry time.

It is a fool's game to debate a comedy writer on Twitter--the service was made for short, concise punchy 'n pithy soundbytes. Which is what a comedy writer does for a living. It's a testimony to Trump's arrogance and years of yes-men lying to him that he even ventured into this battle. Anyone that's ever been dumb enough to heckle a skilled comic knows what will happen to you in a club, this was even worse.

Thing is, just about anyone with access to Google could have done a comparible job. Maybe not as skillfully as Zuker did, but damned close. The reason being obvious--Donald Trump is easily one of the most repellent, loathsome public figures in America today. Which is saying something given how crowded the field is, but Trump is extra-special in that he's not only the walking talking definition of douchebag, he's also a massive failure at what he is supposed to be an expert in, business.

This is a man whose primary business declared bankruptcy three times in 15 years. He purchased an airline and drove it into the ground in 4 years. And as so many speculators did in the last decade, he had a mortgage firm--that didn't go bust in 2008 like the others, because it was already DOA.

Minus dad's contacts and cash, he'd have been nothing. Yet, at one point, he was the GOP's front-runner in 2012. How on earth is that possible?

Simple. He's rich. Not successful, rich (and nowhere near as rich as he says he is). Conflating wealth with success is one of America's great shames. As the nation has no royalty, it had to invent one and as its Founding Fathers were landed gentry, it's been that way since.

Donald Trump is a loser. That his fans got a vicarious mental hard-on every time he bellowed out "you're fired" on TV without realizing that the poor victim of abuse was a lot more like them than Trump says everything you need know about America's Tories. They're losers too.