San Francisco News Blog

Joe Eskenazi

Green Party state co-chair Barry Hermanson brought his own beer -- literally

​Members of San Francisco's Green Party refused to exude the blues last night in the farewell bash for the party headquarters they can no longer afford to keep, dousing the place in one last coating of spilled soda, beer, and plenty of top-notch hard stuff. State Party co-chair Barry Hermanson even wandered the room with large bottles of his home-brewed ale and a pocketful of sample cups he foisted upon one and all. Here, at last, was a politician who truly served the people.

As anticipated, the mood was bittersweet. It's certainly not a thrilling realization that a matter of a $1,200 monthly office is an untenable drain on party coffers: "It'd be nice if we needed a bigger space because so many people were active in politics," admitted Paul Platt, a member of the party's county council. But, on the other hand, nobody was crying into their absinthe one room over as a DJ gyrated to the beats.

As the music temporarily faded, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi -- the party's most prominent local member -- urged his contemporaries to keep on keepin' on.  

Joe Eskenazi

Lots of nice folks with dreadlocks for a political event, yes

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Some of the party's best work, he said, came before it even had an office. This was a volunteer-driven party, he continued, and they were doing their damnedest to "compete with the big boys" and their "unchecked power" and money. Certainly that wouldn't change in the future, Mirkarimi noted.

Joe Eskenazi

Ross Mirkarimi urges the party faithful to keep up the fight

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It was a perfect speech for the moment, sincere and heartfelt. And it was followed by others that were each incrementally less perfect for the moment until one man felt the need to bring up, apropos of nothing, that the Israeli diplomat who'd visited the party recently "was actually from Palestine." If ever you needed an example of how a third party can ensure its own marginal status via a spectacular inability to stay on-message and an incessant need to tie literally everything to contentious Mideast issues -- well, there you go.

But,then, the music and libations began flowing once again and the party -- and the Party -- got back on track. A number of attendees -- mostly female -- admitted they weren't sorry to give up the office at all. Located on Howard between Sixth and Seventh, this wasn't a stress-free place to walk home from late at night. Meanwhile, the Greens' first office-free meeting will be held tonight at Club Waziema Ethiopian restaurant on Divisadero. The party has reserved the back room, and Hermanson laughed at the notion of "back-room politics."

"But there will be no smoke," he assured, "By city ordinance."

Joe Eskenazi

Really -- ain't no party like a Green Party

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