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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.

It's not the "law", it's racism.

JohnnyW — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 01:06:50 +0000

Sebastien De La Cruz

npr.org

Twitter can be a blast and a half or it can be a nightmare. It was indeed the latter that reared its ugly head right after 11 year old Sebastien De La Cruz sang the national anthem at Game 3, NBA Finals in San Antonio.

De La Cruz, a prodigy of sorts, is an American born in Texas. As he was dressed in traditional Mariachi gear and is clearly of Latino origin, his appearance set of a slew of racist tweets. Like "this li'l Mexican snuck into the country 4 hours ago" or "can't believe they have the nerve to have that beaner sing the national anthem" among others. The most amazing of the lot came from Congressman Joe Heck's (R-NV) son. Heck has apologized for his 16 year old's behavior.

Let's cut the crap, shall we? More likely than not, Heck's kid learned this spew in his house. Just as the other Tweeters probably did as well. And let's keep cutting said crap--the only people fooled by the idea that "we aren't racists when we rave about illegal immigration, we just believe in the law" are the ones that believe their own lies.

The ravers are the same people that sent out those Tweets. As has been stated before, Boston in the 1980's was awash in Irish undocumenteds and no one said a thing, Chicago and its Slavic population, ditto. Nope, "illegal immigration" as issue is pure bullshit--these same "real Americans" have no problem patronizing restaurants with undocumented workers washing dishes and bussing tables--but they go slugnutty at the idea of the same people's kids going to the same schools as theirs.

Nearly one of every seven Americans is Latino. The kid sang great and the Spurs had him back. Get over it already, K?

A statement about the Guardian

Todd Vogt — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:09:14 +0000

Today I named veteran Bay Area journalist Stephen Buel publisher of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

And following the resignation of Editor and Publisher Tim Redmond, I named longtime Bay Guardian editor Marke Bieschke interim editor of the paper.

Buel, editorial vice president of the San Francisco Newspaper Company, will bolster the paper’s fortunes while upholding its long tradition of investigative journalism, progressive values and cultural coverage. Bieschke, the paper’s managing editor, nightlife columnist and long-time San Francisco resident and activist will help provide vision and leadership on the print and digital editions of the Guardian.

“The Guardian has been losing money, and we were forced to contemplate some editorial layoffs,” Buel said. “Tim decided to resign rather than follow through with what we were discussing. I am dedicated to reversing the Guardian’s fortunes and helping it grow again.

“While we will all miss Tim’s skills as a journalist, I would like to assure the Guardian faithful that it will remain the progressive newspaper of record in San Francisco. I suspect there will be some skepticism about that, but over time, I am confident that readers will not be disappointed.”

— Todd Vogt, president and publisher of the San Francisco Newspaper Company, parent company of the Guardian, SF Weekly and The San Francisco Examiner.

Win tickets to Frameline37: the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival

jackie — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 18:11:56 +0000

Frameline37: the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival returns to the Bay Area with its signature showcase of the world’s leading queer cinema. Frameline37 unites diverse communities for 11 days of innovative and socially relevant cinema, paying tribute to a rich legacy of queer filmmaking, and envisioning the future landscape of LGBT media. Behold emerging talents and embrace an unparalleled community of festival-goers at the world’s oldest and largest celebration of queer cinema. Frameline37 relishes LGBTQ experiences through pioneering documentaries, gripping features, delightful shorts, cinematic classics and more.

The festival includes international imports from China, Nepal, Cambodia, Thailand, Taiwan, and South Korea, as well as local gems. Get tickets here. To enter to win a pair of tickets, follow this link.

Thursday, June 20 Thru Sunday, June 30 @ Castro, Roxie, and Victoria Theatres in San Francisco and in Berkeley at Rialto Cinemas Elmwood

MySpace re-launch and Mayor Lee

JohnnyW — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 15:24:56 +0000

J Timberlake and friends

thatgrapejuice.net

Big party in LA last night celebrating the re-launch of My Space. Justin Timberlake, one of the moribund personal networking site's co-owners (along with Specific Media) brought in some of his pals to rock the El Rey.

One can only imagine the reaction this fete got in San Francisco--wonder what Mayor Lee and his pals will dangle in front of MySpace to get them to leave Beverly Hills (and Irvine).

A few inexpensive ideas spring to mind--why not offer to re-name the Trans America Pyramid the "Really Pointy My Space Tower"? Or Lombard Street as "The Way Twisty My Space Street"?

It would cost the city a lot less than taint polishing Zynga or Twitter after all.

Guardian forum on Plan Bay Area draws big, engaged crowd

steven — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 00:38:08 +0000

More than 130 people attended last night's Bay Guardian forum in the LGBT Center.

San Franciscans who want to help shape how this city grows — rather than just leaving it up to regional planners and market forces — packed a large conference room last night for a community forum presented by the Bay Guardian: “Whose Future? What Does the Regional ‘Plan Bay Area’ Really Mean for San Francisco?”

Moderated and organized by Guardian Editor/Publisher Tim Redmond, and co-sponsored by the Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO) and Urban Institute for Development and Economic Alternatives (UrbanIDEA), the session began with a overview of what’s now being planned for the San Francisco of 2040.

Gen Fujoika of the Chinatown Community Development Center said that Plan Bay Area, which is being jointly developed by the Association of Bay Area Governments and Metropolitan Transportation Commission (which will hold a hearing on the plan tomorrow, Fri/14, at 9:30am in Oakland), doesn’t pay for itself yet it will include strong incentives that will shape development in the region.

“It is in some sense a plan and I think we need to critique the hell out of that plan,” he said. “As we think of Plan Bay Area as a vision statement, we need to think about whether it’s our vision.”

As illustrated by the Plan Bay Area maps that the lined the walls of the LGBT Center conference room, the plan’s “priority development areas” that are slated for dense, streamlined development are also the same areas identified as “communities of concern” with vulnerable, low-income populations, making the plan a recipe for mass displacement.

Fujoika quoted a comment that Mayor Ed Lee made on Tuesday when asked by Sup. Eric Mar about the issue: “San Francisco has some of the toughest anti-displacements laws in the country.” While that may be true, Fujoika said that the plummeting numbers of African-Americans in the city and Plan Bay Area’s displacement projections for San Francisco show those laws simply aren’t up the challenge.

“If we have the toughest anti-displacement position in the country, then we are in some trouble,” he said, calculating that the affordable housing needed to prevent extreme gentrification in the city would total $6.8 billion, and that the affordable housing fund created by voters last year is only projected to raise $1.3 billion by 2030.

Fujoika said that he and the other panelists aren’t against growth and development, “but we are for equitable growth,” which would involve more community buy-in for the plan, more money for affordable housing and infrastructure needs, and more of the growth burden being shared by other Bay Area communities.

San Francisco Planning Commission Chair Cindy Wu cited growth projections for Chinatown as a good example of the problem, noting that is already a dense, complete neighborhood that would suffer from the greatly increased traffic that would be funneled through it and other negative impacts of unfettered growth.

“It’s not just growth for growth’s sake, it’s who gets to live there and who gets those jobs,” she said. Wu called for more community organizing around this and other development plans, citing as a good example the coalition-building that forced California Pacific Medical Center to agree to a multi-hospital project with far better community benefits than the deal it originally cut with the Mayor’s Office.

It was a point echoed by Maria Zamudio with Causa Justa, who said Plan Bay Area will worsen pressures that are already displacing the Mission District residents she works with, or forcing them to live in unsafe housing. “They’re going to push our families out of the city and maybe out of the region,” she said.

To combat the power that this plan and profit-minded property owners will exert over how San Francisco grows, San Francisco Labor Council President Mike Casey, head of UNITE-HERE Local 2, said that progressive San Franciscans will need to work cooperatively with organized labor, a relationship that has suffered during these tough economic times.

“Unfortunately, I think we’ve become alienated and marginalized from each other,” Casey said, calling on activists to not let differences over individual projects or issues interfere with solidarity over the larger, longer struggle for equity and justice.

“Not everyone agrees that a strong labor movement is the cornerstone of a more progressive vision,” Casey said, arguing that displacement of working class people from the city has a cascading effect in gentrifying the city. “The demographics of a city shape very much what the politics of protest look like.”

And those politics of protest will be more crucial than ever in resisting the demands that powerful capitalists will make on San Francisco in the coming years, a point that all seven panelists seemed to agree on.

Bob Allen of Urban Habitat said the planning research groups represented on the panel need to find ways to funnel more funding into grassroots organizing, both in San Francisco and regionally. Otherwise, we’ll see the “suburbanization of poverty,” with Plan Bay Area funneling the best jobs and most expensive housing into urban areas and leaving everyone else to fend for themselves in communities that don’t have the tenant protections and other hard-won social justice programs that San Franciscans have struggled for.

“Local control can be a way of saying ‘I don’t want black or brown people to live in my suburban community,” Allen said.

Ironically, Plan Bay Area is ostensibly driven by concerns over climate change and the argument that it’s better to concentrate development along transit corridors, which is why almost all of San Francisco and much of Oakland is proposed for development that would be given waivers from some California Environmental Quality Act scrutiny.

Yet the plan doesn’t fund the transit upgrades that would be needed to serve that growth or create restrictions on automobile use that might encourage more transit use. Instead, Fujoika said low-income people who actually use transit would be the diplaced in favor of wealthier residents who might not.

“Transit has become an amenity rather than a necessity,” Wu said.

The forum, which was attended by more than 130 people, included a lively discussion that involved dozens of audience members who offered their own views, ideas, and strategies for how to move forward. Among them was Brian Basinger of the AIDS Housing Alliance, who said that he is working with a coalition to reform the Ellis Act, which allows landlords to evict tenants from rent-controlled apartments.

“We could move this as early as January,” Basinger said of the reform legislation now being developed with allies in the Legislature, urging attendees to get involved.

After the audience discussion, the meeting closed with Peter Cohen of the CCHO summarizing the high points and getting people to sign up on lists that were circulated to be involved with next steps. And Rachel Brahinsky, a former Guardian staff writer who is now a professor at USF’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good, urged attendees to fight for San Francisco to remain inclusive and diverse: “San Francisco is the place it is because people have kept fighting.”

The Return of the Replacements

JohnnyW — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 23:43:09 +0000

The Replacements

ear.fm

Word from somewhere outta the Midwest is that the Replacements--in many ways the quintessential American indie band--are reuniting for a trio of festival shows. In Denver, Chicago and Toronto. Whether or not the band will add more dates is uncertain, as is the band's lineup. The band's best known living principals, Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson are on board. Their last lead guitar player, Slim Dunlap suffered a stroke and is unable to play, drummer Chris Mars is now a fine artist and may be unwilling to play (their notorious feuds ended when they recorded tracks to raise cash for Dunlap).

Their evolution as a band, detailed in Michael Azzerad's wonderful tome Our Band Could be Your Life is almost the story of Amerindie itself. Beginning on a tiny Minneapolis independant label Twin Tone as a not really hardcore at all band that played the same circuit as their city mates Husker Du, the Replacements 1984 album Let It Be ranks with any of the great classic blues based rock discs ever made--without any hint of the blues. Signing with Warner Brothers in the wake of the masterpiece, they continued to their evolution into more cerebral roots music. Perched between the underground that birthed them and the commercial success that eluded them, they called it a day 22 years ago.

Whether or not their motives for returning are financial (bassist Stinson has made a good living as Duff McKagan's "replacement" in Guns N Roses) or artistic (they ain't sayin'), it is unlikely that they will play enormous festivals with the same shambling, shit-faced style that they were notorious for in the 80's. Prone to being barely vertical, playing whatever songs came to Westerberg's pickled cerebellum, from bubblegum oldies to metal, their gigs weren't even uneven, they were almost upside down--unlike most of their fans from that era, I didn't really dig the drunken stumble-bunny schtick because I loved their songs.

I hope they'll stick to them, from all of their discs and I guess I hope they come to California as well (by way of semi-disclaimer, Stinson and I are former bandmates in a short-lived "punk cover band" called Strap On Baster). At their peak, they were the open and honest bards of the dark ages known as the middle 80's, at their nadir, comatose. Let's hope for the former and not the latter from these truly American originals.