Vol. 12 - No. 35 Sunday August 29, 2010
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Welcome to the 12th year of this weekly column that's updated fifty-two times a year, on Sunday nights or Monday mornings, depending on how well the booze holds out. If you've got any news, clues or rumors to share from around the Bay, or the world, feel free to send them to;
AUGUST 29, 2010 WHEN THE LAST ROSE OF SUMMER PRICKS MY FINGER Among the many disappointments this year was the lack of sunflowers, all slain by cold and invertebrate scavengers. Nevertheless, we cannot allow the Summer to pass without at least this headline image from Chad's repository.
BADGE The latest news over the transome, as reported by the inalameda blog at SFgate.com had several of our staff in stitches rolling on the floor at the hilarious potential of a perfectly well-intentioned and earnest endeavor. We trust you all know about the Importance of Being Earnest around here. A couple of enterprising local lads have collected some Serious Money to cobble together a pilot for a standard cop procedural TV series, or at least a movie called "A-Town" set in, believe it or not, a fictional California suburb island city located not far from San Francisco. The fictional name of this town is , , , "Almaden." O! OMAH GAWD! O! This is too rich! But it gets better. According to the producer's website for the project, which we pursued as most of us thought this was some kind of gag, "On his first day riding solo, rookie Almaden Police Officer Derek Cooper copes with depression, micromanagement, and corrupt city politics. His shift is somewhat brightened by Stephanie Davis, a struggling single mother. As two opportunist criminals launch a violent takeover of Almaden's small methamphetamine trade, Derek learns that when fighting monsters, it is difficult not to become a monster oneself. As the sun sets on Almaden, we find that nothing in the peaceful suburb, including Derek himself, is quite what it seems." Omahgawd, omahgawd, ohmahgawd! Corrupt city politics? Perish the thought! According to Denby, the series will feature Officer O'Madhauen fingering wanton jaywalkers, then move on to the next installment with a crackdown on those irreverent speeders, then its on to scofflaw parking (wrong zone, parking over 72 hours, straddling the lines, meter infractions, etc.). This must be why Officer O'Madhauen has not only gotten another haircut, but also mowed his lawn shorter and flatter than the top of Dirty Harry's imagination. We simply cannot make up stuff like this, no matter how wild we try to pretend. You can read more at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/inalameda/detail?entry_id=70984#ixzz0xxAAlPuO The trailer, complete with Island backdrops, is here:
THIS ISLAND LIFE Its stories like the one above that remind you just why you love living here. Not so pleasant is the reminder that charm comes at a fearful cost, especially with our history of fires in the Bay Area (sympathies to the Russians during their travail). Victorian houses were made to burn, or so it seems, as the habit of overconstruction, tangled beamwork, plaster and lathe walls, internal wind-tunnels, and wire+post electrics all conspire to doom those painted ladies to inevitable flames. Firefighters responded to a two alarm after being sent to the wrong address initially, finally knocking down the blaze in the 1600 block of Clinton after an hour's effort. Fortunately, no one was injured. Another pleasurable aspect of living in a small town are the brough-hahas that occasionally erupt over what Big City folks would term "peanuts." We got an urgent missive from mayoral candidate Adam Gillitt midweek that complained about a couple "respected" bloggers. Basically, Gillitt issued some critical commentary to an SFgate post by blogger John Knox White, who had written about the failure of the Transportation Commission (a rather inflated title for a committee that exists mainly to discuss the timing of pedestrian walking signals at traffic lights). A couple commenters issued the usual flames and Lauren Do, who runs a couple blogs in addition to the one that attaches to SFgate independent of the discussion, noted that Gillitt seemed not to understand what Knox was trying to do. Instead of responding to the flamers, who clearly were getting personal, Gillitt chose to attack Do and Knox and then send a complaint, cc'ed to several bloggers, to the SFgate forum moderator, alleging a number of things that turned out to be not true. Here is an excerpt from what was sent us: "My comment on the post (link above) was meant as an encouragement to get my fellow citizens to get involved in their local government, but Ms Do chose to use it as an opportunity to attack me and my campaign on a personal level. I understand Ms Do has her own private blog where such biased attacks might be considered more apropos, but I do not think such conduct is befitting an organization with such a respected and storied history as the Chronicle, nor is it fair to the political process when it is my understanding that the Chronicle nor the SFGate has a policy of endorsing candidates in Municipal elections." Now, we must say we generally like Do, and Knox, for both of them grant a sort of respectable aroma to this Wild West period of blogging, and their contributions to the SFgate tend to be well-informed and well-articulated and absent of inflammatory rhetoric. Do did not use her official position with SFgate in any way to handle this. In fact, her most current entry there had to do with the flap over the alleged misuse of gasoline pumps by the fire chief. We also like Gillitt, as he seems to be very aware of the back-end problems that are hindering this city from moving right, left or forward. When we checked back on the story, virtually all commentary had been removed -- by whom, we do not know. All the flames were gone, for the most part, as well as all of Do's comments and Knox's rebuttals. At the end of the day, it was a tempest in a teapot. As for Lauren Do's SFgate story on the Fire Chief, that refers to the latest whoop-de-do going on at Silly Hall. David Kapler apparently had been accused of improper use of city vehicles while employed as Chief of the Tahoe-Douglas Fire Protection District. He was also accused by representatives of a casino of soliciting contributions in exchange for support on a casino construction project and of a variance another builder sought that would allow it to avoid installing sprinklers in a planned parking garage, news reports issued at the time said. Kapler also came under fire for soliciting contributions that included ski passes, a mountain bike, and vacations for a program aimed at curbing department absenteeism, the same news reports said (information of allegations from SFgate). Kapler resigned as a result of those allegations, although subsequent investigation cleared him of all wrong-doing. On the Island, Kapler had a verbal from the City Manager -- oh dear, it does get complicated -- that use of the pumps was permitted and included in his contract for his modified personal vehical, which serves as an emergency response vehical from time to time. The Interim Manager has confirmed this was the case, which seems to let the Chief off the hook this time. Our Editor began rending the remaining hairs on his sparse head after reading the tortured syntax and bollocksed associational verbiage on The Island blog. "I simply cannot plagiarize any of this in good conscience; it's too badly written!" Ya gotta love this Island. We're special. A bunch of things happened this weekend, but since none of us has any money, none of us went. Jack London Square held a foodie fest about Fast Food that featured music and stuff, but food you cannot afford to buy only causes distress when placed on display. Sunday, they closed the Av' up in Berzerkeley for a stroll there among the tchotchke booths and the usual open air faire kind of thing. Rocky the mechanical bull apparently made a return to this end-of-summer event. Nearly 2,000 athletes took part Sunday in the Escape from Alcatraz triathalon, including Islander Barry McKeown -- who has been paralyzed from the waist down since 1994. You go, brother. Its Local Music Month at KFOG, and folks can snag a CD for a bargain $5 by going to KFOG.com. All proceeds benefit local schools, so the bargain is well worth the price for those of you who still have bank accounts.
It's been a cooling week of overhead fog on the Island our hometown set here in California on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. Javier has started plowing down the hapless stunted stalks of what never bloomed this disappointing summer in the garden out back of the House. The first red potatoes have already swum up from the loose sand that calls itself soil on the Island. Late garlic clumps are being pulled only now from the loam before they decide, well, if not this year might as well try again the next. Its now the eleventh summer of reporting in Island-Life on things happening around the Bay and if this is the first time you read this sentence, we congratulate you for spending your time wisely out living the events on which we report instead of hulking in front of that darn computer screen. Life is short and its a long, long time to be gone. As for us, our wheels bump against the desktop if we forget the chocks, and for that reason the dance floor is not a region where our limited abilities can perform well. Ah well, there are some born without noses who cannot smell the broken rosemary; everybody has their limits. We do not have the choices you have; life is what you are doing so that we can report it and live vicariously through it. Along with a number of others. So by all means, Carpe Diem. If you must imagine us as we look, imagine a bearded Cutter John sitting in his chair on a Bloom County hilltop gazing out over the fields of dandylions and mist. If you cannot dance, then smell and look. But always do. The Staff has been preparing for the Annual Mountain Sabbatical with a different attitude this year. No one knows what is going to happen. No one knows if this is the last trip to the High Country or if this is just another period of trouble leading to yet another year of the same. Nights the Editor sits among scales and bags of carefully measured foodstuffs and bear cans while running about the usual tasks. Maps up on the wall display the treeless and trackless alpine slopes and mountain tarns of the High Country. James McMurtry plays over the PA. "The
wolves howl all night long The Editor notes that McMurtry will be appearing at this October's HSBF in Golden Gate Park. Something for which to look forward. The Editor comes from a stern people. They were retrograde Catholics who had joined the offshoots of sects which had always regretted the modernization of Vatican II way back thenm, which meant that they were medievalists. They would have been heartened by current events and trends in the Church in which a sort of regression to a past time seems to be going on. But such people tend to knaw inwardly until the heart stops far earlier than expected and the Editor had long since fled that clan for the warmer and more congenial Unitarian air of California. There he had fought on the front lines at the clinic barricades against the Lifers and the Mad-eyed Theologians. This had resulted in a number of excommunications and any number of threats added to the ominous warning, "You best not come back here!" Punctuated with a nice burning cross on the lawn and a shotgun blast through the windows. And so for the Editor, there was no going back to the Sunny South. Nope. Here he had taken root. Over at the House on Otis, the place is filled with melons. Probably some kind of harvest came in along with extraordinary deals on eggs, which seem to suddenly available at less than a penny a piece nowadays. Perhaps the salmonella had something to do with that. But the melons are a mystery, a sudden exhuberance of fruit that appeared quite suddenly and with abundance. Nearly every cushion and chair sports a melon which arrived from the Food Bank, via friendly strangers and from any number of well-wishers who know how desperate the straits are at the House until the place began to resemble a Buckaroo Banzai spaceship. Somebody had fashioned together a sort of tableaux made of a mannikin and clothes found on the beach and placed in the figure's arms a large ovoid honeydew with an infant's chapeau. The title, scrawled in magic marker on cardboard read, "Madonna et Melon". Meanwhile, surrounded by melons, Xavier longs for a good old-fashioned hamburger. He, Xavier, Martini, Denby, Jose, Rolf, Marsha and Tipitina took one down to the beach and played touch football with it while Bonkers and Wickiwup ran back and forth providing interference and Tipitina's McFrugle's player blasted songs from her OK GO CD until Marlene yelled at them to bring back the food she was planning to make into melon soup. Can't stop
those kids from dancing but why would you want to Mr. Howitzer, walking past the Post Office, was accosted by a real woman with child, both dirty and dressed in rags. The woman held up a small sign and called out to the real estate magnate, "Sir! Sir!", but Mr. Howitzer snarled "Go back home!" The woman, taken aback by this tone, muttered, "Soy Californio!" At that moment Eisenhower, Mr. Howitzer's dog, broke loose to chase after a rolling grapefruit which had escaped the shopping cart from Waifsay across the lot. A truck coming out of the PO, making the usual illegal left turn there bumped the dog abruptly before the driver slammed on his brakes. Eisenhower sort of flew back a few feet and staggered a big with a
bemused expression -- the dog was a chunky Weimariner similar to Mr.
Howitzer's previous dog which had gone missing a couple Thanksgivings
ago. The blow did not kill the dog, but after that day Eisenhower's coat began to develop a yellowish tinge. His behavior changed as well. In the dog park, he lost his aggressive territoriality, and started sharing his toys with other dogs and protecting the smaller ones from bullies. He started taking chewsticks out to the racoons and leaving kibble for the neighbor's cat. Furthermore, all around the house, everywhere there was a portrait of one of the Bushes or of the Great Confabulator who had brought Conservatism in from the American wilderness a distinct odor of pet pee emanated. He started perking up and listening with interest on Sundays when music swelled from the Lutheran church across the way. One day, right on the piano, right in front of Nancy's signed photograph, a steaming heap was found. Yes, it was as Mr. Howitzer had feared. The absolute worst: Eisenhower had turned into a Yellow Dog Democrat. O the anguish. This is a time of year that is all preparation for leavetaking. The changes are subtle and the summer continues to sway like a woman dancing with her eyes closed in a hot sweaty bar filled with saxophone and memories. But the students are all packing up to go off and do what they never have done before -- leave home and enter a brave new world of learning things your mother didn't tell you anything about. Back to School sales are blathering their annual blather on the radio, in the newspaper, in the letterbox. And even here in California, here on the Island, wild birds form chevrons, practicing their leavetaking for Buenos Aires. Something about the light as it cuts through the window panes in the late afternoon looks a little different and something about sudden gusts of wind outside sound a little more insistent. Something is about to happen and a wind is due to come down from the North. All the butterflies have vanished; you saw the last one about a week ago. Somerset sits on a stool in the Old Same Place Bar, drinking his last drink there on the Island. He is leaving and taking his family with him to go back to Terra Haute, even though it does not look like things are going to be any better there than here. A lot of families are leaving, going to stay with relatives, with friends, with any old situation. Folks are even returning to the ruins of New Orleans, for ruins in one place are just as good as ruins in another and might as well be in some place you know as miserable in some place you don't. Need to get rid of any things, Padraic asks, hoping for some kind of windfall. Somerset shakes his head. The trouble has lasted so long all the things that were are broken, torn up and useless. All has been badly mended and its off to the junkyard for the cracked dishes, the shattered and torn furniture, the broken electrics long out of date and everything else. He had come to the Bay Area on the tails of an insurance job offer and had done well for a long while. Then the Great Recession had hit and despite every effort, despite superhuman struggle and long nights and scrimping and saving and arguments about spending twelve dollars for a movie luxury or a case of beer their best had not been good enough. The house had been foreclosed and the car repossessed and they were down to the last dollar from the last garage sale. In the morning, they would toss a few things into the used wagon they had got from a neighbor and join the reverse wave of Okies washing backwards toward a sullen and inhospitable shore of dust. Where at least the rents were more reasonable. All across the Island one sees these piles of shelves, boxes of books and clothing, dishes, lone sofas standing like Edith Piaf singing quiet songs of abandonment. Eventually, these piles erode as if by stop-action photography to nothing, for there always remain a few still fighting on who can use that pan with half of its teflon scratched away or those picture frames and the inevitable baby stroller. Then again, there are those who drop a dishwasher or a microwave on the curb and angrily slice the power cord, as if to say, "I am going but the fighter still remains. You vultures shall not profit by my dismay and by leaving I shall leave you poorer than before. Pay yourselves for disposal, you scum." And so the world is indeed poorer for the loss of not only a useful thing but also good will. When those people recall their stay in California it shall be of a sullen and inhospitable people who welcomed them not and their anger shall abide. At the other end of the bar sits Ng, who came in walking with stiff legs. Years ago, fleeing with his family the NVA advance, captured and pushed against a wall, a young captain of the North, barely a teenager, had shot him in both knees before blowing off the head of his sister beside him. The young NVA captain stood there looking at him, holding the pistol with an expression that declared to the world that this was his first atrocity, the first of probably what would be many more, and he dared Ng with his eyes the way teenagers do all the time around the world before leaving them there. The body of his sister fell down in front of him, twitched and was still while his parents wept. Eventually they made their way to a refugee camp in Thailand, but it had taken several more days. Because of that experience he walked with a limp as he went about his work as a mechanic at Blanding Automotive Works. Beside him sat Roman, a former Croatian who had tried to return to his native village Kortzyn near Split on the seacoast, only to find that not only the house, but the street, the neighborhood and most of the town had been obliterated by raids and subsequent bombs and most of his neighbors lay in shallow graves a few miles away and the name of the town would soon be erased from all the maps. He also worked in the garage on Blanding Avenue. For these two there was no going back. Roman had always dreamed of owning a fruit orchard beside the ocean, and here on the Island the backyard sported a plum tree he had rescued from blight, to the eternal gratitude of his landlord, as well as some sunlight soil, where he planted grapes and other produce. And so he was able to make his own homegrown slivovitz in the old way and had become content, for his friend Ng owned a boat and the two often went out fishing together. Nothing he could do could ever bring back his neighbors or his family or his house. Not the girl with corn-silk braids next door, nor his murdered grandmother with her eyes, nor the water silo or the vanished well could ever be restored to the way they had been. What he had for now was enough. Up on the bar telly, the news was showing a clip of Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech, the anniversary of which had passed this weekend. The camera cut away from the clip excerpt to show the florid face of a demigogue who had chosen the anniversary and the location to hold a rally of fascist brownshirts in Washington D.C. Several people threw celery stalks from their bloody marys at the screen so Padraic changed the channel to HBO and movie which showed a man digging a hole with a hunchback in a graveyard. The man cursed the work (What a filthy job!) until the hunchback, played by the bug-eyed comic actor Marty Feldman said, "Could be worse." "How!" shouted the other actor. "Could be raining . . . ". Right then the long wail of the throughpassing train ululated across the laughing waters of the estuary as the locomotive wended its way from the gantries of the Port past the dark and shuttered doors and windows of the Jack London Waterfront, headed off to parts unknown. That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
AUGUST 22, 2010 IF YA SHOW ME A SIGN, I'LL BE WILLIN'
This week's headline photo is a simple shot of a storefront in the Southshore Shopping Mall which underwent a facelift and name change shortly before the bottom dropped out a while ago. Its also a shameless plug for businesses to set up shop here. Right now the Island has prime locations available in a mall that clearly by this shot taken on a weekend (please examine the large crowds reflected in the windows) which is chock full of potential. It outta, as we counted a 50% vacancy rate there. But then, its all about location, location, location. For those of you seeking to supply the needs of folks wanting to build up the image of "Fine Living by the Bay" the number is right there in the storefront window. Opportunity knocks. Strike a deal. We got an Island you gonna love. Only you can change this from being the Sign of the Times. WHAT'S GOING ON Word is out that the big outdoor festivals are turning over less revenue from reduced ticket sales this year due to the Great Recession. Some folks in the finance biz are starting to talk about ways to avoid worse scenarios and the "Big D" is being bandied about as both consumers and companies (plus Government) retract spending and tighten the purse strings. Conservatives of a certain ilk should be delighted by the present circumstances, as all government is being stripped back to basically no services except military, and excess spending by everybody has been cut to basically bare bone. This means nobody spends anything and nothing happens, which appears to be Conservative Nirvana. On the upside, the HSBF, which is entirely free and paid for by a bluesgrass-loving benefactor has established its initial lineup, which includes, besides the usual suspects, Larry McMurtry, he of the Heartless Bastards and antiwar fame and our beloved, our much esteemed, our long treasured Patti Smith. Not for us bobby-sox girls with names like Muffi, and Valerie, who dotted their i's with little hearts and romped around to the Beach Boys or Abba. We had no poster of Farah Faucett on the wall in our dorm. We plastered posters of a gal photographed by Mapplethorpe with hairy underarms and a beater t-shirt on our walls and blasted those debutantes out of the lanes with howling feedback and "Rock and Roll Babylon" and "25th Floor". Yep, our adorable Patti Smith will grace us with curses and style in the Golden Gate Park this October.
It's been a cool and foggy week up to the weekend on the Island, our hometown set here on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. This weekend marked the first time Summer really made its presence felt as the El Nino fog burnt off for many adventures along the Coast. Saturday started off inauspicious, but by afternoon the Strand was packed with dogs and kids and volleyball and BBQ from the jetty all the way up and around the Cove. By Sunday, the bright color dabs of parasails and windsurfers dotted the intense blue sky over the high tide water as temps racheted up into the nineties, bringing a real sense of summer at last. Cowboy Wiz dropped in for his sixty-seventh birthday, saying that Phoenix had topped 110 degrees again. So the old barfly tugged on his alligator boots, his turquoise-studded belt and set his Stetson at an angle to troll the waters of the locals around here. We told him to do his best to stay out of fights, as few in the Bay Area still enjoy the old-fashioned knuckleduster quite the way he learned in knockdown saloons and fandango joints across the West, complete with smashing crockery, splintering chairs, bleeding stitches and broken bones. Ah, them were the days. So, after a mildly regretful evening of Jaegermeister shots he finished off his birthday in true Western style by going up to seal Craggy Doyle's cabin roof under the blazing sun, fix the jammed garbaged disposal, cook up a BBQ feast for a gang of outlaws passing through and generally needle Craggy Doyle -- who was somewhat hard of hearing -- by whispering every time he talked to him. "Hey Doyle, yer shoe's untied." "What?" "Doyle, yer fly's unzipped." "What?" "Doyle, the sink is about to overflow and your underwear is showin'." "SPEAK LOUDER! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" "I SAID YOUR EX-WIFE IS ON THE PHONE SAYIN' YOU GOT LESS DOWN BELOW THAN UP TOP!" "Oh okay, that's all right then. . .". Then the two would start punching one another in a way that Doyle always lost because Wiz would kick loose Doyle's wooden leg untilt the man fell over. Real cowboys know it's always good to have long-term friends who know your strengths and your weaknesses. To work off the steam all the outlaws went out for a bike ride with Susan leading the way. The sun glanced off off the points on her collar and wrist spikes most charmingly and at the end of the day a fine time was had by all. The heat kept off the fog well into the evening as the nearly full moon began its leisurely walk across the sky. Lionel returned from his movie date with Jacqueline and got berated -- again -- by Luther, who never could understand the man's fascination with the oh-fay hairdresser when so many fine Sisters were available. "Why don't you go out with that Yvonne over at the Creek?" Luther said, but Lionel's opinion that Yvonne was a nurse at the Clinic and too smart a gal. "Truth be told," Luther said. "Just about every woman out there is smarter than you, Lionel." It also may be added that it was generally agreed that no one could decide for which party on either side this was most distressing. Meanwhile Tommy and Toby were having margaritas on board their sloop, the Lavendar Surprise, with Lynette and Shelly. They all commented on the fine weather as the moon continued its promenade above. Lynette said the weather made her hands feel better. All the bones had been smashed up during the attack long ago outside the Pink Triangle Bar in Boston. She had nearly died in the snowbank where she had fallen under the baseball bats, and there were still health problems. All of them had experienced, either directly or indirectly through friends something similar before coming to California and the Island. She looked at Shelly, whose grey eyes reminded her of the nickname for the Wise Goddess, Glaucous Athena. She would never have met her had she never left Boston. There was Trouble every day, but for now, there was the slap of the water against the ship's hull after a fine day of sailing on the laughing waves and the pitcher of margaritas and old friends and lovers. From across the way, the strains of an acoustic guitar drifted from a party. For the moment, life was good. Across the way, Denby was playing music with Andre -- the entire Household had gone down to the water for relief from the heat and Occasional Quentin had brought a jug of wine with him which he passed around. Somebody sort of found a cache of beer cooling in the water which had been sort of left behind by a boating party. Sort of. The beer got definitively handed around as well. "Trouble in mind Rolf clinked bottles with Marsha; they understood one another. Perhaps no job or prospects, but definitely no Vopos, no Stacheldraht, no husband knuckle sandwiches and definitely no Jersey despair. Marsha fingered the sand dollar that she had kept of the two found hours after arriving at the beach so long ago.
Bonkers sniffed at a box he found sitting on a bench there and whined. Somebody had left what looked like a simple cheese hotdish embedded with what looked to be jalapenos there. It didn't look that old and perhaps it was still edible. There was even a plastic spoon in there . . . . At that moment, walking by on separate walks, Father Danyluk of the Church of Our Lady of Incessant Complaint and Pastor Nyquist both heard the music and paused to admire the peripatetic moon, each according to their likes and their liturgies. Bless us O lord for this moment and the simple joys. The moon continued its walk, unheeding. Pallas Athena going to meet her brother in the morning. The West is big and wide and full of a million stories and a friend says you can go crazy if you listen to 'em all. The Editor turned from the window and looking out at all the bonfires flickering far away on the beach, Lights of Earth, another friend had said, meaning not the fires but the people there, each one a bright star. Thinking of friends, those who had passed on and those who abide, he returned to his desk and the pool of light cast by the lamp. From far across way the long wail of the train ululated across the moon-walked waters of the estuary as the locomotive wended its way from the starlit gantries of the Port past the dark and shuttered doors and windows of the Jack London Waterfront headed off to parts unknown. That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
AUGUST 15, 2010 PUT ME ON THAT WIND HE RIDES This week's photo is from Island reader and amateur photog Mike, who took this image of a Cooper's Hawk dining on a mouse just outside his window.
Tastey mouses. Yum! MOTHER MARY WON'T YOU WHISPER Something from the Past certainly is done and it done fingered Patrick McCabe, formerly resident on Walnut Street but now cell occupant at Santa Rita Jail, where he awaits extradition to Ireland on charges of sexual abuse in Ireland while serving as a Catholic priest. McCabe is alleged to have molested children from the early 1970's onward until allegations of immoral conduct led the local diocese to move him to the United States in 1981 where he continued working as a priest in Sacramento and the North counties until his departure from the priesthood in 1988. That same year he moved to the Island. Interpol located him here a few years ago, and in 2007 the ex-priest admitted to wrongdoing while serving in Dublin. He also had scant good words for his former employer, claiming that the Church treated him for a head cold when his condition was more like pneumonia. He also stated to Island detective, Aaron Hardy and police Sgt. Kevin McNiff that he knew he did have a problem with his attraction to young boys. The 2009 Murphy Report, which blasted church authorities for covering up sex crimes with little or no regard for the wellbeing of the children, did not list McCabe because he was never brought to trial. The man is now quite elderly and in poor health. As there are no local allegations against him, he has been entirely truthful to Island police on all counts, and the Irish charges are based on secondary testimony, it is possible McCabe may be able to fight off extradition, although its clear that he will live with his disease and terrible self-knowledge until his last unshriven breath. (some details from an article by Angela Woodall in the 08/13/10 Alameda Journal.) THIS ONE GOES OUT TO THE ONE I LOVE Flames lit up the night and sirens wailed as the Old Encinal Terminals pier behind the former Del Monte warehouse caught fire. The pier goes back quite a number of years and was the site of the first high-speed container crane to be installed on the West Coast. The fire destroyed about 100 feet of the 700 foot long pier. The warehouse was being used by a business for refurbishing shipping containers and is the subject of a redevelopment project by owner Peter Wang. The Great Recession has stalled that project for the time being. Police are investigating the fire's cause at the untenanted pier.
THOSE PERNICIOUS THREE DOTS Ron Dellums is not seeking re-election to Oaktown Mayor -- to everyone's relief. Even the East Bay Express has stated that his tenure was "disappointing" . . . The Island is seeing the new PG&E SmartMeters installed at a rapid pace despite allegations of dangerous amounts of electromagnetic radiation . . . The deadline for filing to be on the November ballot has passed, leaving us with Frank Matarrese, Tony Daysog, Doug deHaan, and Marie Gilmore to battle with Kenneth "Kenny the Clown" Kahn for the Mayoral Hot Seat . . . Current Mayor Beverly Johnson is one of eight aiming at one of the two Council seats, including Lena Tam, Marilyn Ashcraft, Tracy Jenson, Rob Bonita, Jeff Mitchell and Jean Sweeney. With Mitchell (Editor) and Sweeney (activist) joining Kahn as non-professional politicians, should get interesting. . . Proposition 19 is likely to garner national and international attention as it seeks to legalize medical pot dispensaries for the purposes of raising tax revenues. Pro Prop 19 folks have raised five times the cash collected by its opponents, so they are now contributing this money to selected office seekers locally and statewide. Just say Now . . .
ALL ON AN ISLAND Its been cooler than usual and overcast late into the day all week here on the Island, our hometown set here on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. With the times being so hard, food tends to arrive in the larder in very curious forms, and usually is entirely unlike what you usually have. Jose and Xavier got a big bucket of Black Lentils from the food bank and looked to the internet for ways to make something of this bonanza. Neither one of them knew that the efforts to make a meal for the Household would result in one of those "Only in the Bay Area" stories. Xavier downloaded a black lentil recipe without checking all the ingredients, the recipe or the process, which is pretty much what all good cooks will do, but not our boys, and so they were well on the way to making savory lentils when they each came across an item of which no one had ever heard. "Add one full tablespoon of garam masala. This will give the dish its distinctive savor and aroma." ? ! They each looked at one another. "Maybe we can just add celery or Worcestershire sauce instead," offered Xavier. "No no, if it is so distinctive it must be something special and we have to have it. We have already begun everything else. We just need to know if it's a spice or like a vegetable or a kind of meat," Jose said. So the two did what any enterprising American-Wabos would do in such circumstances: they went onto the Internet at the Free Island Library. They each knew that it was a free library because the sign said so. "Are their libraries in Alta California which are not free," Xavier asked. There ensued a lively discussion as to whether the library was free because nobody paid for the right to read books or whether the name referenced the political condition of the Island until Jose told Xavier to shut up and stop asking stupid questions while he hunted for garam masala on the library's free access computer. As no one at the House had enough money for computers, let alone monthly internet service, the library remained their conduit for news and international affairs, so free worked well enough for them. "It says here on the bottom that garam masala is the most commonly used spice from Tunisia across North Africa, the Middle East and on to all of India," Jose said. "It also says that it is universally available but that many households make their own so as to have the freshest condiment in the house." "So that's it!" Xavier said. "Off to Plucky's Grocery." And with that the young man dashed off with the five dollars the two of them had managed to scrounge by lifting all the cushions in the house, checking the gutter, the underside of dryers at the laundromat, begging and just going through their own pockets. A little concerned that five dollars might not be enough for some kind of exotic spice, Jose stayed on the computer. "To make garam masala, assemble the following spices: one 1/4 tsp saffron . . . " Saffron! That was the first ingredient?! Jose did not know much about India anything but he did know that saffron from India was hideously expensive and so up he jumped to intercept Xavier with the precious five dollars without checking any further. Hell, with that kind of gourmet expectation they could just mix the lentils with day-old and Worcestershire as usual and grill up veggie burgers. He ran into Xavier who was triumphantly waving a sheet of paper in front of him inside the Waifsay Grocery. "Guess who I ran into!" "You have the recipe", Jose said. "You look at what's innit yet?" "No. He said it was easy. Nobody knew what it was in Plucky's and not in Traitor Schmoes either. And no one here in the Waifsay. They say all say go to speciality shop. But I got this recipe right from the main source! Somebody from India!" "Give me that!" Jose said. HOW TO MAKE GARAM MASALA
Jose looked at Xavier dubiously, saying, "Somehow I do not think this recipe is all genuine. Who gave this to you?" "Amir," said Xavier. "Amir?! Amir Booshwadi of the Blue Ganges restaurant? I have known Amir for over fifteen years and never known the man to speak two serious words in consecutive order! First time I met him he said quite seriously that he felt very Northwest Indian that day and could not speak to me." "I do not get it," said Xavier. "He meant he was feeling 'velly Sihk'," said Jose. "I still do not get it," Xavier said. "Here we are in the middle of the most cosmopolitan area in the most cosmo State of the American Republic and nobody here knows about 'the most commonly used spice from Morocco across North Africa, the Middle East and on to all of India'!" Jose stamped his foot. "All gabachos esta stupido!" A voice broke into their discussion there in the spice section of the Waifsay. "Excuse me, do either of you gentlemen know the difference between Saigon Cinnamon and regular cinnamon?" A short Asian woman, perhaps Chinese-American, perhaps not, stood there holding two bottles of a reddish powder. Jose looked at her. "The Saigon Cinnamon undoubtably costs at least a dollar more," he said. The woman looked at the two bottles in her hands. "Why yes, that is exactly true! Did you say you were looking for garam masala? There it is -- under the Cinnamon." And there it was. Bottles of it that looked as if they had resided there for one thousand years. Layers of dust covered each one. And each one cost exactly $1.50. No one knew it was there, no one had inventoried the stock since god knows when and no one had changed the price since they had been placed there sometime in the 1950's. Or perhaps earlier than that. Javier grabbed a bottle and after paying for their purchase, they ran all the way back to the house just as the Mary Poppins Summer School was letting out after a day trip to the dye factory in Oaktown. Those of you who have never employed garam masala should know that "1 tbls garam masala" is an aweful lot of masala, and probably a misprint. More likely the original recipe called for "1 tsp", for when the boys dumped a tablespoon of the pungent spice mixture into the lentils the aroma filled the house and all the other houses in the neighborhood with a peculiar scent that evoked djinns, whirling belly dancers, geniis, busy bazaars thronged by people wearing djellabas and headscarves. Guys coming home to the usual tuna hot dish or chicken enchilada sniffed the air and wondered what was up in the kitchen as they came through the door for four blocks in all directions. For a time, ancient Persia glided along the hallways and alleys of that district in silk slippers with curled toes, resurrecting a time of magic carpets and turbans as little girls ran down the street unfurling long translucent colored scarves while the two cooks reeled with waving arms to bang into the stacked pots and the refridgerator. But a little smoke in the air cannot hold back folks used to noshing on raw habaneros. The two of them who had just been cursing with language that would have turned a sailor pale only a moment ago soon bustled about the little kitchen, getting in one another's way and singing merrily little songs, like "Siempre Siempre Abualita" a song by Tish Hinojosa, who is a darling of the Lilith Faire, a place where gentlemen such as these were hardly welcome. Certainly not in their Appolonian aspect. However, Jose in wearing the apron with sunflowers printed on it represented some other aspect at the moment. That night the denizens of Marlene and Andre's household on Otis all gathered around the pot and all admired the extraordinary odor, an odor that was a product of NorCal, and the Bay Area in particular, for it had all resolved itself satisfactorily after an Asian-American woman had asked two Wabs about the fine distinctions between two Vietnamese spices in a thoroughly Gabacho grocery store. And as they all sat back or reclined after their fabulous repast that included Food Bank lentils, rice, and ninty-nine cent jugs of Burgundy wine, for the meal had begun after the sun had set, allowing for a breaking of fast in the middle of Ramadan. And so, the long wail of the throughpassing train ululated across the holy waters of the estuary as the little locomotive wended its way from the gantries of the Port past the dark and shuttered doors of the Jack London Waterfront, heading off to parts unknown. That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
AUGUST 8, 2010 THEY TORE DOWN PARADISE AND PUT UP A PARKING LOT This week's photo-op got phoned in by a reader who ordered Old Schmidt to haul his keister down to Webster Street where they are busy renovating the old Tillie's building. This is what the workmen uncovered there.
Latterly we have returned to peeking in on the other blogs running here, especially that of Lauren Do, who has managed to finagle a relationship with SFgate. Lauren's Blog has been called by some entities a "reputable Blog", which makes all of us wonder about the quality of our society. Is Lauren Do hanging out in Tiffany's, dressed in pearls and white gloves now? And the rest of us, are we sort of shady types sporting 3-day stubbles, dissolute tramps flying the flag of dirty slips and torn lingerie below the hemline? Yes, we are the sort of reporters about whom your mother warned. Likely to dangle any sort of participle in front of an innocent babe, corrupting the City's youth with purple adjectives and limpid prose and so on. Beware Lauren: from Reputable there than be only one place to which to descend. O the ignominy! In any case, we note in Lauren's latest her curious attempt to obtain emails that are supposedly available for public scrutiny under any number of "sunshine laws", only to be told the City does not retain the emails due to "lack of server space", that the emails are not subject to (Federal) Government Code Section 6254(a) and furthermore all emails are considered "drafts", and so discardable. Ms. Do's response was pretty much the same as our IT tech's response in-house here. "Nonsense and poppycock on each and every issue!" shouted Denby. "I have run email systems for government and private industry as a consultant for the past 20 years and helped to enforce Sarbanes-Oxley requirements for open disclosure. In goverment ALL communications must be retained for YEARS and there are long-proven ways to do so! I know Groupwise (the system claimed to be in use by the City) and I KNOW it can be done!" Ms. Do did not rest on the Official Response, as it was clearly ridiculous even to a non-techie, and so got the Californians Aware, a watchdog group with the mission to ensure open government, involved. Their rep stated, according to Lauren's Blog, "this routine deletion of emails could be construed as a violation of California Government Code section 34090 and could potentially be stopped by a court order. Specifically, the government code section does not allow the destruction of records less than two years old." People should also know (see following item) that there is an issue involving a Councilperson who is accused of misusing her office to provide information to parties involved in negotiation with the City -- by way of E-mail. She may be "Respectable", but we applaud Lauren Do's effort, which is precisely the thing that locally-oriented blogs should do. Excellent work. You go, girl! The article was last found at this hyperlink:
Her main blog is still BLOGGING BAYPORT at Wordpress.com.
Moving right along we come to the issue that has been ruffling feathers for quite a while and which looks now to be descending, pretty much as we expected, into a Gordian's knot of legal imbroglio. As the entire country should know by now, the Island has had a plot of land open up due to the departure of the Navy -- the largest within any metropolitan area in the country that remains undeveloped in fact. After a great deal of non-success for any number of reasons, one developer was left standing from a gaggle of orginally interested parties. This developer is SunCal which signed an exclusivity agreement with the City to handle every square inch of what was expected to be handed over by the Navy as part of the Peace Dividend made possible by the collapse of the Soviet Union. All across the Country, as military bases closed, local communities made ready to handle the expected windfall of land -- or the disaster of lost revenue in places where losing a base meant no gain for anybody. If communities presented comprehensive plans within a stipulated time period, the base lands were handed over for the token price of $1. Here on the Island, one developer after another backed out of promises while negotiations for toxic waste cleanup continued. SunCal presented a comprehensive plan -- we actually have read it -- that put forth in over 300 pages a combined business and housing development with allocations for some 3,000 - 4,000 dwelling units including low-income housing, parks, trails, bus stops, a new ferry terminal, etc. In the meantime, as the decade passed, people moved into the vacated buildings there -- its not like the place has remained totally vacant. TWA kept an airplane hangar there, the old Officer's Club became a place for Islanders to hold wedding receptions and other functions, and businesses set up shop in the big aircraft hangars. Some of the sailor housing is still being used for low income residents. Stats about income from this activity range from 8 to $18 million dollars per year, meaning the City is not exactly losing revenue during this entire time. Unfortunately whoever handles SunCal's public affairs seems to have all the finesse of a chimpanzee. First, they blow their image on the Island as beneficial partners by agressively pushing for high-volume housing and exemptions from existing City height limits. Then they get the Mayor to conduct these "Robocalls" in which a recorded message from Mayor Beverly promises all sorts of stuff that turned out to be vaporware. Thirdly, they toss away months of committee negotiations in a blatant effort to score a greedy coup on everything by forcing the City to pay $300,000 for a special election that would have given SunCal total rights to the land to do with as they pleased with virtually no serious obligation to the City and entirely put the kibosh on any negotiation whatsoever. The process of gathering signatures for this election involved deception, shikanery, and outright foolishness from the getgo. Everything about it was distasteful The Special Election tanked the initiative and served only to stir up a hornets nest against SunCal, which should have seen its entire efforts here as doomed, if only for the sheer incompetence of its marketing arm. This is a company which has had an history of failure in several California projects, a recent history of bad-faith decisions with regard to the City and a set of relationships with disreputable financial entities which we are sure Lauren Do would put off with protestations meant to preserve personal honor and integrity along the lines of "Sirs, I do not associate with riff raff and scaliwags! I am shocked. Simply shocked by your forward attentions". When it came time to renew the Exclusivity Contract, Mayor Beverly, who we believe must also feel somewhat abused by vulgar association after the Robocall incident, along with the majority of the City Council who had turned against SunCal's increasingly dubious schemes one after another, all voted to terminate their association with this less than savory suitor. In fact, of the original 300 page document, very little had remained going forward. Parks had vanished, plans for infrastructure building, such as roads and sewers had evaporated, the promised ferry landing looked to be entirely unfunded by anything, and an awful lot of unexplained white space had materialized on the planning maps. "Oh that strip along the water! Well, that's going to be either a bank of high rise condos or a set of offices. Did we promise a park there? Can't recall that part . . ." was SunCal's response when folks challenged newly appearing issues. As it devolved, the Great Recession caused some changes inside City Hall while all this was going on. We lost the City Manager and took on Anne Marie Gallant, a feisty take-no-prisoners and get-it-done sort of gal with a lot of experience digging folks out of budgetary holes and conducting internecine political campaigns. Lena Tam, on the City Council dug in her heels regarding SunCal and earned herself a formidible opponent in one who was used to the nastiest of small town politics. As a result, Tam is now facing a raft of charges that allege she sent info to SunCal and to other agencies during sensitive negotiations when she should not have done so. As Tam put it, "This seems well timed for the elections." There is an excellent article in the NY Times written by a local here on that imbroglio. Whether Tam was ever involved in any impropriety regarding SunCal we think her involvement had no real impact on the final result. Nevertheless, SunCal has now levied a law suit against the City, claiming that Gallant acted with malicious intent to halt its honest efforts to make a buck. The developer accused Interim City Manager Ann Marie Gallant of sabotaging its efforts to develop the base, saying she wanted the city to develop the site instead. The company says the city breached its contract with SunCal, which it said violates the U.S. Constitution. SunCal contends that city staff members are seeking to destroy a development that will significantly enhance the environment and add value to the community, all so they can perpetuate their positions and ensure their job longevity. The suit seeks to have the court reinstate the developer's exclusive agreement to negotiate a development deal for Alameda Point, nix the council's July 20 vote that effectively fired the developer, and stop the city from moving forward on any other plans for the site. SunCal's suit asserts that negotiations were proceeding well until Gallant was hired as interim city manager in April 2009. After that, SunCal said the city put up roadblocks intended to frustrate its development efforts. No, to tell the truth, even if Gallant had been working behind the scenes like some Tolkein character to thwart SunCal, Suncal's own behavior had scuttled what probably started out as a fairly reasonable project to develop. The idea that "negotiations were proceeding well" is some fantasy with no basis in fact. According to our best recollections, SunCal's representatives worked at crosspurposes to its own efforts at every step along the way, save for the maligned and disregarded planning committee meetings, so as to savage the very effort all this was supposed to have accomplished. It does not matter how good the project was and no silly nuisance suit can rescue the situation now. SunCal drilled a hole in the perfectly good hull of a perfectly good design and sunk it themselves out of flagrantly obscene greed. It remains now for the other suits and investigations to wind their laborious way through the courts to conclude as meaninglessly as they had begun, regardless of outcome. In the best case scenario on behalf of SunCal, their silly suit will not earn them the billions of dollars they hoped to earn previously, but only the undying enmity of the local populace and a nod from a judge who says, "Looks like y'all got screwed." The best they could hope for would be a renewal of the exclusivity contract, but such a contract would be a vainglorious and Pyrric victory, for who in their right minds would agree to work with them now at this point? And the City has no money to pay for a settlement, so they are not going to get that either. In the end, the City will need to work with the Navy to handle the land, keep the existing low income housing so as to skip over the State requirement that every municipality have something like it, keep the existing businesses so as to preserve ongoing revenue, court a few new ones, and gradually allow flinty-eyed folks convert empty hangars into dollar signs over the long reach of time and also allow the VA to come in to build the badly needed veteran's facility along the southern area there, which will help stabilize the region as well as give some of our wounded soldiers a place to convelesce; no better place than the Island for such a project. SunCal, unfortunately, is likely to live a long time in the Golden State and in the neighboring West, continuing to prey upon gullible municipalities with promises of the next Bonanza coming just around the corner, twirling its moustaches as it courts Reputable ladies at the soiree with paste diamonds and sly insinuations. That's our view and we stick to it. Don't You Ever Get Elected The announcement came over the wire this week about Tony Daysog toss his hat into the ring for position as chief brickbat magnet and whipping boy known as Mayor. This makes Daysog a contender against Frank Matarrese and Marie Gilmore, all currently serving on the City Council. Daysog had announced his intentions as early as February, but had delayed the paperwork until last week. PLAYING WITH PINK NOISE It's been an overcast week on the Island our hometown in California set here on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. The days begin heavy with low fog and end with sunny afternoons almost as if it were summertime. One of us drove down last Friday to Silicon Valley to find work and was dismayed to find themselves piloting along the dreaded Nimitz Freeway during rush hour. Not to worry. On the busiest day of the week rush hour was as empty as a pawnbroker's conscience. No one was going to work on Friday because there was no work to be had. Reports came in over the wire of impossible unemployment rates and stocks tanked on the reports. Problem is that even with the extension to benefits, grudgingly granted by a stubborn Congress, the stated rate of 12% unemployment is in reality double that, or about 22%, because of the large number of folks -- such as yours truely -- who are unemployed and uncounted. Looking at some counties like Butte and Amador, we are talking about real unemployment rates well over 75%. People are not selling matches and pencils in the streets -- although there are tables selling things like wallets and ties in Babylon -- only because the cost of some things has rendered such attempts at small change pathetic. Normally, during a Depression, the prices decline to reflect real purchasing power. In this case, from rents to steaks, the people with jobs are paying for the loss leaders to keep the prices higher than real. Empty rooms? The landlords jack the rent of those remaining to cover the cost of the empties and maintain their lifestyles. Jaqueline of the Salon sat and regarded the latest issue of Entertainment Today with disgust. The main actress in the Harry Potter films had gone and gotten a pixie do, shaving off all of her luxurious locks and Jaqueline was outraged. "This is bad for business! Whatever shall I do with such short hair! Such insouciance! What has gotten into the Ofay!" Jackie saw this event as the forerunner of a trend that would cut into the profits of the already struggling Salon. Girls and women were not coming in for dos and fixes quite as frequently as used to happen. Regulars were showing up less regular, and Jackie was aghast at what aesthetic deviances were allowed to happen as consequence. Less frosting, less tipping, less curl and less income is what it all looked to be. Jackie remembered well the day Yolanda came in and asked that it all be shorn off. Right to the skull. All of it. Now Yolanda was an attractive woman and fortunately possessed of a well-formed head as well as facial features that would have shamed Nefertiti. Now this in the entertainment industry about to bodyslam the haircare world right from the teens on up! As Lionel passed by the shop he looked into the window to see the proprietor stalking back and forth with her hands in her own luxurious curls -- a woman's crowning glory -- however Jackie was screaming. Not a good time to go in and ask for a date to the Jack London outdoor movies. Instead, Lionel did what Bogart would have done -- lit a cigarette and walked on. Here's lookin' at ya, kid. A very different mood prevailed onboard the Lavendar Surprise, where Tommy, Toby, Shelly and Lynnette were having a party. Not only had BP finally capped the oilwell disaster in the Gulf, but the State Supreme Court had just overturned that hate-filled Prop 8 and they all were ecstatic. Cautious, but ecstatic. "Remember what happened the last time we tried to get married," reminded Shelly. Indeed all could remember that terrible Thanksgiving when everyone had tried to get married all at once on the same street with the Chapel of the Santified Elvis becoming a major battleground during the annual Poodleshoot. All the would-be ministers and couples-to-be had scattered amid flashbang grenades and flying bullets in a wretched descent into atavistic savagery and flaming pews. Bear had saved them in the Grotto by flailing a motorcycle chain in a primieval invocation of his ancient Viking aspect while the Wiccans had called up the spirit of HST to scatter the combatants in a deluge of Purple Windowpane. Andre and Marlene had fled with Reverend Freethought in smoking trousseau, which still hung up where the weeping girl had nailed it to the wall that terrible evening in savage disappointment. Then came the Special Elections and the Proposition 8, sponsored and promoted by out-of-staters from Texas and Nebraska had put the kibosh on everyone's dreams. This time, though, even Der Governator had spoken out in favor of marriage equality, while all around the world, in Cuba, in Mexico, in South America, the winds of understanding and freedom were toppling the rickety towers of intolerance (while providing unlimited opportunities for alliterative structures and rhetorical flourish!). Heartened by these things the little crew partied on into the night while remaining docked at the Marina (due to new and more stringent rules for opening the drawbridges for masted ships like theirs). There remained the appeals launched by the Texans and the rather unpromising Federal Supreme Court to decide things further on. And November 25th, with its annual Poodleshoot lurked months away into the shadowy future where anything could happen. For now, Tommy rustled up another pitcher of margaritas. And of course, as always at this time of night, the long wail of the throughpassing train ululated across the hope-filled waters of the estuary as the locomotive wended its way from the gantries of the Port past the dark and shuttered windows of the Jack London Waterfront, headed off to parts unknown. That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
AUGUST 1, 2010 LULLABYE FOR THE SUMMER This week's headline photo comes from neighbor Rachel, who works the lunchtime crowd at the Fat Lady in Oaktown and teaches dance lessons in the City. The image is of one particular front yard on Santa Clara Avenue that has been exploding with color in early Spring each year.
O why endure a boring lawn of European grass when you can astonish all with extraordinariness! Another Island original . . . . JERICHO ROAD All the literary world is abuzz over legendary author's latest public utterance. The “Interview with a Vampire” author, who wrote a book about her spirituality titled "Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession" in 2008, said Wednesday that she refuses to be “anti-gay,” “anti-feminist," “anti-science” and “anti-Democrat.” With that blog posting the famed San Franciscan turned New Orleans resident (Garden District) has jumped ship from the Church. Rice wrote, “For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian ... It's simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else.” Rice then added another post explaining her decision on Thursday: “My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me," Rice wrote. "But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been or might become.” Some of us on Staff here knew Ms. Rice when she was an instructor at San Francisco State University and also her husband, poet and painter Stan Rice, who served as Dean of the Creative Writing Department before his early passing away due to cancer. Whatever her decisions may be, we all send our fondest wishes. THIS ISLAND LIFE Dropped in to say hello to owner Mr. Domenici on the occasion of Pagano's Grand Opening at Southshore Mall (aka Town Centre). While a bouffant clown tied up balloons for the kiddies and folks lined up for one bit hot dogs, Islanders wandered the aisles of the store which has been physically open for about six weeks and doing fairly decent business in the troubled shopping mall.
With 500 hot dogs given out Saturday, and another 400 on Sunday, this larger version of the venerable hardware store, which will keep its old location on Lincoln Street, provided indications it is likely to provide a needed shot in the arm for the local economy. Andy Pagano established his hardware business in an old shoe on the corner of St. Charles and Lincoln Street in 1958. He has long since passed away, but his family retains property in that block and the name is retained for the privately held, independent store for sentimental reasons. Also in the news, Ross Stores, which was kicked out of its location at the Mall when owners gambled --- and lost badly -- on attracting more upscale clients there, has said "no hard feelings" and is building a brand new store there. This is also very good news. Practical, reasonable stores are more of what we want here. Speaking of shoe stores, we popped into Larry's Shoe Repair on Webster, where a shoe repair service has been in continuous operation at that location since the mid 1920's. Larry is the third owner there, inheriting the business from his former employer, Pat, in the late 1950's. Larry, however, has been going through some extremely tough times, despite his fierce attachment to professional integrity. Over the years he has resoled any number of shoes as well as successfully repaired a canvas bag which had been mauled by a bear. You heard that right -- while the man was on a camping trip, a tawny 500 pounder with a hump looked calmly at Denby from about ten feet away and calmly ripped the bag from its line to paw through maps and notepapers a few years ago. Such a literate bear. Larry fixed the bag and it -- the bag -- has been hauling junk for another five years on.
When we made to lay down the deposit for a resole job, Larry said he had to cancel all the card relationships during his stay in the hospital. His diabetes had resulted in ulceration of his legs to such an extent they had to amputate both feet. Now, people. this is a particularly savage irony for a man who makes his living servicing other people's footwear to lose his own pins and our collective hearts go out to the man. If you have canvas work, leather or shoe repair of any kind drop the job off on Webster. And say "Hi" to Larry. HEAVEN ON EARTH Its been a breezy week on the Island, our hometown set here on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. The summer is marching right along with the usual suspects perpetrating the usual sorts of garlanded mischief. Glads continue to erupt, pole beans are hanging down and the tomatoes are swelling in those places where sun does shine while all the corn is being harvested by the squirrels. It was a desultory day on Park Street when the discussion in Juanita's restaurant centered on what the differences were between California and the rest of the Country. Eugene shoved Juanita's effort at Spicy Spaghetti Bake aside and ordered a wet burrito and a margarita. First, of course, they had to limit what "rest of the Country meant," for as Eugene said, you can forget places like New York which everyone admitted was too damn wacky. "New York is provincial," said Paul, meaning Manhattan. "But they do like theatre." Boston was full of Irish Catholics and Brahmins, which prompted little Pepito to go fetch his dictionary, and for the rest of the evening he marvelled at mental images of sari-clad bald men switching the gaunt hides of cows as they plodded along the dusty streets while intoning the universal sound of Om, all under the shadows of an immense Catholic cathedral. It was generally agreed that, unlike people from New York or Boston, people from Chicago tended to be very polite, but then no one there at the table could recall anyone from San Francisco as being particularly polite either. That question led by natural degrees to the problem of determining just who they knew was San Franciscan and, ergo, who was a genuine Californian. This was a problem as no one there could recall anyone living who was a San Franciscan native, although Eugene did recall the Wildenradt family who used to own the McMurray Pacific Hardware Store. He could not recall if any of them had been particularly polite, but he did recall it had been a very good hardware store. The guys in there could fix any number of exterior door locks for you. It had been across the street from the 7th Street Jail and while they fixed your door locks, you could watch the hookers being let out and have your other hardware dealt with while you waited. Juanita set down a pitcher of margaritas and someone foolishly asked her opinion on the matter. Juanita paused a moment, and then said vehemently, "E'stupido!" Then she walked away. This soured the mood and the conversation and so the group finished their drinks quickly before heading from there to The Old Same Place Bar. Now, it should be mentioned a few things as to why Juanita had responded in this way. In her house on Taylor a framed steerskin of a map hung up between guitars her husband, Glenn, had played in high school while working his way as a musician to pay the bills. Everyone knew about this hide which was an old desueno that expressly stated that Juanita and all her heirs were lawful owners of most of El Sobrante, Pinole, Richmond, El Cerrito and Albany according to all the dictates and stipulations of the Treaty of Hidalgo and subsequent agreements between the United States and Mexico as well as Alta California. Clearly Pepito was not to be Mayor, Alcalde or owner of anything like Pinole or Richmond in the foreseeable future and so this desueno was worth no more that the rotting hide on which it had been inked, so all this discussion about who was genuine Californio and who was entitled and who was not had long since curdled her Mother's milk on the subject. Even though everyone knew about the hide, Juanita was not likely to get any benefit therefrom, so perforce was made to work a restaurant on Park Street on the Island, which had the distinction of being one of the few pieces of land for which the lawful owners had been paid. But that is another long story. Meanwhile the argument continued in the Old Same Place Bar, as irrelevant as such bar discussions tend to be. Naturally, things got muddy, as one would expect the deeper one dives into the little brown jug, for the Water of Life does not always run clear. It was the opinion of Jaqueline that California, or more importantly the Idea of the Golden State, was vital to preserving the vitality and health of the rest of the country, most notably Minnesota. For without California there to absorb the malcontents, misfits, purple-haired punks and rioters produced in such abundance by places like Bear Lake and Minneapolis, those people would remain there and cause all sorts of mischief. Innovation would become the order of the day on Main Street and there would be Trouble, yes, Trouble with a Capital T, right there in River City. Pretty soon Unitarians would be running amok over the Lutherans, and they would be serving bean sprouts and tofu-stuffed walleye -- total chaos would ensue in the Heartland. That's no Sha-boopie, sir. Truth be told, California needs the Heartland desperately, for here on the edge of the continent, backs to the sea, we long for the faux memories of simple beginnings, the Big Sky and the modesty enforced by the boundless prairie with its uncompromising weather. Somewhere in the Great Midwest a woman wearing a gingham apron closes an oven door on a hot dish cassarole and unbends to brush a strand of corn-floss hair from her eyes. Out the window she can see the bare cross glittering from the steeple of the church perched above the horizon miles away. Everybody wants pristine orgins, best kept pristine by being held at arm's length. If people were really perfectly happy living in the present, deracinated and as empty as characters in a William Gibbons novel, there would be no Sons of Knute, no DAR, no Native Sons of the Golden West. While this discussion was going on, they were all sitting, crouching, perching to dinner at Marlene and Andre's, where Marlene had cobbled together another Bread Soup feast from scraps left from the Food Bank distribution and spring harvest from the ironmongery garden out back, and just about everybody was there. Piedro, from East LA, Jesus, from Managua, Tipitina (Metarie, LA), Marsha (Newark, NJ), Sarah (Goleta), Xavier (San Francisco), Markus the dog (Fremont), Pedro (Martinez, CA), Occasional Quentin (Oakland), Rolf (Leipzig, DDR) Suan (Walnut Creek), Alexis (Falls Church, VA), Crackers (Pinole, CA), Mancini (Trestle Glen, CA), Sarah (Oaktown), Pahrump (Pyramid Lake, NV), Bonkers (also Newark, NJ), Wickiwup and Johnny Cash (both native Islanders), and Snuffles Johnson, the bum (can't remember), and Februs the hamster liberated from Genentech Labs in Burlingame. Andre was from Vallejo and Marlene was from Weed, in the shadow of Mount Shasta. And they were all there for a supper in the depths of the Great Depression. Nearly everyone had lost their job or had hours cut back, but Februs -- who had been slated for vivisection as part of his employment at Genentec -- remained sanguine. Given the wretched places from which they had all come there was no going back for any of them any more than for Februs. Even for the ones who hailed from towns closer at hand; that would have meant simply shifting misery a few miles to the left or the right, and, according to all reports, there were so many just as miserable people living in those places already. Hey ho. So it goes. Everybody in the room had already seen plenty of hard times before just like these. Only difference was that a whole new crop of folks was experiencing what Occasional Quentin had started living through long, long, long ago. So they all sat around while the fog rolled in and ate their bread soup in a dinner that couldn't be beat and lay around while Marlene picked his guitar. For it has been said and we'll say it again, no matter where you go, there you are. In the Island-Life offices the Editor stood at the window, looking out while Denby finished up the weekly Issue, standing like some Captain at the Poop looking out over the mutinous waves with his remaining white hair flying all about his head in an aureole, although only the peaks of dark rooftops unrolled in a frothing swell of lamplights, a choppy sea of houses all the way to the tsunami of the hills shrouded now by fog. He had gotten the news recently that a man he knew named Robert, the man who owned the New Orleans-style restaurant Angelina's in Marin, had died of an heart attack earlier in the week. Seeing the man was troubled, thinking about his people suffering in these Hard Times, Denby put on the stereo a CD he had made and they listened to Jorma Kaukonen's "A Life Well Lived." As he left, the speakers started playing "Heaven on Earth," and the Editor unclenched his fists. Music has a way of doing that. It doesn't do much, but sometimes it unclenches the fist. Sometimes that is all for which one can hope. As the notes died away, the long wail of the throughpassing train ululated across the Estuary and the choppy sea of rooftops as the locomotive wended its way from the lighthouse gantries of the Port past the dark and shuttered windows and doors of the Jack London Waterfront, heading off to parts unknown. That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
JULY 25, 2010 IF THE LADIES WAS BLACKBIRDS, IF THE LADIES WAS THRUSHES After a two year dormancy, a pot in the corner of the Old Fence suddenly sprouted a five-foot stalk that erupted into this sudden burst of Pink Ladies which have remained persistent over the past two weeks.
GOODNIGHT AND GOODLUCK He was the last working member of Edward R. Murrow's CBS newsteam and he passed away after a brief illness this past week. Daniel Schorr, prickly and demanding, set the gold standard for broadcasters, a standard few now meet. His cantankerousness and savage attention to professional integrity and the truth of things had him bouncing from CBS to other networks until he finally ended up on a long tenure with PBS, but only after earning a top 20 spot on the famous Nixon Enemies List, a list he himself outed more than forty years ago.
His first paid assignment occured when a woman jumped off the roof of his Bronx apartment building and he phoned in the story to the local news service. The five year old Schorr was paid $5 for his efforts. Schorr became friends with composer Frank Zappa after the latter contacted him, asking for help with a voter-registration drive. Schorr made an appearance with Zappa on February 10, 1988, where he sang "It Ain't Necessarily So" and "Summertime". Schorr delivered the eulogy on NPR after Zappa's death on December 4, 1993; he professed not to understand Zappa's lengthy discourses on music theory, but he found a kindred spirit—a serious man with a commitment to free speech. They don't make them like Dan Schorr any more, and more's the pity. ON AN ISLAND
Autobody held its doggie fundraiser this weekend in its gallery off Park Street, but may have run into competition for the concurrently running 26th Park Street Art and Wine Faire. The street was entirely blocked off between Encinal and Buena Vista, with only a few streets allowed to cut through for emergency vehicles and homebody traffic. We wanted to sample the Cavit Pinot Grigio, but none was to be had, so we settled for a capable and sturdy Ironstone Chardonnay. Fat Tire and Lagunitas provided the beery end of the potables while Zebop! supplied Santana tunes. Cascada and Drew Harrison were the only non-tribute bands supplying Latin Jazz, while Savannah Blue offered bluegrass.
There was popcorn galore, hotdogs and the usual Park Street suspects, including Silvertree where one of our crew purchased a shocking pink ersatz Panama hat. Checked out the Australian hatter who sells hand-made headwear of all-natural materials featuring rabbit felt, including the hard-to-get Akuba hats, which cannot be purchased (in Australia) by anyone not carrying that country's passport. For a C note plus change you can look just like Indiana Jones. Kids bounced and danced and got facepainted and scads of folks shopped the pricey tchotchkes. Gallons of wine were swished and the sun shone down merrily. At the end of the day, a fine time was had by all.
Its anyone's guess why humble Oaktown is superceding Babylon across the Bay as the premier jumpstart for top-marquee acts, but we suspect we are seeing the consequences of Greed and Art-Flight from the one-time center of the Boho Universe. The latest scut has none other than Bob Dylan launching his latest tour from the renovated Fox, entirely shunning both the venerable Fillmore as well as the Warfield. Truth is large numbers of artists have been fleeing to the Warmer Side of the Bay for several years as usurious rents and rather obnoxious hoighty-toighty attitudes over there have driven those on the Edge to and over the edge. Some say one should feel "privileged" to live here and so much so that one will serve more amenably as minions of the self-appointed Elite. For the time being, the bustling dives and savory BBQ joints of the East Bay be the place where a man can learn to train his horn and tune his reed without hassle. Speaking of Oakland going uptown, the increasingly trendy Uptown is hosting the Calexico band Los Lonely Boys this month. For cost-effective music, Southshore Mall is continuing its summer concert schedule, with Natasha Miller just finishing up there this weekend. Zydeco Flames takes over August 5th for the Thursday evening slot, while the Mo Rockin Project provides world beats on Saturday night. Both bands are worth checking out and usually present fairly incendiary performances. This Tuesday marks the expiration date for the exclusive agreement between the troubled SunCal and the City for development of the Point. In classic SunCal fashion, instead of working with the Council, has threatened crushing lawsuits against the City should there be any hitches in the process of extending this agreement. In addition, SunCal's attorney, Louis Miller, has written a letter blasting Interim City Manager Ann Marie Gallant for her investigation of political opponent and Councilmember Lena Tam. The two officials have long stood on opposite sides of the fence regarding SunCal, which has resulting in classic small-town in-fighting and political shikanery the extent of which was questioned in the July 16th edition of the Island Journal, which suggested that the behavior of all parties involved as well as those on the periphery has been less than honorably. Unsavory politicians? Never heard of such a thing. And no wonder Mayor Beverly looked to be such a sourpuss at her last July 4th Mayor's Parade. By this point Bev would be well to think "A pox on all your houses; I am leaving to play golf!" Reflective of what is being experienced Statewide as well as in other municipalities, the City reported a 4.1% decline in sales tax revenues for 2009. Also in the news was the unsurprising report that property tax revenues are down statewide due to the high number of foreclosures and the rather unwise decision by many districts to conduct property reassessments. Um, didn't anyone upstairs figure out that prices are down right about now? A quick look at recent housing sales revealed fairly high prices reported, due largely to the momentarily successful tactic of reserving property from the market by real estate firms, thereby creating an artificially low availability index. In fact quite a large number of houses are being kept back while in a state of "renovation" on nearly every housing block. Also, a number of speculators are gambling on the development projects at the Point, Ballena Isle, and the Boatworks area. In addition, the idea that the Island is a desireable location has not gone away, although it would be good to remember that for the longest time this Island was NOT desireable as a place to live and the current majority population reflects this reality. All indications, nationwide and including the Golden State, indicate harsh conditions continuing for another year at least no matter who wins the mid-term elections. The beancounters indicate that the Corporations are sitting on well over a trillion and a half dollars in cash reserves instead of investing. The reasons for that depend on which side of the liberal divide one stands, but one thing is clear -- taxes up or down will have little effect on these reserves or on the Great Recession, which continues unabated with national unemployment pegged at 9.5% but with various Golden State counties (Amador, Butte) reporting whopping numbers of well over 40%. What does this mean for the Island? Well we have a mini-bubble that just might last another year and some folks are betting the bank that in that time, things will rise up again to make that bubble just a reflection of status quo. It might work. Then again, it might not. ORION Its been a coolish week on the Island our hometown set here on the edge of the San Francisco Bay, with days struggling out of bed in a fog that burns off sometime around noon to gift us with blue sky afternoons. After the Affair of the Spicy Hot Dish, Juanita has not given up on producing a perfect combination of Midwestern and Latin cuisine. This notwithstanding folks are still finding boxes of her gifts to the Norwegian Bachelor Farmers in strange places all over town. Mr. Howitzer's dog, Eisenhower, found one secreted under the commemorative alarm bell in front of the Park Street firehouse. Her latest effort involved a sort of spaghetti bake/tamale pie combo for whom she employed Lionel of the Pampered Pup (because he came from Elgin, Illinois) and Jacqueline of the Salon (because she hailed from Bear Lake, MN). Lionel took a tray of the stuff to the Pampered Pup where he and Jose picked at it dubiously. "Wuz dis here sauce?" said Lionel. "Worchestershire?" offered Jose. "That's what I said,"Lionel commented. Meanwhile Maeve took some of the bake over to her Taiko drumming class. After an hour of pounding drums, working up a sweat and getting screamed at by Sensei Ito in the gymnasium of the Community College, all the women and girls who had joined for the express purpose of toning those abs and developing that killer butt always worked up a ferociously difficult to govern appetite for anything heavy and loaded with carb. Taiko is a Japanese artform that, typically for Japanese, has developed into a rarified and rigorously physical regimen. It involves flailing away furiously with heavy sticks on immense drums until the muscles scream silently in agony. But melodically and with delicacy. It is supposed to be full of Zen and stuff like that, according to Maeve. And be a damn fine workout in addition. Accomplished female taiko drummers are supposed to look like ballerinas but be able to tear phonebooks in half. "Pound on the drum like you kill your most detested enemy!" Ito yelled at Maeve. "What about my husband?" Maeve said, meaning in her mind that such a job is reserved for her mate, but Ito, hailing from a different culture understood her differently and was thoroughly shocked. "Do not ever kill your husband! Kill someone else!" Ito shouted. "What if I don't feel like that today?" Maeve said, ever the reasonable woman and fully in touch with her innermost feelings after the Feminine Mythology Class of the day previously. She was a great one for taking advantage of the Adult Ed program at the Community College. "Then kill your husband another day!" shouted Ito. "Think of that!" Maeve rattled a bit with her sticks while Ito practically jumped up and down beside her. His job was to guide and inspire the students to do their best beyond their physical limits and Maeve was a problem. He soon found himself abandoning the core principle of muga mushin, which is that of serenity amid chaos while he shouted any amount of nonsense at Maeve to get her to dig deep. Somehow he glommed onto the right formula, or at least a formula that worked for today. "Babies! Children! Pregnancy! More babies!" Ito shouted. Maeve, whose youngest was less than a year old, suddenly began furiously pounding the immense drum. Gradually she moved into the Flow of the Drum and the class was saved. Ito, a standard Japanese man with all the length and breadth in his soul of an average salaryman would never learn how he had just made what would later become the East Bay's most distinguished Taiko drummer. Such is the nature of genius. Such is the nature of true accomplishment. Best to disavow all attachments. That is the true way of Zen. As for the tray of spagetti bake, that largely went home with Ito who used it with variable success as crab bait, for it did not resemble anything like food for human beings. The crabs went for the hamburger content and were stunned by the other ingredients, so the effort was not all lost. A tray of the stuff wound up in the Old Same Place Bar where various customers picked at it with plastic picnic forks. Late in the evening a stranger came in wearing a greenish coat and he sat down and ordered a pint of plain. It was clear that although he spoke the language he was not from any place around here. He heard all about the Norwegian Bachelor Farmers and all about the famous Hot Dish and all about the Spaghetti Bake and all about the economic troubles going on and the trouble about the school tax and the trouble about the Point development and then, after thinking a good long think he had this to say: "I've been around the world and seen many sights and I have noticed this: When things go wrong and will not come right, When money's tight and hard to get When health is bad and your heart feels strange, When food is scarce and your larder bare In time of trouble and lousey strife, The man sipped his brew and added, "You will notice you are not the Midwest and never shall be for they have no ocean nor mountains to speak of. And you will note that you are not of New York for New York is a small-minded provincial place suitable enough for itself. And you will note that you are not of the Western frontier entirely also, for cowboys have never been entirely welcome in these parts and the cattledrives have long since moved on. You are yourselves and god be with you for I shall go now." With that, the man wiped his lips, left sufficient tender on the bar for his bill and soon walked out the door leaving all amazed. When Padraic ran out to see where he had gone or notice the manner
of his car, the endless street extended empty in both directions under
the buzzing streetlamps as far as one could see. The fog had returned
with nightfall to shroud the city streets. Thats the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
JULY 18, 2010 JUST A SIMPLE COUNTRY DRESS This week's photo is of a bloom probably most of you have never seen, even though it is perched demurely, face down, on the top of one of the most common crops found all around the world.
This, gentle people, is an humble potato flower knipsed in Javier's huerto, almost unnoticed amid the blooming amaryllis and purple hardenbergia. Javier has Yukon golds, reds, and sweet potatoes all thriving back there by the Old Fence. Sometimes in the lowest places strange beauty thrives modestly and without announcement. KEEP ON TRUCKIN' This week's video ought to cheer up some of you as Harvey Pekar -- who died at the age of 70 this past week -- tears it up during a 1987 appearance with David Letterman. Although Letterman appears to give Harvey a difficult time, the famous author who well in advance of the curve turned the humble comic book into serious literature appeared repeatedly on Letterman's show.
WHAT'S GOING ON Our own heat wave appears likely to abate from the triple digits experienced just beyond the coastal areas, however we cannot promise much to the savagely overheated East. Which should be good for some of the outdoor festivals and concerts taking place through the end of the month. That irascible poet with the quirky vocal delivery, Robert Zimmerman will be kicking off his summer tour right here at the renovated Fox. Yep, Bob Dylan will be gracing our own version of Desolation Row. Oakland's Art & Soul, which moved from a freebie in front of City Hall to a relatively economically-priced event at $10 and which usually features at least one Top Draw is announced for the weekend of August 21-22. Previous main stage performers included Gomez, Joan Osborne and Ziggy Marley. The Crucible held its "fire cabaret" this weekend with a rather low-key marketing program that featured, well, pretty much no marketing at all, save for last-minute quarter ads in the weeklies. Local jazz chanteuse Kim Nalley apparently performed her sultry best among eight tons of flaming steel. In-house favorite, Michael Franti should know he knows he is not alone for a warm crowd showed up Friday at the Greek to hear him and opener Brett Dennon ease the troubles of the world. Over on the colder side of the Bay we note that Jonathan Richman, last seen falling backwards off a pier at the end of There's Something About Mary, will appear at Cafe du Nord on the 21st. That eternally hard-working bluesman, Ron Thompson, will appear solo July 22 at Yoshi's. If you have never snagged this versatile artist perform solo then we urge you by all means to do so, as the man who has performed with virtually every major artist, living and now deceased, for the past forty years is really something amazing to watch as he rips through the entire history of the Blues without a hitch. Outside Lands takes over the Golden Gate park the second week of October with the odd mix of just about everything for everybody, including some acts whose aesthetic clearly clashes with one another. Southern Cal punk survivors Social Distortion return with Gogol Bordello and The Strokes, while Grateful Dead survivors Bobby Weir and Phil Lesh will try to keep it mellow even as new kids on the block, My Morning Jacket show up along with Cat Power and Al Green. Whew! Less well known acts to try to snag include Amos Lee, the punk-grass Devil Makes Three out of Santa Cruz, the astonishing Sierra Leone Refugee All Stars whose members all consist of reformed former "child soldiers", and Vieux Farka Toure also out of Africa. At GAMH, Ivan Neville will funk you up during a benefit for Gulf Coast Relief (Forthebayou.org) on Friday, July 23. Last day of July we note in the small print that none other than Kinky Friedman will be bringing his own brand of quirk to the GAMH as he does country songs about the Holocaust and a man kept in a circus cage. Finally we got our own Island Pet-a-Palooza on Saturday at Autobody Fine Art. Jack London is holding some events throughout the summer that are designed for those of us with wallet-challenged situations, including free outdoor moving showings, dance instruction events and yet more Dog Days. WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN Mid-week we got a press release announcing Island newbie Adam Glitt is tossing his hat into the ring for one of the two open slots for City Council. Mr. Gillitt, 40, has been living in Alameda since 2002, and states on his website: "I am an Alameda resident and business owner who is fed up with the corruption and lack of citizens’ voice in Alameda City Government. I have no connections to any political figures or groups or corporations, but I have plenty of common sense ideas about how to make this City the best place in the Bay Area to live. I am stepping up to serve the common goal of my neighbors in this community: Making Alameda the best City it can possibly be." Mr. Gillitt is running for one two open City Council seats. One Councilmember (Frank Matarese) has reached his term limit and is running for Mayor, and another Councilmember (Lena Tam) is up for re-election, despite being under investigation for the unauthorized release of confidential city documents (reported in last week's issue) At this point there are now three declared candidates for the two open seats: Mr. Gillitt, Councilwoman Tam, and her former campaign manager, Rob Bonta. More information about Adam Gillitt, including his biography and campaign platform can be found at his campaign website at http://www.AdamforAlameda.com HEALTHCARE PSA
We have been contacted by local Representative Pete Stark (13th District) about a new online service called Healthcare.gov. In his own words, "This is a one-stop site that will answer your questions about health care reform, and give you access to a range of new and existing insurance options. Healthcare.gov works for health coverage the same way that Orbitz and Travelocity work for buying airline tickets. After answering a few questions about your location and insurance situation, you will be provided with a menu of insurance products in your area, and the benefits they provide. It will give you information about the new Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan available in California. The site spells out your rights as a consumer, and gives important information about new consumer protections enacted in health reform. The site protects your personal information, and will not require your name, address, or income. Finally, Healthcare.gov also explains the new health reform law in plain language. There is a timeline of when each provision of the Affordable Care Act will be enacted, and what each provision means." Anything that tries to clarify healthcare issues and dispel fearmongering is a good idea by our book. BADGE As pretty much most of the Country knows by now, our troubled neighbor across the estuary, Oaktown, recently announced the draconian measure of laying off 80 uniformed police when union talks collapsed over the issue of job guarantees. Bay Area police typically earn about $100,000 in base salary per year as beginners, so 80 officers is quite a chunk of change meant to help offset what is estimated to be a $32.5 million dollar shortfall. The recent discussion to legalize pot dispensaries, with an estimate revenue capture of -- surprise! -- $32.5 million dollars is described by the City Council as mere "coincidence." The City has plans on the table to lay off yet another 112 officers should proposed ballot measures fail at the polls in November. The town, which has one of the nation's highest crime rates still is not the most dangerous, as New Orleans and Washington D.C. typically trade the dubious honor as "Murder Capital of the US.", with D.C. currently the record holder. Oakland lags far behind with between 90 and 120 killings per year, with 2009 ending in 117 violent deaths, down from 2008's 124, however it is often ranked third to the others in "dangerousness". In direct response to the layoff announcement, the Oakland chapter of the red beret Guardian Angels will be hitting the streets starting today. The group called a news conference at 2 p.m. at the Fruitvale BART station. That is where they say their latest effort to keep the streets safe will begin. This is the first time in two years since the Guardian Angels and their red berets have volunteered to help keep the peace in Oakland. The last time it was at the request of Mayor Ron Dellums. The group stated, "Now is the time for all Oakland residents to get involved and help Oakland with safety measures. Keep Oakland the beautiful city that it is. Let's keep crime off our streets."
In quite a contrary spirit Police Chief Anthony Batts responded in a manner that hinted at how the town got in such a fix. According to NBCbayarea.com and Allgov.com, "Unhappy with the city council’s budget cuts, the policy chief of Oakland, California, has threatened to stop sending officers in response to certain crimes. With 80 police officers laid off after the city and the local union were unable to reach an agreement, council members decided to cut the police positions to help close a $32.5 million budget gap. Police Chief Anthony Batts responded by releasing a list of 44 crimes that his department would not respond to, including grand theft, burglary, car wrecks, identity theft and vandalism. Victims of such crimes will be expected to file reports online."
Its been a hot week on the Island, our hometown set here on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. This weekend all the families went down to the Strand to toast themselves, play volleyball and watch the wind and parasail surfers scudding over the calm water that covers the shallow shelf off Crown Memorial Beach for a good two hundred yards or so. With the Great Recession still raging across the land, most folks have cut back on things they used to do, but going to the beach is pretty easy on the budget as, for now, the sun and sand and fresh air remain free to all. Parking has gotten easier in some neighborhoods, as every block now hosts at least a couple empty, formerly occupied houses, while finding a space has gotten even more difficult as some landlords seek to maintain their lifestyles by jacking rents to the point that occupancy densities have increased due to folks moving in to common households similar to that of Marlene and Andre's. Some towns have tried to set occupancy limits, but typically the landlords just burst into loud guffaws at any such attempts to halter their incomes. Meanwhile a lot of homeowners here have opted for the shoulder-shrug approach, by reserving their property from the market while they engage in phenomenal renovation and anti-boring beetle projects. Earthquake retrofitting is always a good one. For these folks would rather not sell or rent to anyone rather than take a lower price for anything at all. Then there is the genius idea of raising the existing rents so that the trapped renters pay for the empties -- work less and make more! Some would say this is particularly shortsighted, but then again, those people do not possess in all likelihood the "spirit of '49". The "spirit of '49" was, of course, defined by a period of unprecented avarice and ecological destruction coupled with a minor bit of genocide. However, the prices for land certainly did go up. At least there was that. But for now there is quite a glut of empty houses and rental units sitting on every block on the Island, and by all report, this situation is duplicated elsewhere. In Detroit they have been subjecting entire city blocks to wholesale building demolition by dynamite. In the Old Same Place Bar, the summer trade continued brisk, for nothing consoles quite so much as a bump and a shot. Andre contracted with Padraic to play music in the corner with his band "No Future in Real Estate". Padraic was forced to find new ways to bring folks into the bar after the fern bar down the street, calling itself "The Rusty Cock" opened up and began siphoning a certain percentage of his clientele along with a theme bar calling itself the Vagrant's Tassel. Padraic was in a state lately because of two unrelated events: the annual Orangemen's parades had recently concluded in Belfast with the usual array of rioting, violence, roof slate upon the nobbin and similar eccentricities, while in the normally staid as Woebegon North Germany had recently closed down thirty-seven kilometers of the most heavily used freeway in the world so as to host a party on the largest table ever built in Europe or elsewhere. The last time Nordrhein-Westfalen had experienced such a tumult was the end of the 30 years war that ended in the Treaty of 1648 which provided the substance and direction of our current USA and British court systems. Then again, there was a brief hoodoo from 1939 to 1945 in which much of the region was bombed, deservedly so, to smithereens. Yes, that too was over the top. It was easy to understand Padraic's concern about the marches in Belfast, which had been provoking IRA and Catholics (often the same animal) for centuries in celebrating the victory of William of Orange over a gaggle of Catholic mercenaries at the Boyne, but the closing of the German A40 was a bit of a puzzle. Padraic felt that the closing of 60 Km of a major artery to bicycles, theatre, and ice cream meant that the end of Western Civilization was at hand. Old Schmidt, who hailed from the Muensterland, remained stoically philosophical, holding the 60 km long party to be small consolation for losing the World Cup to Spain. His own people had been involved with the plot to assassinate Hitler, so his family had boosted out of there a skip ahead of the Gestapo who had then executed about 2,000 Northern Germans in a serious hissy fit. So closing the Autobahn for a party was a fine thing by his lights, as it was just one jovial way to contravene the old expression "Order must BE." Certainly as the Landesbanken collapsed, the Greeks went into financial tailspin, Spain's housing boom plopped into a vast sinkhole of debt, and the one-time economical miracle of Ireland slid back into its accustomed living by the tick any sort of joviality was welcome in these hard times. All across the world people hunkered down by their cookfires and found little ways to make the best of the Situation. In the snug, Suzie popped open her anthro book to read about the Bonobo subculture. "The Bonobo form one of the world's friendliest communities in which each individual seeks to perform small favors for others in the group. Their enthusiasm for one another demonstrates itself when a single Bonobo, coming across another of his race deep in the jungle, will greet him or her with unrestrained enthusiasm . . .". From far across the way the long wail of the throughpassing train ululated across the gentle waters of the estuary as the locomotive wended its way from the Port past the dark and shuttered doors and windows of the Jack London Waterfront, heading off to parts unknown. That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week. 
JULY 11, 2010 THE CALLA LILIES! THE CALLA LILIES ARE IN BLOOM AGAIN! This week's photo is of what appeared in Javier's garden among the fava beans after harvesting began. The plant was placed by Rachel some two years ago, appeared to completely die away and disappear, then this happened.
DEATH DON'T HAVE NO MERCY (follow-up report) Thursday saw the Bay Area react and overreact to the Mehserle verdict announcement as throngs of commuters filed out of the various cities in an effort to get home before any street disturbances occured, while numerous Oaktown businesses prepared by boarding up windows. In fact, citizens of Oaktown remained largely peaceful, albeit angry and disappointed by the rather limp-wristed judgement of Involuntary Manslaughter, which provoked the Federal Justice Department to initiate plans to pursue additional prosecution. Nevertheless, many did realize that the verdict is the first time in California history that a policeman has been convicted of committing a crime for anything in the course of his or her duties, which does make it a sort of milestone. Towards the end of the various peaceful vigils a gang of professional thugs from out of town started up the "rioting" in which store windows were smashed downtown, fires set, and generally caused a nuisance. About eighty people were detained and arrested. Of these, only about twenty were native Oaklanders; the rest, about 2/3rds, were the usual black-clad black bandanna folks from across the water that always cause trouble at every demonstration. These guys are hard-line pseudo-socialists who seek only to provoke disturbance and violence in the fond hope that anarchy will ensue and that it will be good. Their methods and their philosophy make as much sense as Glenn Beck, supposedly on the Other Side. Police remained on high alert through the weekend, but visits to downtown and the Fruitvale district showed people pretty much going about business as usual. We all have our own troubles and we know well that change comes by incremental baby-steps, seldom through revolution. Mehserle will be sentenced by Judge Perry on August 6. He spent weekend in the Los Angeles Men's Central Jail, where he was taken after he was handcuffed and escorted from the courtroom. Because of the gun-crime sentencing enhancement, he faces anywhere from five to 14 years in prison, though he can also petition to be let off with just probation time. However, the defense will likely contest the seeming internal contradiction in the verdict. The jury somehow believed both that Mehserle was reckless rather than deliberate in his actions and that he acted intentionally when he used his firearm. WHAT'S GOING ON Pity music lovers in Arizona right now, as scads of top-drawer acts cancel bookings there due to the rather obnoxious SB1070 Immigration Law. What is not so obvious -- unless it has affected you personally -- is that bookings are being cancelled right and left all across the country this summer. Reason? If you have a job, perhaps you just have not noticed the Great Recession is brutalizing the Music Industry as musicians, seeking to recoup losses from CD's not being bought, overbooks gigs that only resulted in a glut of events with everybody all performing all at once everywhere, only to discover that people were not buying CD's because they have no money. So concerts are failing to draw numbers, resulting in a mass series of cancellations. An insider exec reported, on conditions of anonymity, "This is going to go down as quite a bad year for the Industry." Well, it has been an industry in which the makers of the product, i.e., musicians, typically earn less than one dollar off of each $20 CD. The pay for concerts has been commesurate with this scale, with promoters, venues, agents, managers, vendors, insurers, and just about everybody except musicians making pots of money. Councilperson Lena Tam, who just recently appeared in the July 4th Mayor's Parade seems to have gotten herself into hot water by leaking confidential city information to SUNCAL during negotiations between that entity and the City over redevelopment of the Point. She also is alleged by a contract attorney brought in by the interim City Manager to have leaked information to the Firefighter's Union, among a list of other improprieties, however the SunCal issue is the most odorous here, and the DA's office is now reviewing the charges with a possible removal from public office due to misconduct in order. Tam has supported SunCal in its efforts while the Mayor and other members of the Council now oppose SunCal's involvement with the Point. Tam has responded with denials of any wrongdoing and charges the attorney report contains inaccuracies and sheer speculation with no basis in truth. It also should be stated on Tam's behalf that she and the interim City Manager have often clashed politically in the past, and she has said the timing of the report during the campaign season for the November 8th is "interesting." In other news some cad, varmint, and otherwise ugly-as-a-snake lowlife robbed the PO Box of the Island Food Bank, certainly a victim that most certainly does not deserve hassle. The Bank feeds about 1,350 low-income Islanders per month and is staffed substantially by volunteers. The theft occured in June between the 11th and the 14th. There are no signs the box was forced and the Postal Inspector does not rule out a possible inside job. At issue are checks from an estimated 8,000 donors. If the Food Bank actually did receive a check, they always send a thank you note, so potential donors who did not get a note, should consider their check was stolen. In a cursory check, we learned that nearly two hundred people showed up from single and multi-person households to collect food this past Saturday. Because of draconian rules imposed during the Bush Administration still in effect, most low-income persons are not eligible for either food-stamps or General Assistance. LOVELY RITA METER MAID Lennon is dead, the Great Recession is hammering all of us mercilessly, and Rita is a lying, sour bitch of the worst order. Latest word down the pike on local government turning the screws involves a revision of the Parking Citation System in Oaktown. Which means it is going to get hella meaner, as if being accountable for non-functioning meters, citations for parking more than 16 inches from the curb, and earning bogus tickets was not enough for you. Problem for Oakland is that the zealous, many say overzealous parking tax collectors, have deluged the system with so many issues that the Citation Help Center, certainly an Orwellian titled ministry if there ever was one, has achieved near total gridlock and long delays in - gasp! -- processing the payments. In other words, the Citation folks are making so much money hand over fist they just cannot run fast enough to the bank to deposit the stuff. The reorg (where have we heard THAT term before?) will feature easier online and telephone payment systems. Of course, so long as certain districts remain entirely except from any enforcement whatsoever, such as the Hills and the Middle Kingdom of Crispy Duck and Double Parking, the pressure can only mount everywhere else. Then again, the murder rate is up and Oakland is laying off thirty officers of the sort who kept armageddon from happening last Thursday evening. Oakland: a model city. AINT NO CURE FOR THE SUMMERTIME BLUES Its been a chilly but sometime sunny week on the Island, our hometown set here on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. Pedro Almeida made extra sure to tune in that radio show hosted by the Man in the Red Shoes this weekend and he was sitting there in his armchair Saturday night next to the radio with a bag of chips and a six of Fat Tire ale as if he were attending to the FIFA World Cup (which he did the following morning. Viva Espana!). For those of you who fail somehow to follow these momentous things, NPR's Prairie Home Companion featured a nautical-themed show, with skits and songs all about boats and the sea and fishing. As a professional fisherman, Pedro felt it incumbent upon him to support this effort and he even sent out the missus to locate, bring home and bake a batch of Powdermilk Biscuits (Heavens, they are tasty and expeditious!) but Mrs. Almeida had to return from Trader Joes to report that this was California, not Minesotta, and there were no bisquits of that brand to be had around here. They would have to drive to Minneapolis to get something like that and Mrs. Almeida was damned if she would leave the chickens in their coop in the summer with the racoons about so long just for something she could make perfectly well herself.
So Pedro sat there with his Fat Tire in hand, jumping up every once in a when someone sang a sea chanty. "Yeah!" And all the younger ones sat around staring at him with wide open eyes. Padraic piped the show over the loudspeakers in the Old Same Place Bar and Eugene sat there, entranced as the lovely woman on the radio sang about the "launische Forelle," which had him all agog, for as Eugene had surrendered any reasonable possibility of relations with females long ago in favor of a passion for trout, figuring trout were far easier to understand and get along with once you got to know them well and about as comfortable in terms of long-term companionship as any woman who had ever mistaken him for a likely mate. A fairly prototypical American, he knew not a lick of German, nor much of any other language, however he did know the song was all about trout fishing. "What means 'launische", Eugene asked of Old Schmidt who sat there with his schnapps and Fat Tire and pipe. Padraic, as an Old School pubkeeper, had never enforced what he saw as a criminal edict against smoking in the bar. So Old Schmidt pulled the pipe from between his whiskers and said, "Moody. The trout are moody." "Ohhhh," said Eugene. "That they are." Fishing is one of the few sports which has saved many a marriage. In many respects, trout fishing is much like the US Navy. The husband goes away for a long time, the wife has the place to herself for any number of hen parties, there are no mud tracks on the carpet and no tromping in the azaleas. The woman can finish her novel, organize the Board effectively, govern the local assembly, invent a brand new brain scanning technique that revolutionizes medical science, raise money for Nigerian peanut farmers, build several houses, improve the lightbulb and get the kids to school. In short, she is free to be herself without interference. Meanwhile the man goes out on the high seas in a boat with rough companions, curses freely, drinks too much, throws up on himself, eats a tremendous amount of fish, sinks the boat perhaps, and engages in salacious repartee with unorthodox companions, which is pretty much Navy life and fishing all wrapped up into one. Both members of this happy marriage get exactly what they want and there is little trouble until the man comes home and hangs about very much a third wheel on the relationship until the Goddess of Discord tosses in that damn golden apple. Pretty soon there are squabbles about the most inconsequential things. Why on earth did you rip out the hydrangea? Well I'd been meaning to do that for a long time; it was getting too big. For a long time? Since when? Ever since Midway. Or the Easter Islands. Or the walleye at Bear Lake. Oh for Pete's sake, you know nothing of garden feng shui. Ah . . . Feng Shui . . . know nothing, nothing about it. No idea what you are talking about . . . . Here he is half afraid she has learned something about something about a certain bordello in Shanghi or St. Cloud. Where something may or may not have happened. So that is when he looks for the next opportunity to go to sea or go fishing again. Same difference. It really is all the same to the country at large, in fact, for we send the mightiest Navy out in ships these days only to invade and destroy landlocked desert countries packed to the gills with sand and no trout to speak of. That is their loss and no wonder for all the trouble they have with keeping women in burqas. All for lack of trout and streams in which to put them. Meanwhile she is calling all of her friends asking them what can she do to save her marriage. Whatever am I to do about the Admiral? she said, wringing her hands. He is all underfoot these days. Perhaps you can start a war with somebody. Australia or Madagascar. Someplace with lots of water. Well the United States has never fought a war against Australia and never had a reason to do so, but then it never had a reason to fight a war against anybody since WWII for any rational reason, so that is no impediment. Fortunately the orders come up and the Admiral must leave for a six month tour of duty shadowing the coast of some strange Arabic country on the peninsula of Onan with a fleet of gondolas and needleboats. And the other husband is called up to distribute the ashes of an old friend in the high Sierra near his favorite fishing hole. So off they go and all the marriages saved. Life is grand once again. Yes, fishing is part of core values in America. And although the great steelhead runs of the past are no more in the Golden State, we still have our passion for trout. This fishing business that happens every year (we have an allowed Season that begins each year sometime in May as determined by Fish and Game and which ends in the Fall) goes not unnoticed by Pastor Inkquist and Father Duran of the Lutheran Immanuel and Our Lady of Incessant Complaint respectively. For let it be recorded that many of the Apostles were fishermen and Jesus Christ was pretty handy with a rod and line as well. Then, of course, there are those loaves and fishes multiplying all over the place and pioneering the original Great Society Free School Lunch program as well as Unemployment Benefits. Father Duran was composing his 15th sermon on the Loaves and Fishes when he got a notice from Corporate HQ that the Dominicans and the Jesuits and the Thracian Order were holding a combined Consortium Synod in the neighborhood, Petaluma to be precise and they might be dropping by for a visit. How many? O about five hundred monks or so. Well, this large an assembly of any clergy was novel to the Island, and indeed to the Bay Area, which was regarded by Corporate in Rome as a sort of wayard stepchild with an embarrassing wandering eye that ought to be kept in the attic until the "problem" resolved itself. They were holding the Consortium here only because Boston had latterly earned bad marks for nasty behavior recently. Father Duran was at a loss how to handle a sudden influx, an inundation of monks from all over the world all at once, for the Island is not a place built to handle that sort of thing for any cause, any group. Like anyone in the Bay Area who has been confronted with similar problems, he consulted a travel agency and obtained an excursion program from a travel agency that carried quite excellent credentials, for Sister Mona had used them for her trip to Palestine. The agency turned out to be the Filipino sole proprietor of a market on Lincoln Street and the excursion boat turned out to be two barges normally used for hauling garbage out to sea. The 500 monks did arrive -- on a fleet of sixty buses that drew up, one after another in the traffic cutout to the Basilica of St. Joe's and to the annex at the Church. The monks, all dressed in brown robes and waist ropes and sandals, with a few modernists wearing Nike athletic shoes, were hustled onto the barges, two of them moored at the ferry landing, and soon they were off. The one barge circumnavigated Alcatraz island successfully, but the other, needing to hold off while 250 monks strolled through the old prison cells where Robert Stroud and Al Capone had been held, got somehow disengaged from its tug during the tide change and 250 monks soon found themselves gliding under the Golden Gate out to sea with the tugs and the Coast Guard clipper chasing after them. The barge, after causing several hours of anxiety, ran up against the Farallones and there many of the passengers disembarked for the tossing of the barge made them quite seasick, even though that place is barren, windswept and desolate. But for Catholic monks, it was all right. Catholics are similar to Lutherans in that they are comforted by really bad events like earthquakes and bad weather; it means that whatever god there is must have something special in mind just for you. "O praise god," they say. "A tornado just hit the house." So there on a rocky outpost a gathering of some two hundred fifty monks of various persuasions sat down between the piles of guano there and debated various issues of the world while waiting for the Coast Guard to come rescue them, which the Coast Guard was trying to do while making the most of this excellent media opportunity. 250 individuals was a fair chunk of change to rescue all at once so they had to call back a clipper ship that had started to head up to Alaska to check on the effects of the last oil spill up there and interdict a cutter sent out to head off drug smugglers all the while the TV stations had a field day and KCBS and KQED teamed up to send out a camera team to take pictures and all the monks gathered together to do "the wave" for the newsteam while FOX sourly blamed the socialist liberals for causing everything. So the monks spent the night there, wrapped in their robes and cowls, but they were monks and, unlike priests, were used to privation. Father Duran had dropped down among them from helicopter and spent a cold night with some assistance there on the rocks and they all had a time there talking about making jam. flagellation, books by Dan Brown, and all kinds of cool and groovy monkey things, and they all had a Latin chant sing-along around cans of sterno dropped by the Coast Guard helicopter. At the end of the night all the monks were lifted out onto the cutters and shipped back safely to Babylon where they were distributed by order and denomination to various parishes for "rehabilitation", although all the monks thought it great amusement. "It wasn't that bad", they said. "We had all the oysters we could eat." Out at the Farallones, the Consortium had resolved the Thracian Beard issue and the Marolingian heresy, as well as the number of knots in a monk's belt, so it was not all for nothing this meeting. They didn't have any paper or ink out there, so Friar Jovel from Germany wrote notes on the bald head of Friar Sucious from Mexico with a bird quill and octopus ink. Over at Marlene and Andre's Household, where the sharp tooth of hunger has bitten deep in the depths of the Great Recession since the Food Bank got robbed all the gang that was out of work got up a soccer game down on the Strand with the Abodanza family, there being more than enough from both households to field full eleven man teams. Even the lovely Suan got into the game on Sunday after Spain beat the Netherlands 0-1 earlier that day to win the FIFA World Cup in a heartbreaker for the Dutch. Tips had been down lately at the strip club where she worked, for during the Great Recession, even sex was selling poorly. But they all had a fine time running back and forth and kicking that volleyball around like it was the real thing and all the windsurfers out there taking advantage of the high tide and the breezes. Around the bend of the Crown Memorial Beach, the "pock-pock" of rackets hitting the ball echoed from the tennis courts while gangs of urchins swung bats and ran vigorously around the baseball diamond as parents hovered over the BBQ grates among the trees. Summer was in full swing here in the Bay Area and the sun dropped down through striated cloud, a streaming dahlia of fire, until the wall of fog advanced through the Golden Gate and crawled over the distant hills south of Babylon. Night on the Island in summertime. And the Editor, sitting at his desk, his remaining white hair flying about his head in an aureole, the single desklamp pooling in the darkness. The hum of machines doing machine things. Computer fans whirring. Long bray of a foghorn coming from out near the now deserted Farallones. And then, close to midnight, the long wail of the throughpassing train ululated across the calm water of the estuary as the locomotive wended its way past the dark and shuttered windows and doors of the Jack London Waterfront as it left the Port heading off to parts unknown. That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
JULY 8, 2010 SPECIAL ISSUE - MEHSERLE VERDICT RESPONSE From time to time, we issue a special out-of-sequence issue when particular public events require and as a obligation to cover your Island-Life requirements due to skipped issues, as when the staff goes on the annual Mountain Sabbatical.
DEATH DON'T HAVE NO MERCY IN THIS TOWN From the open windows of the Island-Life offices the few remaining staff can hear the chut-chut-chut of helicopters circling the Fruitvale BART station where Oscar Grant was murdered New Year's Eve. On last report, the vigil being kept there sounded like it was calm, sad, sorrowful and disappointed, but not violent, despite concerns that once the verdict got handed down, there would be riots similar to the two week period between Grant's murder and the arrest of his killer, BART guard Johannes Mehserle. The mixed race. mixed gender jury, which however included no Black Americans, convicted Mehersele of Involuntary Manslaughter in an LA courtroom a few hours ago. RECAP New Year's Eve, BART police, which receive seperate training from regular municipal police, responded to reports of fighting on BART cars shortly after one AM and cherry-picked several people from cars for detention, including Oscar Grant, although it turned out later none of the men were guilty of the fighting. The reasons for selecting these particular individuals by the BART police remains unclear. Officer Anthony Pirone claims the men "resisted him", so he placed them under arrest, however it still is vague what the men were resisting prior to arrest. What happened next shall live forever on the Internet in the form of camera-phone videos shot by at least five persons. The total footage covers about nine minutes and shows a row of Black American men lined up and sitting against a wall of the Fruitvale BART station (about a mile and a half from the Island-Life offices). All of the men have their arms raised in the air. BART police are milling around, in a seemingly aimless pattern. A few civilian individuals stand on the wide platform at a distance, shouting, while there is a lot of shouting from the stopped train. Oscar Grant is seen to partially stand and make "back off" motions, apparently to friends standing on the platform. Subsequent interviews with people who knew Grant revealed that Grant had become something of a peacemaker in recent years, and probably had been trying to calm down the shouting people so as to avoid ratcheting up the situation. This proved to have the exact opposite effect on the police, however. An officer, probably Pirone, grabs Grant and throws him down with what seems to be a judo technique, while several other officers assist to restrain the man who is lying facedown immediately. Pirone kneels on Grant's neck, presses his face into the concrete platform and secures Grant's right arm. All of the videos display this clearly. Mehserle is not clearly visible in the frames as an active participant until a few moments before the incident, although later he claimed that one reason he reached for his TASER was that Grant yanked his right arm away and stuck his hand into his pocket. Grant does appear to have one arm pinned between his body and the plateform. The shouting from the train increases in volume and numbers of people as people realize what is happening. A few officers continue to walk around the scene facing away from the incident. Mehserle appears within the frames of the various cameras bending over Grant to his left. Grant is lying as he fell, with his feet pointing to the wall and his head toward the train at an angle and his arms behind his back. Mehserle hovers a couple seconds over Grant, without seeming to do anything meaningful with his hands before standing halfway up and reaching directly into his hip holster where he pulls out his service revolver. The gun fires a single shot with less than a second to play and Pirone, who very nearly lost his kneecap (the bullet had to have passed only inches from his leg) jumps back and clearly shouts "Why did you do that?" in surprise. The other police also act surprised and Mehserle looks at Pirone, then at Grant, then at Pirone again, seemingly lost for words before bending down to handcuff the lifeless hands of the man he has just shot. The autopsy revealed that the .40 caliber bullet went entirely through Grant, hit the reinforced concrete BART platform and richocheted back through his heart. In the next two weeks, while BART dawdled during its investigation, intense rioting ripped through Oakland's downtown and Fruitvale district. No one could explain why Johannes Mehserle had not been arrested and charged with a crime of any sort. The ensuing political and social scandal destroyed the career of then BART Chief Gary Gee who has retired. Mehserle resigned during the investigation, so he avoided talking entirely with the investigating team. Pirone and his partner the night of the shooting, Marysol Domenici, were fired earlier this year by BART - Pirone for his actions on the train platform and Domenici for the way she reported the incident to investigators. Eventually, Mehserle was arrested, charged with murder, and the trial shifted to LA, due to local tempers and saturated press coverage. For the first time in California history a policeman was being charged with murder in the act of duty. Prosecutors rarely file charges against police for shootings. A Chronicle review of police use-of-force cases around the country found just six cases in the past 15 years - not including the BART shooting - in which murder charges had been filed. Taking the stand near the end of the trial, Mehserle testified that he had decided to use his Taser on Grant because he saw Grant put his right hand in his pants pocket and believed the Hayward man might be reaching for a gun. Mehserle said he had accidentally pulled out his pistol and fired a single shot before realizing he had grabbed the wrong weapon. In talking informally with several local police, they informed us that the service-issue weapons typically do not possess the "safety" switch required on civilian guns, and that accidential firings, including self-inflicted wounds, are fairly common. Most of the officers honestly believed, at least in statements, that Mehserle really did intend to TASER Grant, despite the obvious circumstances of Grant being entirely controlled. The subtext implied is that some officers believe Mehserle wanted to "punish" Grant, either for resisting, or for a previous incident that had happened between them and not connected with what happened on the platform that night. [CORRECTION: Trial documents reveal that not only did Mehserle's gun possess a safety switch, but he unholstered his TASER and activated and deactivated the switch on that weapon more than twice that evening.] JUDGEMENT The jury took a few days to reach the mildest verdict of Involuntary Manslaughter. During deliberations, one juror was replaced due to vacation absence, and a mysterious and largely unintelligible question was directed to the judge which asked, "Is provocation from other than the main parties admissable?" Neither judge nor advocates on either side could understand what was being asked so the judge ruled the question to be disregarded. Sentencing will take place August 6. The possibilities are jail waived in favor of parole, 3-5 years for manslaughter and up to 14 years for manslaughter with a gun during a felony. Because of the unusual circumstances of the trial's circumstances -- an on-duty police officer committing a crime due to negligence -- it is impossible to tell in advance how the judge will rule. NO WAY TO DELAY THAT TROUBLE COMING EVERY DAY Appeals for calm have come out from the Mayor Ron Dellums and the more rational elements of Oakland society. The East Bay Express placed as its front page headline "BE COOL: MEHERSELE LOST HIS COOL; LETS NOT MAKE HIS MISTAKE". Neverthelessess, nervous commuters thronged the exit ramps and downtown shopkeepers boarded up windows in expectation that angry foolishness will prevail.
The perception here among many is that the police really hammer down members of minority groups in Oaktown, where the population is about one third Black. The truth is that the police, at least in Northern California, often hold an attitude of total invincibility, limitless power, and almost third world dictatorship ruthlessness in terms of expectations regarding total control and citizen subservience that is quite at odds with anything to do with an healthy Democracy, let alone what the Founding Fathers intended. It seems often that the police abrogate unto themselves the powers and rights to seize any and all property of any individual, expect complete and entire obedience to any command no matter how slight, whatever the circumstances, whatever the situation, whether in uniform and on duty or not, regardless of public or personal safety and quite outside the boundaries of common sense and with no obligation to explain, defend or make public anything at all in contravention of dictates direct from the State Supreme Court. When it comes down to investigations, lying, obfuscation and misdirection become the rule so as to protect one another and the citizenry can just go hang. Then there are the countless vengances, retributions and and arbitrary judgements and punishments meted out by officers given license to kill. We believe that the police need to generally realize that punishing Mehserle, firmly and fairly, is the best path to assuring their own jobs will become safer and better for themselves and the citizenry at large. One can simply not allow a rogue cop mixing among you, endangering the lives and health of not only the citizens but every man and woman carrying a badge and a gun on the street. And its not the job of the beat cop to summarily judge, condemn and mete out punishment, nor to investigate a situation so as to execute justice -- we have detectives, judges and juries for that. As for response to the verdict, some people, if they haven't realized the System is F***ed up and unfair before this, well they need to just chill, sit back, and watch the adults respond calmly and with dignity. No this is not going to jump-start any bogus Revolution and no, Mehserle and his ilk will cry no more than crocodile tears over you breaking the windows of some Korean's market. The problem with riots is that the victims are never the ones who really need to feel the pain and it just screws up the landscape of our own neighborhood, the place where we all work and live together. Its never the strong warrior or the bold Enemy who gets pulled out of his truck and beaten half to death; its always some hapless schlub just trying to get from point A to point B because his dumb and cruel as rocks bossman ordered the slave to go there despite the obvious. So we tend to agree with the EB Express, something we do not often do. Don't act as stupid as a Mehserle. A beautiful weekend is shaping up, weatherwise for the Bay Area. We got Jack London holding their free movies there, and the Paramount showing the original King Kong at period prices (well close to it, anyway). When was the last time any of you saw a movie in a movie house like the Paramount for $5? Hey, its Recession prices, man! There's the refurbished Oakland Museum with its cafe run by the new chef there, and all kinds of groovy things happening on the warmer side of the Bay. Do everybody a favor and get out there and have some fun for a change! Show the world that Oaktown is the City that Now Knows How. That's the way it is on the Island. Have a peacemaking week.
JULY 4, 2010 SUMMERTIME, WHEN THE LIVING IS EASY Nothing says "summer is here" more than sunflowers in the Bay Area. This week's pic comes from Jim and Sue's Place on Santa Clara Avenue. The flower stalk here is over seven feet high.
DESERT ROSE Longtime readers will know that our multi-culti staff is always searching the foreign shores for alternative news sources for tidbits and real information as well as points of view that come from distinctly non-official loci. Lately some of us have been looking hard at, surprise!, Al Jazeera, which recently has started up with a hard hitting English-language version of their world broadcast. We were quite surprised to discover AJ, far from being a mouthpiece for Al Qaida agitprop, is a distinguished news organization which has garnered grudging accolades from all around the globe. The entity, based in the tiny emirate of Qatar, has remained independent, uncensored and entirely without bias -- except for an understandable tilt towards things like the Gaza Strip and Israel. But because the rest of the content is so refreshingly independent it is fairly easy to bypass the obvious biases and go to the meat of the matter. Here, we include a link to an interview with one of America's foremost intellectual thinkers of our day, Cornell West. The interviewer makes no intrusive comments, allows West to speak at length, and provides a glimpse into the mind of one our best minds so that listeners can make up their own minds about what has been said. There is an interesting moment when West calls Fox comedian Glenn Beck a "brother". A deluded brother, but a brother in Christ nonetheless. Watch this interview for a rare glimpse into the life and ideas about which the USA can be justifiably proud to call one of our own.
INSPIRATION, MOVING BRIGHTLY THROUGH THE TREES Jose skipped up to the increasingly trendy Temescal district so as to catch a portion of First Fridays at SLATE gallery. There he heard a rumor that Marianne Stark, she of the Stark Guide to the Arts, has moved to the East Bay. If true, this would be a major development as the fourth generation San Franciscan has been a major booster for all things arty in Babylon for a while and the Stark guide can be justifiably be regarded as the place to go online for news and reviews for the entire Bay Area. In any case, we caught the opening of the Lines Lanes and Planes exhibit, hosted by Danielle Fox featuring work by Anne Subercaseaux, Patricia Thomas, Mel Davis, Justine Lo, Toru Sugita, and Chris Nickel. A jazz trio performed just outside the door, adding to the ambience on the warm, clear evening. The window area of the gallery was dominated by a playful installation by Toru Sugita who used rope to toy with lines and space from the floor to the ceiling.
DECORATION DAY The 4th was celebrated in a variety of ways all around the Bay this weekend, but the impoverished state of municipal and private coffers definitely made itself felt in just about every area. In a quick check of fireworks displays, we located only six shows, out of the onetime nearly one hundred municipal and private shows that allowed anyone with a view of anything to enjoy fireworks. Once again, Oaktown responded to financial pressures, even as the crime-plagued city looks at cutting police, by cancelling its night display, while its daytime fest lasted barely 11 to 4 in Jack London Square. In better times one could stand on the Strand and watch fireworks go up all along the peninsula and down the Bay to Hayward, but none of those cities held fireworks this year. Sadly, our own 35th Mayor's Parade also showed strong signs of the bad economy, for it may be said that although spirited, this year's 135 entrants substantially lacked zing, imagination and sparkle. In fact it was the blandest parade ever held here, with a strong flavor of local business money trying hard to promote itself by means of the rather large "parade sponsor" signs. Dozens of entries consisted of nothing more than a bunting-draped big car bedecked with advertising. Gone were the colorful Falun Gong, most of the kung fu studios, Mcgrath's Pub, our poet laureate, and most of the talented vaqueros with their dancing horses. No more antique automobile club or rumbling Harleys. Has the bad economy also slain whimsy? On the upside, there remained -- thank heaven for them! -- a small squad of pennyfarthings, stiltwalkers, one surviving Elvis on a bicycle, and the return of the much beloved Little Tramp. The tiki bar on Lincoln reprised their "Meshuggah Beach Party" and at least one strolling food item - an eight-foot high ice cream cone. So here are some pics, starting with a surprisingly sour-looking Mayor with her despondant retinue on a stagecoach.
C'mon Beverly, you got a bigger and fancier coach this year. Nevermind losing the election in June. Most of City Council made their appearance, with Doug
DeHaan, however remaining concealed inside a closed car, probably because
of the organizer's rebuff of his original electioneering float design.
The one original was Frank Mataresse, who alone appeared among all of
them within a modest budget and going "green".
Our parade, being one of the largest small town parades in America, also attracts dignitaries from larger entities. Alice Lai-Bitker is not only an Islander, but also President of the County Board of Supervisors.
The machine that was to have changed the world, and which was killed by local ordinances banning them from sidewalks across the US, the Segway, will likely make its appearance in parades for years to come.
Is it just us, or does it seem like the Bay Area has lately gone to the dogs?
You are in a parade! Smile for Pete's sake!
A little whimsey is better; that is an original way to wear a bowtie, at least.
No parade complete without the King of Rock and Roll.
And a brace of pennyfarthings.
The man's got crabs.
Your first parade is always serious business.
Viva los vaqueros!
Proof we don't make this stuff up: the old as dirt and largely unknown Native Sons of the Golden West.
A walking food item.
The Little Tramp! Back again for more.
Old guys rule!
From a different walk of life entire, these ladies appear to be out to have a good time.
Now THATS a real hi-five!
The USS Potomac was Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidential yacht from 1936 until his death in 1945. It is moored at Jack London Waterfront.
No Western parade complete without at least one cowboy.
But this one seems to also be suffering from the state of the economy.
Part of the NRA contingent. The real revolvers were shooting blanks.
The cameras got gremlins after this. And that was the 35th Mayor's Parade.
SANDY, THE FIREWORKS ARE HAILIN' OVER LITTLE EDEN TONIGHT It's been a warm week on the Island, our hometown set here on the edge of the San Francisco Bay. The Old Judge Wrangle hired his nephew, Julio, to cut back all the brambles behind the Old Fence and the boy went at it at first with an electric weed-wacker, which turned out, not surprisingly, to be insufficient to decimate a forest there about six feet high. Soon enough the fellow was at it with a plug-in circular saw which did a lot of damage and caused immense piles of woody, weedy, blackberries and cottonwood to pile up all around him. He was at that twenty-foot section most of the day getting sweaty and red-faced in the process. A good idea might have been to torch the entire spread, igniting the fence itself, or lay down weedkiller -- to the detriment of the neighbor's tomatoes and beans -- but he is a good Californian boy and would not think of such things. This being a weekend upon which the 4th of July squarely falls, has resulted in a delightful bollocks of schedules. Because it falls on Sunday, Friday is circumspect and for the same reason now, Monday is also an holiday. Because so many are out of work and there is no business to be had, few complain about taking both of the days off, while some have simply stated, "let us keep the Sabbath" and let no one off in fond hopes a dollar may be earned on both days. Marlene and Andre grilled tubesteaks on the makeshift BBQ made of Mr.
Howitzer's missing Bentley grill and other carparts so as to preserve
the tradition of July 4th BBQ with Rolf, Snuffles, and Bonkers the dog.
Suan hung out before heading over to the Crazy Horse for the "Sensual
Fireworks" show in which she would end up wearing a couple burning
sparklers -- and not much else. The economy is tough and a job's a job. On the Island, there was much ado about preparation for the annual Mayor's Parade for some businesses. But at the last minute many entities found that there was no money left after paying the entrance fee to actually build anything. Parlor # 46&1/2 of the Native Sons of the Golden West got into a nasty brough-ha-ha with Parlor # 47 over the issue of including certain Ohlone and Lenni Lenapi elements within their charter, for it was felt by some that these elements did not preserve the Spirit of 49 with adequate enthusiasm. In the end, Parlor #46&1/2 withdrew their entry from the parade in a hissy fit of indignation. The Old Same Place Bar had quite a time of putting together its Gaelic-themed float, which consisted of a flatbed hauling a scene from Cuchulain's madness against the waves, with Padraic presenting as Finn Cuchulain, and Dawn and Suzie cavorting as sea nymphs amid the "foam". A generator powered pumps which sent streams of water into the air over the girls and Eugene Gallipagus drove the truck. They were positioned in the parade right after Mr. Howitzer's float, "Ode to Enterprise", really a pop for his real estate firm, which consisted of sturdy "builders" hired off the corner of Fruitvale and East 14th to look like they were laying adobe bricks while the wealthy magnate (himself) threw handfuls of gold foil-wrapped chocolate "coins" to the adoring urchins on the street. Javier was up there wielding a trowel with his friend Xavier as if they knew what they were doing. They kept a bottle of tequila stashed in the corner of the waist-high fake wall and took nips whenever Mr. Howitzer's back was turned. Mr. Howitzer wanted to make sure everything went smooth, so he arranged for another float to precede him; this one titled "Spirit of '49", and which was staffed by all the indigent folks who lived in the rented house down by the beach. He had them got up in disreputable, dirty, torn trousers, boots, slouch hats and gave them all shovels and pie-tins, so as to mime the efforts of panning for gold on a pile of debris. Bonkers and Wickiwup sat up there wearing kerchiefs and slouch hats as well, acting pretty much as dogs will do while Jose, Mancini, Marsha, Occasional Quentin, and Tipitina tossed dirt and pebbles back and forth, while Pahrump sat there as the emblematic Native American, bare chested and all painted up. Every once in a while one of them would make a "find" and then they all got up and did a merry square dance whooping and hollaring. Their water canteens contained several gallons of box wine from Longs so even though they all detested Mr. Howitzer, they started feeling pretty loose and besides, they all needed the money. Wootee Kanootee, the famous moose tamer, followed along with his charges, Dancer, Prancer, Donner, Vixen and Hockey Puck. Even though he was Canadian, he presented such an interesting appearance in his beaver pelt cap, bright red shirt, suspenders, halo of fruit flies, and eternally muddy boots, that the parade folks let him in. What the heck; he looked like a '49er. Sympatho Mimetoslovic and the Amazing Anatolia Enigma followed performing various magic tricks, including the not always successful effort to make each other disappear. Then followed Father Duran, clad in a Dominican friar's habit, on the float for the Church of Our Lady of Incessant Complaint, with Sister Maria Speculum dressed as a neophyte/madonna with child, the child being a Tickle Me Elmo doll on loan. Piles of sandbags lay about, intending to represent mission adobe bricks while a barefoot mariachi band dressed in white neophyte "shirts" performed lively tunes, such as "La Intrepido Narcotrafficante" and "La Cucaracha", which had nothing to do with the missions, but which everyone enjoyed immensely. Things went swimmingly until the NRA folks, all dressed as vaqueros with broad-brimmed sombreros and riding horses, all let loose with their revolvers as they approached the judge's stand, intending to cause an impressive commotion and lots of black powder smoke. This they did, spooking Kanootee's moose who stampeded up the line, at first toward the NRA and then back again as they shootists let loose another volley. This had the effect of finally making the two magicians fly into the crowd, frockcoattails flying in a blizzard of cards. Hockey Puck lept over -- or attempted to leap over the Old Same Place Bar float but managed only half-way before turning about in a circle to destroy destroying the sea and the Irish castle and the Blarney stones while Padraic flailed at the animal with his blackthorn stick. Something in the water pump broke and a powerful jet smashed across the way to wreck the adobe "wall" belonging to the "Ode to Enterprise before turning most of the "Spirit of 49" into a gloopy pile of mud. The skyline of the City of Enterprise drooped, sagged and finally collapsed pretty much like the housing market did a while back. Mr. Howitzer's dog, Eisenhower, got loose to start chasing Prancer and Vixen who began mixing it up among the Lutheran choir and marching band while Donner crashed into and overturned several flatbed trucks, sending bunting and musical instruments flying in all directions. Amid the Day of the Locusts wreckage and confusion, wailing and lamentation, a red Elmo doll kept waving his arms in the middle of the street and saying, "Ha ha ha! Do it again! Do it again!" The stampede was only halted by the one figure whom everyone respected without exception, and there he stood, dismounted from his bicycle with his arm dramatically poised to halt -- the Elvis impersonator in glittering white suit and shades. Little Imbecilla Cupcake picked up one of the gold coins tossed by Mr. Howitzer and said, "Yuck! This candy is melted!" before throwing back at the furious magnate. At the end of the day a fine time was had by all at the 35th Annual Mayor's 4th of July Parade. The 4th is all about brats, parades, patriotism and, of course, fireworks. That night, a skeleton crew put together the weekly Island-Life issue, as the Editor had let most of the staff go to enjoy the evening with their respective families. So while folks roamed down by the Point and Crab cove, hoping to glimpse a few fire flowers from across the water, the Editor sat at his desk, the few remaining white hairs flying in an aureole about his head. The times are hard, hard indeed, but the weekly issue must go through. And right on schedule the long wail of the throughpassing train ululated across the sparkeling waters of the estuary under the smokey fire-blossoms of the sky as the locomotive wended its way from the gantries of the Port past the dark and shuttered windows and doors of the Jack London Waterfront, headed off to parts unknown. That's the way it is on the Island. Have a great week.
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