San Francisco News Blog

Wheeler Hall

​Anyone glancing at a television or computer is likely well-aware by now that students have barricaded themselves within a building on the U.C. Berkeley campus. It's a wise move; by this time next year they'll be unable to afford the bike locks, placards, or ASCAP royalties for "What do we want?"-chants.

Glancing at the KTVU Channel 2 news moments ago, an anchorman pulled up the school's campus map, explained where Wheeler Hall is in relation to other campus buildings. That's nice, but it doesn't really tell the whole story.

Well, it's always a pleasure to use the benefits of your college education to further your chosen career -- so let me add quite a bit more. And let me also add a warning. Back when I went to U.C. Berkeley -- not so long ago, but tuition and fees were around 38 percent what yesterday's massive hike stands to make them -- people used to make a point of gathering at Wheeler Hall on moist, rainy days like this. Since the building is located on a small incline, the schadenfreude crowd would wait for someone to, inevitably, slip and fall on the deceptively slick storm drain in front of Wheeler. This kind of thing could certainly ruin some cop or protester's day (but entertain everyone else).

Jan McHugh-Smith

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A sizable group of animal-loving San Franciscans couldn't be more delighted.

"It's fantastic that her contract is not being renewed," said Hope Johnson, an SPCA volunteer-turned-outspoken critic. "I think she didn't realize what she was getting into."

"Great news!" echoed Kathleen McGarr, another ex-volunteer who is now a member of FixSanFrancisco.org, a grassroots campaign aiming to end the killing of animals in shelters. "I'm very excited."

McGarr and other like-minded former volunteers have been complaining for months about how McHugh-Smith trampled on the vision of the organization and prioritized the finances of humans over the welfare of animals.

Steve Vender, in a 2007 SF Weekly photograph

​Steve Vender was indicted by a grand jury Tuesday and arrested this afternoon, according to Brian Buckelew, spokesman for the office of District Attorney Kamala Harris. Vender was being held on $75,000 bail, and is scheduled to be arraigned Monday. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to three years in state prison.

"Justice is silenced by the culture of intimidation," Buckelew said in an e-mail to SF Weekly. "This terrorism in all its forms has no place in the criminal justice system and must end."

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The department showed little mercy for the Mission's favorite scofflaw -- the bar was ordered closed in April. Today's Appeals Board meeting was Murad's last chance to keep it open. But both parties apparently requested to postpone the item, and the board rescheduled for Dec. 16. Which meant that tonight's meeting hall quickly cleared out of Medjool supporters and haters alike.

While earlier reports described the wire as electrical (a "live wire"), California Highway Patrol officials have since confirmed that it is not -- though the makers of the doomed show Trauma are certainly slapping their palms on the table that they never conjured up this scenario.

In any event, the right lane appears to still be closed. But, on the plus side, thousands of reverse commuters can now make horrible puns with their co-workers about how they saw The Wire on the bridge.

From Kazakhstan with love...

​The adage about there being no such thing as bad publicity was certainly put to the test by the release of the film Borat. It's not that Sacha Baron Cohen had it in for Kazakhstan -- it's just that most Brits and Americans couldn't find the nation on a map, identify its flag, or name its national pastimes (disco dancing, archery, rape, and table tennis according to Borat).

Kazakh apparatchiks initially outraged by the film are now claiming the movie was a blessing in disguise: Now Americans are heading to Kazakhstan in droves to check on the film's "many inaccuracies." Uh, sure. But here's what we do know: When a PR firm sent us an e-mail announcing a band of young Kazakh musicians would be touring the Bay Area this week, you damn well bet I made several phone calls to ascertain if this was the real deal.

So, unless the Kazakh Embassy's Web site is an elaborate ruse and the young and earnest-sounding PR agent I called is actually an actor -- it's the real deal.

DNA Lounge representative Jamie Zawinski announced on the club's blog today that the besieged nightclub negotiated a settlement with the state's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) that includes a 25-day suspension -- the club will be closed Jan. 4 through Jan. 28 -- and several years of probation.

As SF Weekly has reported in the past, ABC's battle with the DNA Lounge has been ongoing since April 2007 when the club applied to change its liquor license to allow for all-ages events. In order to do this, the lounge installed a $50,000 kitchen because the permit for such a license stipulates that an all-ages music venue also be a legitimate eating establishment. When ABC rejected the application, the lounge appealed the decision -- at which point Zawinski claims the state agency started sending undercover agents in during gay and lesbian promotional events, "looking for dirt."

In July, 2008, the lounge reached a settlement with ABC that finally granted the club permission for the change of  liquor license status. But just before DNA Lounge could enjoy the fruits of its labors, ABC slapped it with another citation -- this time, for "lewdness," "discrimination", and for being a "disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals."

Gotcha

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The debate on whether the Mission Bay thief who allegedly snagged three wallets from the China Basin Building (including one belonging to an SF Weekly employee) is incredibly crafty/ballsy or incredibly desperate/stupid has come to a close. He's apparently a dumbass, and as of two hours ago, the alleged thief is in police custody.

On Monday last week, a man showed up at our gargantuan office building; in professional attire, and stood out only because of his bright red sneakers and coke-bottle glasses. So when our employee returned from a trip to the kitchenette to find him sitting at her desk, she thought he might be new or lost. "Hi?" she said.

"Oh, hi!" he responded, then jumped out of the seat and fled the building. She noticed immediately that her bag had been tampered with and that her wallet was missing. When she called security, she learned that two other wallets had been stolen from a U.C. San Francisco office nearby, and that a suspect had been caught on camera. Although a building security chased the man down the street, he jumped onto Muni and escaped.

Your humble narrator personally witnessed a bevy of electric signs that would have brought joy to the hearts of backers of Prop. D. Heading back to San Francisco at around 11 p.m. yesterday, at least three different flashing warnings informed drivers that the speed limit was now 35 mph, and there was a dangerous S-curve a scant two miles ahead. Proceed with caution!

Spokes are measured in millimeters. Their width is measured according to an arcane "gauge" system that applies nowhere else on a bike. Rim diameters, meanwhile, are sized according several unrelated schemes that don't include gauges or metric units.

It comes as no surprise, therefore, that sign-hangers working for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency seem to have become flummoxed when hanging "Bicycles Allowed Full Use of Lane" signs. One gets the feeling they mixed up the metric system and the U.S. system of yards and feet, bolting the signs 7 meters high even though the city's standard calls for hanging them at seven feet.

If any useful purpose comes from what appears to be a senseless death of a driver whose only sin was to drive a shade too fast and miss a turn, it's to serve as an example for other motorists. This is the second truck to suffer a spectacular crash on the S-curve -- but the horrifying notion of soaring 200 feet off the Bay Bridge could well stick in drivers' minds. Everyone has taken a 40 mph stretch at 50, thinking "I can handle this." With the possibility of a nightmarish death being the result of a miscalculation, however, maybe people will just slow down.

And perhaps the bridge could use signage reminiscent of the stark warnings hikers find at Yosemite. I was shaken by a plaque ordering park-goers not to wander into a stream feeding into a nearby waterfall. In unadorned -- and therefore memorable -- text, the sign instructed hikers not to wade into the stream, as the current was deceptively strong. And: "If you go over the falls, you will die."

Would a sign reading "Speed Limit 40 -- or you could die" be justified? I think you can argue it would.

Joe Eskenazi

A BB gun for every occasion

​We've written a bit about the Kafka-esque situation regarding BB guns in San Francisco. Police officers, following a draconian city ordinance forbidding anyone from possessing "toys projecting missiles by air or gas," continue to impound the air guns and cite their owners with a misdemeanor. Meanwhile, a 2004 state law -- specifically written to override ridiculous local ordinances like this -- renders the San Francisco law obsolete. And yet police are still citing and impounding BB guns simply because no one has told them to stop. It's akin to the cops seizing your beer because of a Prohibition-era local ordinance.

While it may have been a chore to find decent bubbly during the dry years, the above photo demonstrates that tracking down scarily realistic air guns in San Francisco isn't like stumbling upon a four-leaf clover. Throughout the city -- and, especially in Chinatown, where this photo was taken -- many shops sell BB guns. And for less than the price of a medium cheese pizza.

The shopkeeper at this store was flabbergasted to learn of the tenuous legality of selling BB guns in San Francisco -- largely because some of her best customers are police officers who, she says, had shown her identification designating them to be so. "I asked them why they needed these toys -- they have the real thing," said the merchant, who asked we not use her name. "They said they can't play with their children with real guns."

Anna McCarthy

No more seaside views for this Mission Bay resident.

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One of the Port's workers told SF Weekly that the resident had been escorted from the encampment yesterday and taken to a homeless shelter. "We're just cleaning up what's left," he said. He didn't cite any particular reasoning for the demolition, just that the Port was doing its job. A call to the Port confirmed that they mostly work with the city's Homeless Outreach Team.

Anna McCarthy

​SF Weekly has a call in to the Outreach Team to ascertain the former resident's whereabouts.

Menlo Park's Paul McAdoo turned up safe and sound -- but no one really knows how

​Yesterday we urged readers to call the cops if they saw 86-year-old Paul McAdoo of Menlo Park, a dementia patient with a yen for hopping on buses or trains and taking them to parts unknown.

Since McAdoo went missing from his Menlo Park home on Oct. 16, we weren't expecting a happy ending to this story. Elderly dementia patients who require a cane to ambulate don't fare well on the streets. So we were thrilled -- and puzzled -- when McAdoo turned up safe and sound in a Daly City convalescent home.

Details on what McAdoo has been up to for better than two weeks are sketchy; he is, after all, a dementia patient and hasn't been able to recount his travails to authorities with a high degre of coherence. But Detective Tim Brackett of the Menlo Park Police Department told SF Weekly everything he's been able to gather so far.

Paul McAdoo

​Paul McAdoo sounds like an interesting guy -- and if you see him, be sure to stop and have a chat. Then call the Menlo Park Police Department, as McAdoo has been missing since mid-October.

The 86-year-old dementia patient has taken off for spells at times in the past; his family told police he's "a drifter" and a fan of public transportation -- which helps explain why he's often found hanging out at BART and bus stations. San Franciscans are advised to keep an eye out for McAdoo at the Transbay Terminal and any BART station. But, truly, McAdoo is a connoisseur of Bay Area public transit. In previous walkabouts, the Menlo Park man has turned up in Daly City, San Francisco, Pittsburg, and other East Bay transit hubs. 

McAdoo is a 5-foot-7, 135-pound black man who walks with a cane. Should you see him or know someone who has, The Menlo Park Police request you phone immediately: (650) 330-6300.

So, for what it's worth, Ketchum said he will unhesitatingly drive his car across the jury-rigged Bay Bridge -- though he's a regular BART commuter now rejoicing he can get a seat once again. Still, when asked what questions he had about the alarming failure of the bridge's Labor Day repairs, he answered "all of them."

"There's really no data out there on what broke, why it broke, how they tested the design and the new fabrication," said the engineer. "I think all bridge engineering professionals would be well-advised to be interested in that." Still, with the incredible scrutiny Caltrans was facing as a result of the internationally reported bridge failure, he's confident the bridge is as safe as the organization says it is: "In the light of this break and the copious quantities of egg everyone has to deal with -- I believe they really pulled out the stops on a conservative approach to the second round of repairs."

Oh, something else -- maybe we should get used to this. When Cassandras wail about America's crumbling infrastructure -- this is what they're talking about.

Not being frequent San Francisco cab passengers, we had no idea how much of the fare 10 bucks represented. But reader Drew Bader quickly nailed the alleged miscreant as a jerk and a cheapskate. Based on the addresses we reported in the article, he thinks the fare was at least 20 or 30 bucks -- and that's without the customary 10 percent tip. And Bader ought to know -- he's a cabbie.

We got a hold of Bader, a 29-year-old San Francisco native (Mission/Potrero Hill) who drives for Luxor. We asked him if he'd help compile an etiquette guide for San Francisco taxi passengers, and he was game:

Don't whistle -- "You wouldn't whistle at a waiter or a counter person at a taqueria. It's pretty simple; extend your arm at around 45 degrees." Do cabbies drive past people who whistle? "I have."

Don't ever, ever say "I'll tell you when we get there" -- At the best, vague descriptions like this irk cabbies, because it often doesn't let them know what side of the street they're supposed to be on and can necessitate cutting across traffic. At worst, it's the type of language that precedes a robbery attempt. "Cabdrivers have some of the highest incidences of workplace death and violence, right up there with coal miners and cops."

Don't assume your cab driver is a monosyllabic simpleton -- Bader was a radio producer before our wondrous economy decided to call him a cab. He has a collegiate degree, and more of his colleagues do than you'd think. "I know a fair amount of drivers that aren't from the U.S. -- but they have four-year degrees from where they're from. It's not like we're stupid." Repeating directions excessively can cheese off a driver -- especially when he or she has a GPS (which, Bader estimates, 75 percent of drivers too young to remember where they were when John F. Kennedy died now possess). 

Joe Eskenazi

Chris "Jump Man" "Wilson

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Wilson is a tall, whippet-thin man of 42 -- though he looks far younger, largely because he's so incredibly fit. And he's so incredibly fit because of just what it is he's doing five days a week for an hour at a spell -- jumping.

While jumping rope is, for most folks, a sepia-toned memory of simpler days or something you see boxers doing in old Cassius Clay-era footage, it's very much Wilson's present. Just about every working day of the week, he whips up and down with remarkable speed and agility in one of AT&T Park's overflow parking lots while using an exaggeratedly long rope.

Today, our lunch break began with a terrifying encounter with a Specialty's delivery guy, Robert, who appeared to have sustained some serious injuries. That, or he bought fake scars and glued them to his face and caked it with make-up. "I'm just dead," he explained.

Robert, who called in dead for work

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Robert is not the first and certainly not the last to don costume a full 24 hours before the average trick-or-treater. In fact, our lunch break yielded a healthy numbers of early Halloween celebrators (and more than a few pre-ejack-o-lanterns).

​Around 12:30 p.m., this slightly lacking game of beer pong was on the move in front of the baseball stadium. (Ed.: Looks like the gent on the right toting the cane is dressed as Dr. House).

 

Following a shooting that left nine people wounded in 2006, the city curtailed the massive Castro Halloween (and shooting and pissing) celebration for '07. While many would-be revelers predicted that there was no way to keep San Franciscans from enjoying their God-given right to party on the streets -- there was. That year more than 600 cops lined the streets of the Castro, Muni service was largely curtailed, and businesses shut their doors early. The scene felt eerily like a costume party in the midst of a heavily guarded prison yard; it was that saturated with armed authority figures. It was not sexy. In any event, it was proof positive that when the city puts its mind to killing a party, it'll do it. And locals will not risk arrest or even confrontation to exert their "right" to party on the streets.

Any thoughts of re-invigorating the Castro Halloween tradition in '08 were quashed when it rained heavily that night. The events of the last two years make it difficult to believe that scores of thousands of San Franciscans will defy police threats to set up some drunken Bacchanalia anywhere in the city. But, if you do, you won't get rained on:
 

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As noted earlier, the man who threatened to leap off the Crown Hotel at 528 Valencia was talked down by police and fire fighters at shortly after midnight this morning.

The San Francisco Police Department was loath to release many details surrounding the event, but Officer Boaz Mariles did tell us this: Following yesterday's initial 5 p.m. call reporting a man standing on the ledge of the five-story building, two different negotiation teams were eventually required to engage the man and gradually talk him back from the brink.

In an odd touch of life imitating art imitating life, some passers-by told SF Weekly they mistook the police barricades for a Trauma scene. In actuality, the doomed San Francisco-based show was shooting only blocks away.

"I am gratified that Judge Busch clearly recognized the significant threat to public safety Pink Diamonds posed," Herrera said in a statement. The judge also imposed fines of at least $690,000 on the club's owners.

The strip club at 220 Jones Street has been linked to numerous shootings in the Tenderloin, including a June incident when a patron was killed on the sidewalk outside the venue. According to the complaint filed with the court by Herrera's office, Pink Diamonds has also been the site of illicit drug deals, prostitution, and extended-hours permit violations. The city attorney's office says it has required more than 230 service calls by police in the past six months alone.

Daniel C. Britt

Drool Brittania: British cougars Rita Sangha (left), 39, and Bea Cameron, 45, make nice to the camera during August's "National Cougar Convention"

​Do people complain to Rich Gosse about the use of the term "cougar" -- previously applied to a 1970s-era muscle car and, of course, a beast -- for older women with a yen for younger men? Yes. Yes they do. All the time. But he doesn't care.

"We used to have cougar parties in San Francisco before the term 'cougar' was invented," says Gosse, proprietor of the non-profit (!) Society for Single Professionals, which he runs out of his San Rafael home. "We called them 'Younger Men Older Women Parties.' No one knew we were alive. Now we do 'Cougar Parties' and we're famous. I love the term cougar."

Indeed, Rich Gosse is a cougar impresario. Readers may recall his "National Cougar Convention" held down the road in Palo Alto (SF Weekly's summary: "More cleavage than a butcher shop run by Eldridge Cleaver"). Now, searching for a new wrinkle in the "older women-younger men" mileu, he's struck on a novel concept: The nation's initial Cougar Sadie Hawkins Dance, set for San Francisco on Nov. 14.

Uhhh, Rich? Will twentysomething men who don't understand the meaning of the term "don't touch that dial" or even "shake it like a Polaroid picture" really comprehend a 70-year-old Lil' Abner reference? "They will have no idea," he concurs.

Daniel C. Britt

Reloading for battle...

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A neat trick

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The SPCA is seeking a major gifts manager as well as a communications associate and development assistant to aid with PR matters among other tasks. Spokeswoman Tina Ahn said the SPCA is short on money -- and these positions will "allow us to do our work and drive critical donations to help support our efforts."

Former SPCA volunteers and employees, however, cried foul. In dismissing employees who worked with animals and seeking those who work with donors or PR, SPCA critics claimed the organization was, once again, valuing the amassing of capital over the aiding animals -- and pointed, once again, to the SPCA's money-hemorrhaging hospital as driving the organization to behave this way. "Clearly the hospital is costing them money and they're having to focus on paying for it as opposed to quality care going to animals," said former longtime volunteer turned outspoken critic Hope Johnson.

Everyone knows ex-boxer Tony Danza played an ex-boxer namd Tony on Taxi. Not everyone knows that lawyer William Berg's tipsy taxi promotion won't allow you to go from San Francisco to the East Bay

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We'll get you all the details, but we'll also do what most news providers do not -- and that is spell out, explicitly, that you cannot take a cab from San Francisco to the East Bay on Bill Berg's dime. So if you're hoping to drink like Peter O'Toole in the city and then glide home, gratis, in a cab -- you'll have to come up with some other ingenious plan.

"In San Francisco you can go from any bar or restaurant to your own residence within city limts," says Berg. "You cannot go to another party or bar. And, unfortunately, our budget doesn't allow you to travel outside of San Francisco."

Of course, interestingly, if San Franciscans want to booze it up in the East Bay and then take a cab home courtesy of Berg -- he says you can do that.

Larry Halprin

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I wandered over to Halprin's Levi Plaza office back in 2005; as I later put it in print "Walking past the fountain he designed, skipping across the stepping stones he designed, strolling across the courtyard in the plaza he designed, we come to his office, located in the city -- that he designed." San Franciscans may not have even known Halprin was alive up until Sunday, but they do know his work: Much of Market Street downtown was his, as was Civic Center Plaza, Justin Herman Plaza, Stern Grove, Levi Plaza, Ghrardelli Square, etc.

Halprin's subterranean San Francisco office was stuffed with scores, if not hundreds, of tiny models of the monuments, plazas, and community centers he and his staff were in the midst of designing; I imagined that this was what Industrial Light and Magic's special effects shop must have looked like in the pre-CGI days. Halprin -- who was still coming into the office at age 89 -- immediately insisted on being called "Larry." While most interviews don't go longer than an hour, tops -- especially with the extremely aged -- Halprin was happy to give me a high-energy one-on-one tutorial of his life and profession; if memory serves I spent the whole afternoon there (and my editor was pissed). But it hardly felt like any time had passed at all. Halprin was so good at what he did -- and so very good at explaining it to a layman -- that the hours just melted away. You don't get one interview every three or four years as fulfilling as that. 

Around 100 cyclists donned snorkels and other water-themed costumes to show that a warming, rising sea would inundate downtown.

Protest coordinator Chris Carlsson explained which parts of downtown the bicyclists would traverse during their 15-minute ride. Along Market Street, through the Financial District, back along the Embarcadero to Justin Herman Plaza.

Captain Gary Jimenez

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Jimenez announced the move via a terse paragraph in his latest community newsletter. He said he will be taking on a new job as a "night supervising captain" in the operations bureau. He offered no explanation for the move, although it is common knowledge that the newly arrived Gascon is in the middle of a shakeup of the SFPD brass.

As captain of the Tenderloin station, Jimenez was well-liked by residents of the beleaguered district and developed a reputation for candor with neighborhood leaders and the press. But he was unable to staunch the rampant drug dealing and violence that consumes the Tenderloin. One of Gascon's first publicity stunts during his tenure as SFPD chief was to conduct a high-profile sweep of Jimenez's district that netted hundreds of low-level drug arrests.

Intimidating.

​John Brown is the only one of the seven men who has been formally charged since the arrests took place on Oct. 6. DA office spokesman Brian Buckelew said that prosecutors will soon decide whether to press charges against the other men, who have all been released. Brown remains in custody, according to his attorney, Deputy Public Defender Michael Fox.

Brown and six others stood up in court when a witness in a murder trial was asked to identify the alleged shooter, defendant Charles Heard, who has been accused of killing a man over a medallion depicting The Flintstones character Bamm-Bamm. Assistant DA Michael Swart immediately called the move "out-and-out intimidation of a witness" and ordered them arrested. Eric Safire, Heard's defense attorney, said he had asked the men to stand to ensure a more fair identification process for his client, who was seated at the defense table in jail-issue orange clothes.