Just moments ago the Board of Supervisors overrode Mayor Gavin Newsom's veto of Ross Mirkarimi's bill requiring any city meeting that can be recorded and broadcast to be recorded and broadcast.

Hot damn.

Override passed 8 - 3 ... the enemies of open government who voted no are Supes Alioto-Pier, Chu, and Elsbernd.

This doesn't mean it's actually going to happen ... the Mayor can still try to freeze the funds citing the budget crunch ... but the Supes did the right thing.

You take your victories where you can. Let's hope this happens.

Summer is the cruelest season for a crime-addled city. School is out and temperatures are high, so homicides tend to spike.

How a city handles crime prevention when school’s not in session can mean the difference between a summer of death and a summer of love.

San Francisco had one summer of love, back in the 60s. You may have been told about it by people with peculiar odors. It’s been all downhill since then: San Francisco has consistently failed to put together anything resembling a decent plan to address summer violence.

But … this year … there are encouraging signs. Can you teach an old hippie government new tricks? Here’s 3 things they might be getting right for the first time.

According to a May 9 item on Xbiz.com, Playboy enterprises will begin offering softcore gay porn through an on-demand cable channel tentatively named Gay Targeted VOD Package Service. Package service, indeed.

My question is, who pays for softcore? It's one thing if you're in a hotel room and they happen to have a free channel of smooth adults with carefully concealed genitals rolling around on silk sheets, or if you're thirteen and Showtime is rerunning a Red Show Diaries episode at 3am. But who pays for softcore smut when free porno teaming with penetration exists for free on the Internet? Playboy may have a reliable customer base in straight men, but will gay men who have no fond memories of discovering Playboys under dad's bed fork over their cash to maybe see an erect penis? --Andy Wright

There’s so much government happening this week that it can be seen from space. Seriously: check it out on Google Earth. That thing you thought was a hole in the ozone layer? That’s government.

Is it … laughing at us?

Must be my imagination. Anyway …

You can learn a lot from looking carefully at big things. This week’s massive set of meetings, for example, demonstrates a very important lesson: it’s harder for a good idea to get passed by the Board of Supervisors than a bad one.

Think I’m kidding? Read on.

Monday, May 12

10 a.m. – Government Audit & Oversight Committee

The week starts on a high note with the best … news … ever … for reporters. City Hall’s getting a café. This will make it SO much easier to sneak food into government meetings. This is also the best … news … ever for the Mayor’s Press Office, since they’ll now presumably have a way to give reporters food poisoning (I know you hate me, David Miree).

According to an agreement to be voted on at this meeting, Juma Ventures … the same people who provide ice cream and coffee during Giants and 49ers games … will be renting out 2400 square feet of primo city hall space on the ground floor (the “North Light Court” for those of you who have been there) to operate a café that will “deliver fresh, nutritious, wholesome foods for breakfast, lunch and a full coffee and tea bar to City Hall.” No liquor license is mentioned, so apparently it will remain difficult as ever to sneak booze into government meetings (damn you, city hall’s crack security staff!)

Here’s the kicker: Juma will get to do this while paying only $200 per month in rent.

Yah - $200 a month for 2400 square feet in San Francisco: dreams really do come true.

Chron columnist CW Nevius had a piece in Sunday’s paper about the plight of homeless women in SF, focusing on the frequency of sexual assault and the difficulty these women have finding assistance. So far so good.

Nevius writes about one woman’s plight, Carla Crandall, a 32-year-old college graduate who’s battling a heroin addiction. He interviews Carolyn Ritchie, who was a social worker at the Tom Waddell clinic for 17 years. Ritchie expresses frustration at the lack of resources for women in Crandall’s situation. And then there’s this:

"You can see by looking at her that she'd be a target," Ritchie said. "In this case, her good looks are almost a disadvantage."

Because only women who conform to certain beauty standards are targets for rape, right?

A few paragraphs later, Nevius returns to the subject of looks, writing, “ But the life takes its toll. Their hair falls out, their skin withers and scars. Without dental care, the women lose their teeth. And then who wants to take care of you?”

I didn't realize that one of the problems homeless women face is that they are too unattractive for people to care about. Nothing is more frustrating then when a discussion of women's rights and needs gets bogged down with a needless appraisal of their appearance. -- Andy Wright

According to the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice, on this date in 2007 there were 35 homicides.

On this date (today) in 2008, there have been 39.

Victims are also trending younger. According to Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, 2007 had a total of three homicide victims under 18. 2008 has had three victims under 18 so far.

Just thought you'd want to know. --Benjamin Wachs

The new Milk bust costs about as much as 14,860 gallons…

By Joe Eskenazi

On May 22, something extraordinary will happen. For the first time since 2004, people will march into City Hall with the actual goal of looking at one of the busts gracing the edifice. The last time this happened was four years ago, when Willie Brown earned a City Hall bust (no, not the kind that involves the perp walk).

The new bust is of Harvey Milk – and, make no mistake, it is impressive (there’s the mock-up on the right). It will be unveiled to much fanfare, perhaps attract a stream of visitors for a while and then, it will take its place alongside busts of San Francisco folks you’ve probably never heard of such as Edward Robeson Taylor or Michael O’Shaugnessy.

Especially in a transitory city such as San Francisco (in which the statement “I was born here” earns you a glance akin to the one you’d get if you uttered “I have a third testicle!”) it’s important to salt the city with visual reminders that life did exist here before 2006 or 1997 or WHENEVER YOU CAME!

That being said, when's the last time someone thought, “Hey, let’s go look at the bust of George Christopher in City Hall”? But while the busts blend into the scenery, their price tags do not. The winner of the competition to create the Milk bust received $57,500.

“We came up with that figure after doing research on the cost of bronze, artists’ fees, the cost of similar projects in other cities, the cost of transporting it, installing it, the cost of the stone and how much it would cost to carve text in the pedestal,” explains Jill Manton, the city’s public arts program director.

It warrants mentioning that this money is privately raised – but, still, isn’t that a lot of money for a sculpture that essentially performs the same task in adorning City Hall that, perhaps, a bunch of blue bottles would in your apartment window?

Just last week, the Los Angeles Times found a nifty new answer to the age-old question "How do we milk all this free Craigslist content and use it to create page views for us and thus money!!? Money!!?!"

That answer involves videographer Katy Newton, who has been trolling the C-List's "Missed Connections" section for fractions of stories to turn into video segments for the Times' new "ICU" section. Clever or creepy? We're not sure. But we're intrigued and will be checking back on Tuesday for the next installment. Which is probably exactly what their new "innovation editor" had in mind.

Fishbowl LA has the LAT's press release if you wanna see it. --Janine Kahn

Apparently unsatisfied with a $15.6 million jury verdict in its predatory pricing lawsuit against SF Weekly, the Bay Guardian Friday asked a judge to give it even more.

During a post-trial hearing, Guardian attorney Ralph C. Alldredge told Superior Court Judge Marla J. Miller that his client wanted the entire $6.4 million verdict trebled rather than only the portion of the damages incurred within one year of the filing of the complaint.

The effect would have been to turn a $15.6 million verdict into a $19.2 million verdict.

Fresh off the Haight Street sidewalk: The California Herald (formerly known as the San Francisco Herald) is leaving the print world and going online-only effective July 1. Herald Editor and Publisher Gene Mahoney writes:

"All good things come to an end. Or in the case of the Herald, all pretty good things come to an end.

Actually, the Herald’s not really ending. It just won’t be printed on paper anymore. You’ll have to go online to read it at californiaherald.net. It will also “come out” more frequently than it has in the past few years. I’m planning on every month.

Don’t be sad, because I’m not. Actually, this is the most excited I’ve been since I started the San Francisco Herald ten years ago. Or at least since its heyday, in July 2001, where it was all over the place with a full-color picture of a half-naked Terri Nunn on the cover."

Mahoney adds that he regrets starting editions of the Herald for Santa Monica, Palo Alto, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, etc. "as it just took too much time and effort for too little reward." But unlike other papers, he says he never lost money on the project. "It’s always been profitable, just not as much as I wanted it to be." --Janine Kahn

By Benjamin Wachs

Last night the San Francisco Animal Welfare Commission held a public hearing on the Light Brown Apple Moth (LBAM) because they wanted to find out what kind of impact a spraying program designed to eradicate animals might have on…um…animals.

That was just the first of many ironies shot across reason’s bow.

The next one came when state Department of Food and Agriculture representative Bob Dowell (who heads the Light Brown Apple Moth program) tried to explain why the spraying was needed. I’ve heard Dowell give this speech before … and the justification for why the spraying is needed is always “crop damage.” If we don’t eradicate LBAM, it will wipe out California agriculture … it’s that dangerous.

But this time, he busted out a different explanation: we need to attack the Light Brown Apple Moth with pesticides because we’re worried about the impact of pesticides.

Say what? Dowell explained: there’s going to be a huge proliferation of LBAM across California in the next few years (if we don’t stop it), and since they can damage plants, farmers and people who see the LBAM in their plant nurseries or their gardens are going to want to stop them. And, to stop them, they’ll spray them with pesticides. Which is bad. So, if we don’t want to see an enormous spike in pesticide use to stop LBAM, we need to immediately use pesticides to stop LBAM.

We need to spray the village to save the village. Yes, we have really reached this point.

S.F. gives Dhaliwal brothers the bureaucratic kiss-off

By Joe Eskenazi

After thoroughly vetting complaints lodged in March by the survivors of the Christmas Day zoo rampage — that provided Fox news with astounding new ways to portray San Francisco as a hotbed of unholy bestial fury — the city has, in perfect legalese, told the victims of the tiger attack to go shit in their hats.

“An investigation of your client’s claim filed with the City and County of San Francisco has revealed no indication of liability on the part of the City and County. Accordingly, your claim is DENIED,” reads City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s Thursday rejoinder to Amritpal and Kulbir Dhaliwal’s claims of physical and emotional injuries resulting from the tiger attack that left Carlos Sousa, Jr. dead (and, yes, Herrera used the blog-like all-caps to hammer home his point).

The city’s rationale: This ain’t my problem!

Herrera, ever helpful, refers the Dhaliwal’s attorneys, Mark Geragos and Shepard Kopp, to direct their legal fury to:

San Francisco Zoological Society
1 Zoo Road
San Francisco, CA 94132

(Herrera included a line reading “attn: Wayne Reading” — in other words, the zoo’s CFO has been notified that he's just had a legal wolfpack loosed on him).

You can read the terse PDF here.

The FBI's request was ominous for a glut a reasons, the least of which is that the Archive is legally recognized as a library by the state of California. As a press release from the ACLU and EFF states "the lawsuit is the first known challenge to an NSL served on a library since Congress amended the national security letter provision in 2006 to limit the FBI's power to demand records from libraries."

Yesterday the FBI withdrew the letter and agreed to unseal the case. Here's Kahle's statement on the Archive Web site, and here's the WAPO article.

Full Disclosure: Yours truly used to work at the Archive and my unbiased opinion is that they kick ass.--Andy Wright

"In most solemn truth I tell you that one of you will betray me — yes, Daly, I'm looking at you."

By Joe Eskenazi

Sometimes, you just can't resist. How many folks have posed for "I'm king of the world!" photos on the bows of cruise ships? How many of us have assembled a foursome to cross Abbey Road?

And, when in Jerusalem retracing the steps of Jesus, who hasn't suddenly portrayed himself as the Messiah? Well ... not everyone, actually. But our mayor sure did:

At one of the Stations of the Cross, Newsom placed his hand on a wall stone, said to be the one Jesus touched on his walk to his crucifixion. He then placed his hands on the cheeks of his fiancée and jokingly said, “I heal you.”