Politics

Liveblogging Sf.Citi's "Technology Will Create a Smarter San Francisco" Video

The San Francisco Citizen's Initiative for Technology & Innovation, or sf.citi, released their first viral video earlier today, which aims to explain what Twitter/Zynga/Salesforce/AT&T/Airbnb/Ed Lee/Ron Conway-backed organization will accomplish.  Let's give it a watch:

0:02 - “San Francisco is dope and all…”

0:05 - “…but people get parking tickets and bikers look like assholes in my rear-view mirror.”

0:10 - Disenchanted high school vice principle reveals himself: “It'd be awesome if we used technology to cure aggro cyclists.  Let's give it a shot.”

0:15 - *takes 15 second weed nap*

0:30 - Freakishly tall yeti emerges beside his texting teen sister: “SF is seven miles by seven miles, and that's adorable.”

0:35 - Yeti fails to hail a cab, demands answers.

0:40 - Dude named Biz makes a bold suggestion: “How about we glue a giant iPhone to the side of every Muni shelter that tells you where every cab, train, bus, boat, plane, homeless person on PCP, human slingshot, poorly locked bicycle, and dressage pony in the city is and maybe helps you get a ride that probably isn't there?”

0:52 - VEGANS RUINED A DUDE's FRUIT STAND COMBINATION LIQUOR STORE. THROW MEAT AT THEM NOW.

1:01 - OH SHIT, DON'T WORRY BRO, TWITTER WILL THROW MEAT AT THEM FOR YOU.

1:08 - Victim with MacBook Pro is unable to afford $40 for a basic DSL service, has to check email from place where weird smelly people shoot heroin.  How can this be?

1:14 - Guy on a Wes Anderson film set: “We'd like to maybe idk someday put wifi hotspots in old telephone booths.  Someday!”

1:20 - Person speaking in tongues wants to know what the city can do about hipsters and foodies and gentrification and rising rents.

1:28 - Answer: “Uhhhhhh…. dunno.”

1:40 - “Parking? There should be an app for that.”

2:00 - The Yeti is back and now he wants to get in his teen sister's pants.  Unfortunately, she lives in the Sunset and—gosh darn it—there isn't a cab around, so they're off to find a dumpster to plow behind.

2:02 - Wait, this is an advertisement supporting Prop E?  The proposition that would change the city's tax policy?  It's an advertisement for Prop E even though the video's funder, Silicon Valley Mob Boss Ron Conway, said it wasn't a campaign ad?  How exactly does changing our tax code get us public wifi and the Yeti in his sister's pants in the privacy of his own mancave?

2:10 - Good thing they didn't promote that internal SFPD report filing app they created but the department can't use because they cannot afford the cell phone plans…

2:23 - *Asshole bikers evidentially still a problem*

Now, this isn't all to say that Prop E is bad (it isn't, and it's supported by pretty much every politician, NGO, and newspaper in town), nor that free public wifi would be bad for SF (it would plug up all those cellphone dead zones, reduce utility bills for businesses and residents, provide ever-necessary connectivity to low-income students and families).  However, this ad does more than exaggerate Prop E's benefits or make small fibs—it is straight up deceitful in claiming voting in favor of Prop E will do anything to improve ordinary San Franciscan's problems.  Prop E won't give you wifi or fix Muni; all it will do is improve the San Francisco business tax code, largely for the benefit of tech start-ups.

Also, why pick on vegans, cyclists, and Latino's with genuine problems?

It's Debate Season at the 500 Club and the Roxie!

Now that we're mere weeks away from the most important, generation-defining election of our lifetimes, it's debate season in America.  And on Wednesday, the first of four debates that will determine the future of America will go down, as the Massachusetts Machine squares off with the Illinois Illuminati on domestic issues, off-shore bank accounts, and the socialist takeover of American values.  What fun!

Fortunately for us in the Mission, we have an opportunity to come together as a community and drunkenly heckle every fib, gaffe, wink, sneeze, mumble, and righteous burp.  Both the 500 Club and Roxie Theater will be airing all four contests, with the 500 promising cheap beer and Clare's delivered straight to your barstool and the Roxie providing big screen access to the nightmare for ten bucks.

Here's the schedule:

Weds. Oct. 3rd, 6-7:30pm
Barack and Mitt get down on domestic policy!

Thurs. Oct. 11th, 6-7:30pm
Biden and Ryan duke it out over foreign AND domestic policy!

Tues. Oct. 16th, 6-7:30pm
Town hall meeting in which ordinary folks ask Obama and Romney down-to-earth, Main Streety questions!

Mon. Oct. 22nd, 6-7:30pm
Holy fuck another one?

UPDATE: The bartenders over at the 500 Club are encouraging everyone to bring debate bingo cards!  Winner might get a shot and a beer!

A Politically Scandalous Dog Talent Competition in Hayes Valley

Joe the Plumber Doggie (he didn't win).

Along with Supervisor Christina Olague, a cute couple from Dallas, and a bunch of degenerate soda-swilling 6-year-olds, I had the privileged of ranking over 20 of San Francisco's most effing adorable dogs in SF SPCA's DOGMA dog talent competition Sunday afternoon.

The competition was a lot of what you'd expect: dogs playing dead when shot, ample handshakes and rollings over, and dogs in cute costumes.  However, there were two outliers: Biscuit and Fiona.

Biscuit was an fluffy, happy-go-lucky Pomeranian whose similarity to Boo was difficult to overlook.  Biscuit wasn't all looks either, he (she? it?) could also kick a mini tennis ball into a goal—without looking—and do a bunch of jumps through her owner's arms and legs.  An impressive, yet clearly rehearsed, routine:

Fiona similarly killed it, but wasn't the looker like Biscuit.  After doing some handshakes and other boring-ass tricks, Fiona's owner sneezed, prompting the dog to go fetch tissues for her runny nose.  I was immediately taken in, as the dog played at my “slobbering mutt that fetches me beer” fantasy.  But it didn't end there, Fiona then started playing a mini piano:

Both dogs clearly destroyed the field and deserved the top slots, but there was a problem: all 8 judges gave both dogs perfect scores.  There was only one way to settle this…

A dog-off.

After deciding a dog fight would be inhumane and beneath the standards of the SPCA, we had both Fiona and Biscuit get back on stage and repeat their perfect performances, giving each judge an opportunity to pick a winner.

Now, it is worth noting that Mayor Ed Lee-appointed District 5 Supervisor Christina Olague was always the first person to rank an animal during the regular season.  Despite never giving an animal “1”, the lowest score possible, even when a pet froze on stage and the 6-year-olds said “pass” and threw down 1s, her scores generally seemed in line with everyone else.  Not artificially inflated or anything suspect like that, just honest appraisals of the mutt's talents.

So when it came down to making final decisions, I was really interested to see how a politician up for election would rank the dogs.  In the dog-off, Biscuit and Fiona threw down perfect performances yet again.  So, without any blunders to make the decision easy for the judges, we were left up to our own gut.  Would it be an adorable athlete or the tortured artist with compassion for the sick?

In a shocking twist, the judges voted in reverse, leaving Supervisor Olague to vote last.  Biscuit picked up an early lead in the polls, racking up a couple of checks.  Then Fiona received some crucial votes to keep her in the running, but one of the 6-year-olds voted for Biscuit, giving the furball a lock on the win.

When the ballot was passed to Olague for a largely symbolic final vote, she began to throw her support behind Fiona.  But, after looking at the depth of support for Biscuit, she changed her vote and marked one off for the sporty Pomeranian, rubberstamping the 6-year-olds decision.

In psychology, they call this phenomenon “groupthink”, a pull towards conformity in decision-making situations that subverts critical thinking and appraisal of alternative solutions.  In politics, they call this something much, much less flattering.

Anyway, Biscuit was goddamn adorable and this marks my one and only visit to Hayes Valley in the year 2012.

Hunter S. Thompson on Nixon's BART Ride

Reading Peter Hartlaub of the Chronicle's piece on Richard Nixon's September 1972 campaign stop on BART, I couldn't help but think of Hunter S. Thompson's reporting from the event, buried in the latter chapters of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.

At the time of the trip, Thompson had just left the McGovern press corps and recently passed his Secret Service screening to join the Presidential Press Corps. So they tossed him on the dinky press plane headed towards Oakland to spectate—from a safe distance—as Nixon marveled at BART (all pictures from the Chronicle):

The few reporters who switched off the McGovern campaign to travel with Nixon on this last trip to California were shocked by what they found.  The difference between traveling with McGovern and traveling with Nixon is just about like the difference between going on tour with the Grateful Dead & going on tour with the Pope.

My first experience with it came shortly after Nixon's arrival in Oakland.  After nervously pressing the flesh with some of the several hundred well-drilled young “supporters” who'd been rounded up to greet him for the TV cameras, Nixon was hustled off in a huge black bulletproof Cadillac for a brief appearance at one of the Bay Area's new rapid-transit stations.  The three big press buses followed, taking a different route, and when we arrived at the BART station we were hauled down by freight elevator to a narrow hallway outside a glass-walled control room.

Moments later Nixon emerged from a nearby subway tunnel, waved briefly at the crowd, and was ushered into the control room with a dozen or so local Republican dignitaries.  Two certified harmless photographers were allowed inside to take pictures of The President shaking hands and making small talk with the engineers.  His pithy remarks were broadcast out to the press mob in the hallway by means of loudspeakers.

After watching for a moment, I turned to Bob Greene, a young Chicago Sun-Times reporter who had just dropped off the McGovern campaign.  “Jesus,” I said. “Is it always like this?”

He laughed.  “Hell, this is accessible!  We can actually see him.  I spent about twelve hours covering him in New York yesterday, and I never saw him once—except on closed-circuit TV when he made his speech last night.  They had us in a separate room, with speakers and TV monitors.”

From here, Thompson travels across the Bay to cover a $500-a-plate lunch at the Sheraton-Palace Hotel (which Thompson skips to get drunk at House of Shields), but that's for another time.

One of the things that really gets me about the book is looking at it with respect to the 2012 campaign.  The parallels between Nixon's re-elect campaign and Romney's second go for the office are striking—the limited access to the press, their lukewarm support, their incessant tantrums towards the “biased” and “liberal” media…  Romney may not be Nixon in either skill, cleverness, or personality, but it's hard to escape thinking about what a Romney presidency would look like considering their similarities.

Oh, and those “pithy remarks” Thompson was talking about?

Ed Lee's Free Speech Problem

It sure didn't take long for SF Mayor Ed Lee to crash the Chick-fil-A blocking party.  After Chicago and Boston mayors Emanuel and Menino announced they would move to prevent the terrible and homophobic Southern Baptist restaurant chain from opening within their cities, Ed Lee threw his facial hair in the ring, tweeting his disappointment in business's lack of “San Francisco values” towards marriage equality.

And I'm sure we can all agree that the business's anti-gay stance is, to put it lightly, “disappointing.”  But it was Lee's next tweet—a thinly-veiled threat that he'd also block any Chick-fil-As from moving into SF—that gives me the chills.

Take this into consideration: Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy expressed some pretty backwards opinions on civil rights, but as Salon noted, “aside from the fact that Chick-fil-A is always closed on Sunday, there’s no evidence those [anti-gay beliefs] have been institutionalized in any way. There’s no record of refusing service to gay patrons, or unfair hiring practices, or a hostile work environment.”

Effectually, Ed Lee is reserving himself the right to veto any business from operating in the city solely because he disagrees with the opinions of its owner.  That's shady, and significantly more alarming than the fact that a chain restaurant that is closed on Sundays doesn't support gay-marriage.

Do we want to entrust a man who was elected mayor by less than 8.5% of the city's population, with political enemies on both the right and left, to decide what businesses can and cannot open within our limits based on whom he agrees with?  Do we want to live in a city in which our mayor curbs our rights based on what we say and how we feel? And what about the 25% of San Franciscans that voted in favor of Prop 8? Are they not allowed to open businesses in the city which they live?

That's not to say San Francisco should welcome any Chick-fil-As with open arms.  We are a smart and informed city that knows when to boycott and protest a terrible business, but as citizens.

Rest assured, should they ever open a franchise in the city, we would loudly greet them with puke-ins and “Eat Mor Cock” signs.  And that's exactly the point.  As the city that praises free expression and protest to the point we celebrate gross old men being nude in public because “that's their right,” we should be comfortable with confronting the opinions of those whom we wholeheartedly disagree.

I'm sure Ed Lee's approval rating and Klout score saw a bump after making the threats, but what's good for the polls is not necessary right, or legal.  Taking away someone's right to free speech to promote the rights of another is not a San Francisco value.  It's a shame the mayor does not agree.

Ed Lee to Plant Dodgers Fans in AT&T Park for Upcoming Series

Ed Lee is trying to curb the centuries-old tradition of hurling peanuts, beer, and obscenities at fans of the visiting team, according to the SF Examiner:

Giants fans, try not to hassle that Los Angeles Dodgers fan braving this weeks games at AT&T Park. He or she might be a cop.

Undercover officers are donning gear from the hated Dodgers during the current three-game series in an effort to enforce civility and prevent episodes like the one last year at Dodger Stadium in which Giants fan Bryan Stow was beaten until he was comatose.

Certainly the rivalry between the Giants and the Dodgers is as hot as its ever been, Mayor Ed Lee said. We want to do everything possible that we can to make our city continue to be safe.

Seems unnecessary considering how civil Giants fans are (except towards city infrastructure during a successful playoff season, of course).  Where does Ed think he is?  Oakland?

Anyway, I suppose I'll be leaving my nail-spiked bat at home…

[SF Examiner]

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