San Francisco's unemployment rate clearly knows nothing about how to keep fans interested.
The California Employment Development Department released their most recent statistics, and let's say they're less than stimulating. The San Francisco/Marin/San Mateo Counties' collective unemployment rate was 9.3 percent in October, and that's what it was in September. Bo-riiiiiiiiiiiing. Snooze-fest. What's the saying? Everything changes but always stays the same? It's like that, except nothing changes.
San Francisco really brought it to the table, though, once you break it down. Marin's unemployment rate? A mere 8.1. San Mateo County? A scanty 9.1. San Francisco's? 9.9. BOO-YAH. The state of California whupped us all, though, with a heady 12.3. Our hat's off to you, Big Guy.
Long weekends are less fun when taken because the state's dead broke and run like a banana republic
For San Francisco State students, staff, and faculty, extended furlough weekends are kind of like a fantastic spread at a funeral. Sure the deli selection is outstanding and the bread is fresh and hot -- but Grandma's dead.
So SFSU personnel enjoy four-day furlough weekends like the one commencing today -- who doesn't like time off? But it really puts the damper on it when you're taking time off not because you want to -- but because you have to.
"I would guess most students enjoy the time off. But at the same time, it's taking them longer to get through and graduate," said Erica Thomas, an SFSU history grad student and an office coordinator in the geography department.
Stop the presses!!! Do not click 'save' on that blog entry!!! Drop everything you are doing RIGHT NOW (fact: The kids will still be at school, they don't die if you're late) and listen up. The Employment Development Department has issued September's unemployment statistics.
When last we visited them, the San Francisco metro area's unemployment rate was hovering around the nine-point-sumthin' range, and IT STILL IS. In August, 9.6 percent of you San Francisco/Redwood City/San Mateo dwellers were sitting at home, twiddling your thumbs, and swearing that you were going to get a volunteer job or something. In September, it was only 9.2 percent. Good for you, 0.4 percent that no longer lives in fear!
Greenskeeper Joseph Frankel tees off in his backyard
Since we first covered the "funemployment" phenomenon in a June cover story, we here at SF Weekly have been pleasantly surprised again and again by the productive uses to which jobless young San Franciscans are turning their idle hands. From blogging to designing funemployment flare, folks in this city seem inexplicably hellbent on doing creative and useful things instead of turning to drink, television, and despair.
Time to add another all-star to the funemployment hall of fame. His name is Joseph Frankel. He's a 25-year-old resident of the Inner Richmond, via New Jersey, where he grew up. Since he was laid off from a beer distributor at the end of last year, Frankel has actually built a golf course in his back yard.
You don't exactly have to be Tiger Woods to make it on the green in one at the Richmond Country Club, as Frankel and his roommates have dubbed their idyllic golfing enclave, which was previously a fenced-off dirt lot not much bigger than a garage. The club now features several sets of turf for teeing off from different distances, a strip of lawn serving as a fairway, and a rolling green with multiple holes, each of which can be capped when not in use. Frankel has even laid out some turf on the roof of his building, where players can take a swing at their wiffle golf balls (the only kind used at Richmond CC) from par-5 range.
Cheap is the new black. It's hip to be spare. Frugal = fabulous. But according to a new map that shows the most frugal cities in America produced by the personal finance Web site, Mint.com, San Francisco is yet again lagging behind on a trend, trailing both Los Angeles and New York -- among other cities. The map indicates that in the last year, consumers in San Francisco cut their discretionary spending by 19 percent, while Los Angelinos cut theirs by 25 percent, and New Yorkers by 26 percent (it is unclear if this includes Brooklyn, which appears as a separate city from New York on the map. Last I checked, the borough was incorporated into The Big Apple in 1898 -- and that's still the case, no?).
Could it be that crunchy-granola San Franciscans are, in fact, less inclined to give up their doggy day spas and diamond facials than (gulp) Hollywood?
According to the Web site, the map was created using aggregate data from over 1 million Mint.com users, and compares 20 cities (with Brooklyn counting as a city, of course) across 25 "discretionary" categories including clothes, books, hobbies, and sporting goods. On average, the nation's consumers cut excess spending by 13 percent, which means at least San Francisco is still a tad more frugal than the norm.
When the city controller yesterday announced state budget cuts will deal San Francisco a $26.5 million punch in the gut, your humble narrator immediately thought of Jon Lovitz. Just as the Saturday Night Live nebbish once pitched himself to single women with the battle cry "Lower your standards!" so the controller's report was a classic example of bad news being a welcome respite from horrific news.
Sure, a $26.5 rug being pulled out from beneath the city is bad -- but it's not nearly as bad as the $36.7 million the controller predicted we could be out back on Aug. 4. (The $18 million the city budgeted in reserve, which looked ridiculously inadequate for a while, is now merely inadequate).
The report -- which you can see here -- is concise, detailed, and rather readable. Here's the breakdown on who "won" by losing the least:
Earlier in the summer, we wondered if the success of the movie G-Force would lead to a glut of guinea pigs overwhelming San Francisco Animal Care and Control once the novelty of pet ownership wore off. While it may seem only a foul dream, the talking guinea pig film was the nation's top-grosser for a spell, and Animal Control confirms they did indeed adopt out every last piggie that was to be had, likely as a result.
Lest anyone think the recession hasn't made a mark locally, the miner's canary is, often enough, a canary. Animal Control volunteer coordinator Deb Campbell notes that the rate of owner-surrendered animals jumped 49 percent from June to July and is far higher than it was back in 2008. "People are losing jobs, homes, and moving away and they can't take their pets," she says. "We have more owner-surrendered animals than we ever have before."
This mirrors state trends -- and is a real tragedy because, as SF Weekly reported in June, the possibility that the waiting period for euthanizing stray animals would be halved did, indeed, come to pass.
The standard university cap-and-gown day ritual goes this way: MBA alums chant gloatingly to other graduating classes: "We've got the money! We've got the money!" Engineering school grads, meanwhile, chant back: "We've got the jobs!" "We've got the jobs!"
What a burn!
Stanford University, long a font of economic savvy, has taken steps to help its recession-era business school graduates respond in kind. They're teaching students to become car salesmen.
Those of us who grew up in Northern California never experienced the joy of a school "Snow Day" in which reading, writing, and arithmetic are abandoned in favor of the ecstasy of winter frolicking. Growing up here, I vividly recall the time I witnessed ice on the sidewalk near a drainage pipe while walking to junior high school in 1988. You should have seen it. It was frozen solid.
Like justice, however, joy delayed is joy denied. While a great many San Francisco State students who also never benefited from snow days will probably enjoy their pending six-day weekend, the knowledge that this is happening because the state is too goddamn broke to keep the school open on Sept. 4 and Sept. 8 really does slip the turd into the punchbowl.
As we reported last month, SFSU capped a year of conditions more befitting a university in which classes are occasionally disrupted by bouts of rocket attacks by posting an official "furlough calendar." The school has posted an update on its Web site; reading it feels like being privy to someone else's heart-breaking how-to manual.
The leaves rustle gently in the wind, and deer raise their dewy muzzles expectantly to the sky. Birds twitter in anticipation. Hark! What's that sound?
Shhh. It approaches.
Here's this month's unemployment statistics from the state Employment Development Department!
So, there's good news and bad news, as always. And by "good news" we mean bad news lite! The good news is that the unemployment numbers for San Francisco are holding steady. We were at 9.3 percent unemployment in June and, darn it if we weren't at 9.3 percent in July, too. And that's better than the state unemployment rate, which hovers at 12.1 percent. We're less employed than neighboring Marin County, however, which rings in at 8.2 percent. It's a lot easier to keep your job when you own the company and several smaller, cuter companies near by.
SFSU faculty and staff received this message from school president Robert Corrigan last week, a stark reminder of what the consequences are of bleeding hundreds of millions of dollars out of higher education.
Apparently, even this guy has been forced to give up $4.90 every time he passes "Go"
The official reason that 18 of the city's highest paid elected officials will take a minuscule pay cut was a recent city charter. But you could trace this one back to the Code of Hammurabi. Way down at the end, it states: "If ever the jaw-droppingly paid officials do lean on the unions to give wage concessions, lo, shall they give concessions also." This is right before the part about how an accused adulteress will "jump into the river" for her husband, and those who steal water wheels from the field are out five shekels.
So, the mayor, board of supervisors, and other top electeds are out -- wait for it -- 2.45 percent of their salaries. Both of our major dailies neglected to mention how much money this will save the city. But we have a calculator on our phone, so we can tell you it's $95,939.
You know what the city could do for that kind of money? Well, for starters, we could relieve six-thousands of one percent of the city's debt obligation for the General Hospital rebuild. But it might be more fun to see what each of the elected officials coughing up 2.45 percent of their wages could have done with the dough:
What's that? Scoma's? Just up ahead on your right.
San Franciscans looking for one more reason to preen can always flaunt the fact that they live in one of the most tech-savvy cities in the world. Online video archives of City Hall meetings? Check. Twitter-happy mayoral staff? Check. Animatronic dinosaurs that dispense friendly advice and directions to tourists along the Embarcadero? Not yet, but a guy can hope.
But when it comes to sucking at the federal teat, no amount of digital prowess is too much. So it is that city officials are preparing to woo newly confirmed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski on his upcoming visit to the city, in an effort to snare what San Francisco Department of Technology Media Director Ron Vincent said he hopes could be "millions" of dollars in federal stimulus money for increasing access to broadband Internet.
Genachowski is slated to visit the Valencia Gardens housing project in the Mission District on Sunday, where city officials are going to treat him to a presentation on what they've done -- and still hope to do -- to expand broadband here. Vincent said that, San Francisco's status as high-tech hub notwithstanding, there are many neighborhoods that still lack high-speed Internet access, such as Bayview, Hunters Point, parts of the Mission, and parts of Chinatown.
Yeah, we thought it was Zach Galifianakis too. It's Joaquin Phoenix -- and be quiet or he'll eat you.
You've got to salute someone who finds a way to succeed in down times. The man who invented and marketed the bindle -- he must have cleaned up during the Great Depression.
Along those lines, the San Francisco Public Library this week happily crowed that it is serving 30 percent more people than it did at this time last year and checking out 15 percent more materials. Now we're big fans of the library -- we even read the newsletter -- but bringing up "the appeal of our newly opened branches" as a rationale for this boom doesn't cut it. The barrage of people at the library is a surefire sign that more and more San Franciscans don't have anywhere else to go. It's not coincidental that the number of library users has surged in the same year that the city's unemployment rate jumped from 5.4 to 9.8 percent.
"Oh, lots!" answered a librarian at the Main Branch when queried how many of the folks hanging about the premises were newly unemployed. "We've got people coming in to do their resumes. I work on the public desk and the building is full." In other words, the usual library daytime clientele of homeless folks has diversified -- it's now homeless people and people worried about becoming homeless.
Those looking for an example of irony not involving diabetics being flattened by insulin trucks will be disappointed. No, it was not an example of irony when the city's Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management released a hefty report warning that the San Francisco's nonprofits are in extreme danger of shutting down due to lack of funding -- and then, almost immediately, shut down due to lack of funding.
We can't think of words describing this course of events other than "bummer," "downer," and "get used to it."
The report, issued by the organization formerly housed at the University of San Francisco, notes that a tightening up of the monetary spigot has forced the city's 2,229 registered nonprofits and 862 foundations to hit the fund-raising trail -- and spend less time serving the needy folks who depend upon their services.
When Kathy Miner started her apparel and image consulting non-profit 14 years ago, she catered to low-income people looking for jobs. The non-profit, A Miner Miracle, provided them with free consultations on wardrobe and hair, as well as free new outfits and hairstyles. Over the years, Miner -- a former corporate dresser and designer -- has helped hundreds of disadvantaged people to look professional and acquire jobs. But as of last month, as a reponse to the economic downturn, Miner (above) extended her services have been extended to encompass anyone who is unemployed. (FYI: even those with jobs can find amazing deals in Miner's store, A Miner Miracle Shop, which supports the non-profit and is located at 899 Mission St.).
Just earlier today, Miner and her team were re-outfitting Nancy Cook, a 60-year-old unemployed woman from El Cerrito. For just $100, a smiling Cook was provided with a new Larry Levine suit (which normally would cost her more than $400) a couple of tops, a scarf, and a cardigan as CBS News and the SF Weekly documented the occasion and asked questions.
Gather 'round, children, it's that time of the month when we reveal the state's Employment Development Department numbers -- which indicate our employment rates are (still) failing to thrive in this sluggish economy. Basically, the numbers are as lowly as they were last month. Which makes one wonder, is bad news still bad news when it's old bad news? Is it even news at all? How much wood would a woodchuck chuck? Anyway, we're already here and I brought a casserole so let's get on with it.
Between May and June, the number of jobs in the West Bay counties of San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin decreased by 2,400. Private and public schools lost 1,700 jobs, Trade, transportation and utilities fell by 600. For the last 19 years retail has gained 900 jobs between May and June, but this year it lost 300. People, it is your American duty to KEEP SHOPPING. If you bought a Slanket, you have no excuse for shying away from Old Navy. They are practically giving stuff away.
But, lo! What have we here? An increase in jobs! Seasonal hospitality jobs grew by 900. Save your pennies, arts, entertainment and recreation workers, because apparently you won't be getting jobs at the mall when the tourists recede.
Banking experts qualify the service being hawked in this San Francisco Chronicle ad as a potential Ponzi scheme
Readers skimming the ads on page D-2 of the Sunday, July 12 San Francisco Chronicle might have been surprised to see an extraordinary investment opportunity in a quarter-page advertisement running a couple columns below Scott Adams' Dilbert cartoon.
"You can now earn: 1 year -- 11.00 percent," the advertisement announces, urging readers to go to a Web site describing "investment notes" offered by a company called Advanta Corp., which owns a bank specializing in handling savings deposits and credit cards for small businesses. The investment offer seemed unbelievable, given that bank savings account interest rates nowadays top out at about 2 percent. Indeed, First Republic bank advertised that modest savings-account rate in a quarter-page ad also on the July 12 business section's page D-2.
"It looks kind of like a CD. It appeals to an older person trying to get a better rate," said Richard Newsom, a retired bank examiner who gained fame as one of the investigators who helped bring down 1980s Savings and Loan villain Charles Keating. "But this is an example of the old standard rule, that if it looks to good to be true -- run."
It was only a matter of time. If you saw the July 1 New York Times Magazinecover story on the California governor's race, chances are you paused over this insouciant notable quotable from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who apparently isn't letting his state's financial meltdown get to him:
"Someone else might walk out of here every day depressed, but I don't walk out of here depressed," Schwarzenegger told the Times' Mark Leibovich. "I will sit down in my jacuzzi tonight. I'm going to lay back with a stogie."
Sounds nice, doesn't it? But before you make this your new Facebook quote, be warned that not all delighted in this particular cup of chicken soup for the wealthy and powerful soul. Particularly displeased were state union leaders, who are now organizing Wednesday rallies in San Francisco, Sacramento, and Fresno to highlight what San Francisco Labor Council Political Director Amber Parrish says was the callousness of the governor's remarks.
San Franciscans loooooove to recycle, and for good reason. Few techniques of self-massage for this city's innumerable preening eco-egos are easier and less time-consuming than tossing paper, plastic, and glass into a separate bin. There's just one problem with recycling as currently practiced by most of us: There's no money in it.
We know, we know. It's not right. You go to the effort of meticulously setting aside all recyclables in their own container, and priggishly insist that your dinner guests and roommates do the same, only to have the city make off with your dime? The good news is that this nightmare of government extortion is over. That's right: TOMRA is coming to town.
That's TOMRA Pacific Inc., a unit of TOMRA of North America, a branch of the international TOMRA business operating in 50 countries, which is itself a subsidiary of TOMRA Galactic Enterprises (headquartered in a tax-friendly, interstellar version of Delaware). The company, which operates 440 recycling centers in California, is opening a recycling center geared to beverage containers at 195 Bayshore Blvd., between Bernal Heights and the Bayview.
Forbes magazine recently came out with a list of America's Best and Worst Cities for Families. The publication looked at the 40 most populated metropolitan areas according to the U.S. Office of Management and Budget and then used the Economic Policy Institute's Basic Family Budget Calculator to determine what families of varying sizes would spend on "essentials": Housing, child care, food and taxes. "Luxuries" were not factored into the budget. What constitutes a luxury? Eating out. Saving money.
New York, which routinely tops lists of expensive cities, was deemed the "least affordable" -- 93 percent of a family's annual pay is immediately sucked up by living expenses. But -- surprise! -- Bay Area locales like San Jose, and yes, San Francisco, were deemed some of the most affordable. Here in San Fran, a relatively svelte 68 percent of a family's income is tied up in living expenses; if the city has its way you can soon spend the remaining 32 percent on municipal fees.
"In the Assembly, we had good, bipartisan support for three bills that would have stopped these IOUs," said the San Francisco Assemblyman. "But they were hung up in the Senate becuase the governor said he'd veto everything and that had a chilling effect. The governor keeps piling on other demands; he wanted the Democrats and Republicans to sing Cumbaya -- and we did that in the Assembly; I have to credit my Republican colleagues."
And yet, still, Schwarzenegger is "saying he'll veto any bill."
When asked to explain the governor's obstinacy, Ammiano conjectured that Schwarzenegger was concerned with his legacy: "What legacy? His legacy is in the toilet."
Cops from the city's central district this week reported busting up a game of three-card monte by Pier 35. Good thing, too -- apparently, the schemer was using a trio of bottle caps to conceal a ball (which he palmed, of course), and that's low-class. It reflects poorly upon our city for purveyors of fraudulent games to use shoddy materials like bottle caps. Are there no cups for this man?
While the purveyors of this game were taken into custody, this is the wrong approach. Based upon the passage of Mayor Gavin Newsom's transparently opportunistic cigarette fee -- the methodology and rationale are manifestly dishonest; it's simply a chance to wrest much-needed funds from a group of people who are looked down upon and have no political pull here -- three-card monte scammers shouldn't be arrested but deputized by the city. Force them to hand over a certain percentage of their "earnings" to a devoted fund and set them off on their merry way.
In the same way that smokers really can't complain about being asked to
cough up an extra 20 cents per pack for a habit even biblical young
earthers know will kill you, how can someone naive enough to actually
plink money on the table of a three-card monte player operating in a
well-known tourist haven have the temerity to complain when he's
hustled?
As California teeters down the road toward the day when even pot roast-fed Republican legislators could earnestly suggest a marijuana-based economy, the word "staycation" has grown as annoyingly ubiquitous as tabloid headlines about those reality TV folks with all the kids.
After stumbling across this video on Channel 7, one has to wonder: Is this really a sign of the terrible times -- like our Joad-esque state unemployment rate -- or simply a case of journalists feeling the need to churn out a "save money -- it's a recession!" story? Personally, I'd like to think it's a little of Column A and a little of Column B.
But, if it really is motivated by hard times, I wonder -- why try to pitch cheap hotels to folks who live here? Doesn't staying in a hotel when you live in the city beat the whole purpose of a staycation -- i.e. to save money?
In a cover story a few weeks ago, we took a look at the surprisingly sunny mindset of many young San Francisco workers who have lost their jobs in the current economic downturn. The lifestyles of the "funemployed" provoked responses both angry and sympathetic from SF Weekly readers. This morning, however, we received what is far and away the most creative riff on our description of funemployment so far.
Irina Blok, a 31-year-old graphic designer who was laid off from Google about a month ago, has come up with a series of buttons and a t-shirt that she says were inspired by the funemployment story. Originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, Blok now lives in San Francisco. You can check out her Web site here; a sampling of the buttons can be seen above. ("I've already had a few orders," she tells us.) Here's the t-shirt and a button close-up:
California's unemployment figures have gotten bad enough you are now allowed to mention the Joad family
Hooray! It's that time of the month when the state's Employment Development Department releases its numbers about how much employment is not being developed. We're posting this article right now because the contents within are not suitable for reading after lunch.
In a bit of news akin to your doctor telling you that "plenty of men live normally with this condition" -- i.e. it could be worse but it ain't good -- San Francisco's unemployment rate for May rose two-tenths of a percent to 9.1 percent. And yet, San Francisco was still green acres compared to the state on the whole, which features a whopping 11.2 percent unemployment rate (the state Employment Development Division's numbers don't quite jibe with the federal Department of Labor's, which report an 11.5 percent jobless rate).
Here were the big losers locally: Construction workers, who usually gain around 500 jobs between April and May, lost 1,300 positions; professional and business services also lost 1,300 jobs (not surprising considering the post-Tax Day drop-off); and 1,200 government workers, mostly on the federal level, were shown the door.
The union representing the lawyers staffing the offices of San Francisco's City Attorney, District Attorney, Public Defender, and others yesterday announced its membership has voted by a two-to-one margin to approve a wage concession in which attorneys forfeit two percent of their yearly salaries.
Jerry Coleman, a 30-year attorney in the DA's office and a member of the Municipal Attorney's Association union executive board, told SF Weekly the deal calls for city lawyers to be paid for 78.5 hours of every 80-hour pay period -- essentially a furlough without days off. This is the second consecutive year that city lawyers have voted themselves a pay cut.
California has been called a place where dreams come true. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that our state is a land where grotesque fantasies become reality without causing anyone to blink. The elected leader of California's 37 million residents is an Austrian bodybuilder who made his name impersonating robots; its politics is the best known refutation of the cherished American principles of representative government.
In this vein, the California Healthy Marriages Coalition (CHMC) is another characteristic state institution. This bizarre nonprofit, which avows the importance of marriage and partners with "faith-based" groups throughout the state to offer classes bent on preventing divorce, pulls down $2.4 million per year in grant money from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Church-state separation? Pshaw. The layperson might have some common-sense questions about the secular nature of an outfit that works hand-in-hand with religious groups and assails divorce as the root of all social ills, but no matter.
At any rate, taxpayers will be happy to know that CHMC is putting federal dollars to good use with its latest propaganda broadcast. "California Healthy Marriages Coalition Says GM Bankruptcy Could Create More than Financial Devastation for Families," reads the ominous headline of a new press release. Oooooh. What could it be? Just what sort of shadowy devastation could the bankruptcy filing of the U.S. automaker General Motors portend for families of the Golden State? Natural disaster? Mass unemployment? Swine flu?
When we ran our 'Funemployment' cover story about how some young San Franciscans, to paraphrase the sage words of Aerosmith, are "livin' it up 'till they hit the ground," a number of people reacted vehemently. Misery loves company, and out-of-work folks searching like mad for a job resented the Funemployed's serenity -- while those working a job and making money resented that unemployed people could be having so much more fun than they are.
Well, watch out: This door swings both ways. Today in downtown San Francisco, hundreds of locals -- some with advanced degrees -- will gather to volunteer their services to private companies. We restate: People are working, sans pay, for private, for-profit companies -- 13th Amendment be damned.
The advent of "Freemium Jobs" is the brainchild of Julie Greenberg and Alan Shusterman, San Francisco-based co-founders of the Web site JobNob. Greenberg presents today's 4:30 p.m. get-together of hundreds of job-seekers and representatives of more than 70 companies at Jillians as an altruistic attempt to connect the unemployed and start-ups ostensibly without the funds to pay for workers. When asked if it's exploitative to direct desperate, out-of-work individuals to private companies that have no intention of paying for their services -- and offer no guarantees the company's future success will enrich the job-seekers in any way -- she says it's not. These, she notes, are the times we live in -- and job-seekers have been ringing her off the hook to bring these (non-paying) job fairs around the country.
When the suffix of your e-mail address is "@NameOfaNewspaper.com" you get a lot of amazing solicitations by truly desperate PR mavens. We've lost count of how many deluded souls thought you, the readers, would be clamoring for stories about contact paper one can apply to a toilet seat to create an Evel Knievel-like stars-and-stripes motif, interviews with random folks claiming the world will end based upon ancient Mayan prophecies, or articles explaining how to engorge various portions of one's anatomy -- and discharge certain bodily fluids further than a kangaroo can leap.
Maybe you would be interested in that after all. Anyhow, when the latest junk solicitation -- in all-caps -- told us how our readers could "SAVE $10,000 ON YOUR WEDDING!" we took note.
What can we say? Our solutions of: A. Don't get married; B. City Hall, Vacaville, and; C. Take over a house of worship by force and compel the priest/rabbi/imam to marry you at gunpoint would save you the money, too. But let's see what this is all about:
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