COURT JESTERINGS

With h. brown

San Francisco mayoral candidate, h. "Court Jester" Brown.
Photo(s) by Luke Thomas

Red Moon, Heart by-pass, Hall drops

By h. brown

August 31, 2007

Well, haven't we had ourselves some week?

I have anyway.

One of my best friends (Doug McAbee), a young 44, has his plans for an international employment change (he was scheduled to teach in Istanbul as he has in Japan and Korea) … finds he has to undergo by-pass surgery to make it to 88. This, after he sold his car and most of his things and made an orderly transition out of his apartment in the Presidio. Fortunately, his girlfriend is a cardiac care nurse and he has an option of staying with best buds Beth and John (John being a radiologist) on top of Sanchez Street (stay off the hills for a few months guy). So, on the upside, the best luxury property manager in the City will be staying indefinitely and maybe I can get him to do an Odd Couple routine and co-manage a nice building as he recovers. Not that I want to get out of the Tenderloin after 30 or so short years.

Good luck, Tony

And, Tony Hall dropped out of the race for Mayor as the red-moon of the 3am lunar eclipse hung like a drop of menstrual blood over the San Francisco sky. It would seem that total changes of direction are the order of the day. Who knows what can come of such things when we are caught like small feathers in the rush of the Creator's hurricane?

Or, it could just be bad luck. I don't buy that though. Too many coincidences. Naw, the Indians and all the 'primitives' knew things we don't know when they warned of personal cataclysmic events that would certainly accompany the gods' celestial light shows. The rest of us should get prepared for some shocking changes of direction too. Hey, not all sharp and unexpected changes end up being for the worst. My own battle with Eric Jaye in our rush to 6-pack abs being a case in point.

Newsom's pig calls us "barnyard animals"?

Eric Jaye does political consulting like the Giants' relievers save late inning games. You give the bastard a 70 run lead and a 500-1 fundraising advantage and he manages to fuck up so badly that he makes a cliff-hanger out of it on election day.

I'm told that Jaye is intentionally gaining weight during the campaign so that he can look like a fat barnyard pig with pretty blue eyes at the Newsom victory party. And, he calls the Mayor's opposition "barnyard animals"? This slop-hog has taken over a quarter of a million dollars from the Newsom re-election account over the past 6 months (that's more than 10 times what any of Gavin's opponents have raised en-totale just for this one monument to gluttony). You know what this dildo is going to do?

He's gonna lose the crowd

He's gonna make the crowd sympathize with the opposition Candidates Collaborative that meets to debate for the third consecutive Friday later today below Gavin's windows (5-6:30pm in Alioto Plaza). Til now, barely anyone knows that we've been there. The City Hall bureaucracy refuses to answer our requests for recognition. That makes us all liable for arrest at anytime and that's the kind of intimidation Jaye specializes in.

Just how stupid is Gavin Newsom?

Not very much. Really, it's all Jaye that makes him look dumb. Take the case of the 'Free' Wi-Fi that Gavin has been pushing. It makes Gavin look really bad and the evidence is right there in the same edition of the Hearst's rag, Chronicle.

On the front page (8-29-07), Newsom blames the Board of Supervisors for not rushing into a contract with his buddies at Earthlink and Google that would tie the City and its airwaves up for a decade or two to a system that has proven inferior everywhere it has been tested.

'Universal' free Wi-Fi my ass. There is absolutely nothing in the contract that requires the providers to extend service to blacks in the Bay View or the poor in the Tenderloin. Comcast certainly never did. The system will essentially only reach people in sidewalk cafes (which already have the stuff for free) and those lucky enough to live in a front apartment.

And, the service is slow and all of your thoughts are tracked and it is just a plain stupid idea that has no right to even be under consideration in a city that calls itself innovative. Another article in the same edition of the Chron (8-29-07, reprint from Washington Post's Blaine Harden) … Harden tells us how forward looking city's act.

"Americans invented the Internet,
but the Japanese are running away with it."

"Japan's lead in speed is worrisome
because it will shift Internet innovation
away from the United States."

How does Tokyo's system compare with Gavin's best?

It's 300 times as fast and costs half as much and it goes absolutely everywhere. That means that a work-from-home graphic designer in Tokyo can have a service up to 30 times faster than Comcast's best which is in turn, 10 times faster than the Wi-Fi Newsom proposes.

The answer is municipal fiber optics and the City already has a start on the system but to use what they've already built for citizens instead of just governmental agencies will require going to court (Comcast put in a rider saying City couldn't compete with them).

Tokyo has a rocket, Newsom offers SF an antique soap box car

Only a complete buffoon like Jaye would have the Mayor ranting in such a public manner about the loss of a system that would have put the City at an international competitive disadvantage for the next 30 years at least.

I'm proposing that the City place a $500 million dollar bond measure on the ballot as soon as possible for the purpose of constructing a municipally owned broadband fiber optics system the equivalent of the one in Tokyo.

First, the thing would pay for itself in business expansion within a decade. And, secondly, providing the latest tools to the geniuses who abound by the block in this burg would be the second-best investment the City could be contemplating.

First, SF Land Trust to keep artists in town

At least 15% and preferably, 20% of the land in San Francisco should be land trusted to remove the incentive for real estate speculators to grab it for turnover.

The YMCA on Golden Gate comes to mind. For 35 million bucks the City could make the several hundred rooms in the Y into a permanent home for musicians and artists and geeks from around the entire world. All you gotta do is break even. And, again, the monetary value of the creativity we are losing due to high real estate costs is inestimable.

The federal government housing projects are another obvious target for Land Trust. Newsom has failed to apply for federal funds to maintain them since he was elected. The plan is to allow them to fall into such a state of disrepair that the people will clamber for billionaires like Walter Shorenstein and Donald Fisher and Warren Hellman to 'save' them.

That's already happening. If Gavin cared about the projects or the people who live inside them, why didn't he apply for available federal Hope VI funds to keep them up? Why is he touring the projects with the best views with unnamed billionaires?

Public Power and beyond

As Mayor, I'd push hard for another Public Power initiative aimed at recapturing the City's Hetch-Hetchy generated electricity. And, I'd push for another $500 million dollar bond issue to invest in a Tidal Power project such as the one scheduled to go online under a Gonzalez mayoralty. We should dump Comcast and AT&T as fast as possible. They've both done shitty jobs and fucked every resident possible every time possible. A City should own and operate their own utilities.

Salon at 1pm

Debate 5-6:30pm

Collaboratives party 7:30pm

Good luck, Tony

Good luck, Doug

h. brown is a 62 year-old keeper of sfbulldog.com, an eclectic site featuring a half dozen City Hall denizens. h is a former sailor, firefighter, teacher, nightclub owner, and a hard-living satirical muckraker. Email h at h@ludd.net.

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