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Gauging mayor’s engaging future
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San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom did his best not to put the historic state Supreme Court decision giving same-sex couples a constitutional right to marry in political terms — but I think it’s fair to say that for someone who has been struggling to find an issue to catapult him into higher office, he found one Thursday. San Francisco’s values — which have been beaten about the head and ears by a host of politicians in recent years — got a huge affirmation. Yet, outside of all those people who have been waiting to sign a binding legal document announcing their union together, no one scored a bigger victory Thursday than Newsom, who, according to the highest court in the state, was right when he announced that the state’s policy on same-sex marriage was discriminatory and began issuing marriage certificates in 2004. Newsom has been openly musing about running for governor after his mayoral term ends. He doesn’t have to muse anymore. “This is like placing a set of booster rockets on the Newsom-for-governor campaign,” said political consultant Dan Schnur, a former state Republican strategist who served as communications chief for Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid in 2000. “It’s something that helps him hugely in a Democratic primary.” It’s still to early to see how the court ruling will play out, especially now that conservative groups will be more emboldened to try and pass a statewide measure in November to place a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages. But that will just serve as a larger bully pulpit for Newsom — who can happily point out that there are six Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court that struck down the state’s discriminatory marriage policy. “It’s definitely beneficial that it’s a Republican-nominated court,” said Bruce Cain, a UC Berkeley political science professor who run’s the university’s Washington Center. “But it also validates a view that he took before it became a popular issue.” If Newsom seemed a bit giddy during interviews and news conferences Thursday, it’s partly in the knowledge that despite the incessant bickering and sniping from his former colleagues on the Board of Supervisors, the court decision essentially returns him to the rock-star status he enjoyed when he initially issued marriage certificates at City Hall. Newsom said “the Constitution is the biggest winner” Thursday. He came in a close second. |
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I’m ready to eat my words
.jpg) Clearly the heat has gotten to a few people — namely Brian Sabean, the person who puts the roster together for your San Francisco Giants.Sabean talked to beat reporters this week and said that the team, which most people have predicted will be a cellar dweller this year, has a chance to compete for a title this season. I hate to throw any chin music Sabean’s way, but reality says that the Giants are 17-24, can’t hit, have great trouble scoring and often look severely overmatched. True, they’re not in last place, but in baseball, they don’t allow eight teams from each division to go to the playoffs. But hey, the team is a lot younger and it can be fun to watch. And to be fair, if Sabean turns out to be right, I’ll eat this column at the ballpark setting of his choice. |
California public-college fees feeling budget pain
 State officials have gotten a lot of mileage throughout the decades in declaring that California has the finest public university system in the nation. And it still may be true — but how good will the system be when families and students here can no longer afford it?With state university and UC system leaders voting this week to increase fees for the sixth time in seven years — doubling the cost for students to attend California colleges since 2001 — other top universities are expected to benefit from the inability of our lawmakers to not try and balance the budget without tuition hikes. The proposed fee increases come as a number of prestigious schools — including Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth — are changing financial aid packages or cutting tuition costs as a way of attracting top students. While UC officials maintain that its system may still be the best bet for the majority of California students, the top-tier scholars are certainly going to weigh whether it’s worth going to overcrowded schools like UC Berkeley and UCLA when other prestigious universities are offering more lucrative financial incentives. That’s driving a bad bargain. Overcrowded public schools are facing tough competition for new students from private institutions. (AP file photo) |
Ugly silence toward Prop. F backer
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One of the more remarkable things about the contentious battle for the future of the Hunter’s Point/Bayview area, as outlined in Propositions F and G, is how silent Prop. F’s proponents have been about the incendiary comments and public statements of its primary backers. Recently, one of the main forces behind Prop. F — discredited Bayview activist Francisco Da Costa — was publicly rebuked by city leaders for the racist, sexist and anti-Semitic rantings he posts on his Web site and other blogs. At the time, Supervisor Chris Daly, who is well aware of Da Costa’s outrageous statements, said he has asked Da Costa to step aside from the campaign. That hasn’t happened, according to Da Costa himself, who in a recent diatribe again made references to Jews as “Zionists’’ and had no problem calling U.S. Dianne Feinstein — among others — a crook. Da Costa, who has called Supervisor Sophie Maxwell a “shameless fat cow’’ and refers to several African American ministers in the Bayview who support the housing development outlined in Proposition G as the “three black fools,’’ claims he is still an integral part of the Prop. F campaign designed to kill the long-planned Bayview housing proposal. So why haven’t Daly and the ever politically-correct San Francisco Bay Guardian — the highest-profile backers of Proposition F — denounced the ugly, racist comments from the measure’s loudest blowhard? It’s a good question, one on which you shouldn’t hold your breath waiting for an answer. |
(Proposition) F is for fantasy, (Proposition) G is for gift
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In San Francisco, elections can take on the feel of grand social adventures based on the view that things, somehow, some way, will someday get better. City residents in recent years have thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at schools and parks with marginal results, and they have created a system in which lawmakers attain office with just 2 percent of the citywide vote and yet cling to the ideal that they will represent all of San Francisco. Which brings us to our latest foray into the ballot box of the absurd, generally known as dueling Propositions F (as in fantasy) and G (as in gift), arguably among the most important land-use measures voters have seen in the past quarter-century. And, if recent polling is any indication, it appears that not only are voters prepared to look a gift horse in the mouth, they’re ready to smash said gift into a thousand broken pieces. I have some faith that reason and common sense will prevail, but then I remember how, despite my best efforts, San Francisco elected Terence Hallinan — by any statistical measure the worst district attorney in California’s history — twice. Proposition G is a policy measure that seeks to transform long-neglected Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and the Candlestick Point site into a new housing and park area with as many as 10,000 new homes, promises thousands of jobs for community residents and calls for the rebuilding of the run-down Alice Griffin housing project. It would also provide a permanent home for the remarkable group of artists who have been working in some very dreary shipyard studios for more than two decades, and it includes a provision that 30 percent of the new homes are built as affordable. But the Lennar Corp., the private developer behind the housing plan (and also one for Treasure Island) has run afoul of some discredited activists in the Bayview who blame the company for stirring the existing asbestos at the Superfund cleanup site and have essentially portrayed Lennar’s officials as baby killers. To that end, they found a friendly ally in supervisor and resistance leader Chris Daly, who, unable to get the support of his colleagues on the board, launched a signature drive to qualify Proposition F for the June ballot — a measure that demands the developer increase the number of affordable units to 50 percent. Now you don’t have to be a developer to know that a 50 percent affordable quotient is unprofitable, undoable and unthinkable — that is, if you actually believe that any private developer would even consider such a losing proposition. But that’s not what is happening here, for Proposition F is designed solely to kill the Hunters Point development project — an unmistakable poison pill marked up with a happy face. Proposition G has taken 10 years of design studies and hearings just to get to this point. It has the support of Mayor Gavin Newsom, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and most every considered planning organization in San Francisco. The one hiccup with the measure has been the lack of support from unions, which are demanding more work force housing for teachers, service employees and other municipal workers — though I’m told ongoing negotiations may produce a positive outcome soon. But if Prop. F passes, and recent polls suggest it could, it would kill the Bayview development plan and leave a community that is deficient of jobs and housing once more in search of tomorrows that never come. I asked Michael Cohen, the widely respected head of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, how big a setback it would be if Prop. F is approved. “If there’s a 50 percent requirement for any private developer on a project like this, it will ensure that that land will remain fallow for the next 20 years,” he said. So you’d have to wonder why activists who reportedly support the poor and the needy would try to detonate a long-studied plan with a last-minute proposal that has no details or financial analysis. Part of the answer could be found in a plan by Daly probably headed for the November ballot in which the free-spending supervisor wants to set aside $2.4 billion in taxpayer money from the general fund over the coming years to spend on affordable housing. That’s not a land grab, it’s a revenue raid — and an untimely one at that. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a private developer cover the cost of new housing than our deficit-straddled city, especially a builder that is willing to commit at a time the home-construction market is in the tank. The Bayview community deserves some equity — and some hope. For residents there, Prop. F stands for just one thing: Forget about it. |
Memories of Robert Kennedy
 As the grueling campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton grinds toward summer, the contest harkens back to another epic fight for the White House — a battle that took place in California.It was exactly 40 years ago when Robert Kennedy made a late entrance into the presidential race, with the pivotal fight focused on the nation’s most populous state. Kennedy faced off against two other senators, establishment candidate Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy, who vied for the anti-war vote against the former attorney general. And if you think the rival camps were splitting Democrats now, you should have seen officials in California and particularly San Francisco back when the Vietnam War was raging. California was like a Democratic jigsaw puzzle. Gov. Pat Brown was solidly in the Humphrey camp, as was San Francisco Mayor Joe Alioto. McCarthy’s support was largely among college students and in the suburbs, and he marched into California after winning the Oregon primary. Kennedy had the backing of Assembly Speaker Jesse Unruh, who helped the young senator tap numerous local Democrats to stage events and gather endorsements (which he got from George Moscone and supervisors such as Jack Ertola). Kennedy’s campaign was more like a barnstorming tour here, with daily rallies at whistle-stops between San Francisco and Los Angeles. I remember going to one event at the shopping center formerly known as Gets on Sloat Boulevard (now Lakeshore Plaza) where Kennedy, at his mesmerizing best, attracted the largest gathering I had ever seen outside of a concert in Golden Gate Park. Retired lawyer Joe Kelly said Unruh asked him and Ertola, both University of San Francisco graduates, if he could get the school to let Kennedy speak there after it originally turned him down. “We went to talk to [USF President] Fr. Charles Dullea and we got permission,” Kelly said. “Kennedy gave one hell of a speech. It was a lot of fun.” It all ended tragically when Kennedy was shot to death on election night in Los Angeles after winning California’s winner-take-all primary. His presidential run is the subject of at least two forthcoming books, one of which is excerpted in the current issue of Vanity Fair. It’s worth a look, if only for the great photo of Kennedy and his wife riding on the trunk (literally) of a convertible in North Beach — the days of lost innocence. This was the scene at KGO-TV station in San Francisco as Sen. Eugene McCarthy, fourth from left, and Robert Kennedy, second from right, were readied for their presidential debate on June 1, 1968. (AP file photo) |
Charity event packs a bite
 There’s so much fundraising competition between charities and nonprofits these days that organizations are always looking for the most intriguing auction items — and the Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Center may have grabbed this year’s originality prize.The venerable community agency, which has been providing educational, social and medical services to the North Beach neighborhood for 118 years, is holding its annual gala fundraiser Saturday night (it’s sold out), and one hot-ticket item will be up for grabs — a shark hunt. Actually, it’s a chance to go on an expedition with marine biologists from Aquarium of the Bay and catch and tag local sharks in San Francisco Bay. But you don’t have to go to the dinner to get a chance to see a leopard shark up close and personal — Tel-hi officials are accepting absentee bids. Call (415) 421-6443, ext. 34 — if you want to bite |
Decorative mansion pays host to Decorative Showcase event
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For those who wonder what it would be like to have 30 designers essentially critique and take over your house for a month, San Francisco’s Ken Paige has the answer. “It’s fine once you get over the initial avalanche of opinions,” he said. Paige is the owner of the fairly spectacular 16,000-square-foot mansion on Scott Street that is being used for this year’s Decorator Showcase event, which runs through the end of this month. Paige, who is the owner of the Paige Glass Co., said he worked on the house for 2½ years before the designers showed up with their expensive accessories. “The whole reason to do it is because it’s fun,” he said. “My only question was whether they could pull it off, because three months ago there was so much construction it was absolute chaos. And it’s a testament to cooperation that it worked.” Paige’s grandfather, who started the company, also worked on the famous Tower of Jewels, which was part of the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition here. Paige Glass opened four years after the 1906 earthquake. “It was a good time to have a glass company,” Paige said. |
Just an old-fashioned neighborhood water-gun fight
 The fight over the future of the Pacific Rod and Gun Club at Lake Merced has been placed in the sights of several local organizations — and it’s looking more like an old-fashioned land grab instead of a genuine debate about water policy.The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which is taking over management of the lake, has been holding hearings on the future of the lake — but most of the focus has centered on the 14-acre site, which has been used by the popular gun club for more than 60 years. A number of groups, including the Neighborhood Parks Council and San Francisco Beautiful — which made its name fighting billboards and blight — are now lobbying to get rid of the gun club, saying that it does not fit the best long-term use of the lake. But the fact is, the gun club has said it would share the property, possibly with crew teams that want a new storage facility at the lake. The Parks Council recently tried to takeover several city-run golf courses because they were losing money for San Francisco. But the gun club is one of the few lakeside facilities that makes money for The City — as politically-incorrect as some view it. The PUC has been trying — mostly unsuccessfully — to appear neutral regarding future lake management. But a large number of city residents want the gun club to stay, and they can express their sentiments at lakemerced@sfwater.org. Members of the Pacific Rod and Gun Club would like to be able to keep shooting clay pigeons on Lake Merced. (Examiner file photo) |
It’s high time for SoMa to soar above San Francisco’s skyline
.jpg) Taste is not a matter of dispute — though one would be hard-pressed to see that as an accepted truth in San Francisco, where the positions of four people can block a museum project or steer citywide transportation policy.So it will be interesting to see whether the visions of the past will determine the skyline of the future, which holds promise for San Francisco during the next half-century. I have always had an affinity for the Transamerica Pyramid — a building that helped launch the neighborhood protest movement in San Francisco and drew poison from the pen of a former columnist named Herb Caen. Yet that tower has come to define San Francisco nearly as much as the Golden Gate Bridge, and even those who find the Transamerica building aestethically challenged might wonder what all the fuss was about nearly 50 years ago, when it was being built. The latest cycle of debate was stirred last week upon the presentation of the new Transbay Terminal tower plan, which would allow a number of new skyscrapers to scale beyond the current 550-foot height limit around a signature spire that would rise approximately 1,000 feet next to the proposed transportation hub. Now I’m not a proponent of the school that bigger is necessarily better, but there’s no reason that San Francisco’s skyline — which is unusually flat for the standards of major American cities — couldn’t use a bit of a dramatic, vertical push. The City’s limited land mass has created a dynamic where just about the only place to grow is up. The fact is, if San Francisco planners can find the right balance between density and livability, some new high-rises might lift The City above the level of drab design mediocrity in which it has long existed. It also makes sense from a planning standpoint. As long as San Francisco’s policy is driven by transit-oriented development, any expansion must occur near its central business core, and the only place left for that type of growth is in the South of Market area that has long been zoned for it. That should hardly ignite cries of “Manhattanization,” though in some quarters it undoubtedly will, but five to seven towers could add some architectural zest to a city clearly lacking it. “It’s not like there’s going to be a dense forest of new towers,’’ said Dean Macris, San Francisco’s recent planning director who oversaw The City’s rezoning effort. “What you’re struck by here is how little change there has been physically over the years. But the planners here aren’t interested in height for its own sake.’’ Macris notes that there are good reasons to increase the height of some new buildings in San Francisco — namely growth projections and the need to increase office space to meet future demands. In addition, he said, global-warming issues will require planners to concentrate on increasing public-transit access. The new skyline proposal also fits in the pattern of San Francisco development, in which height issues seem to spring up every 30 or 40 years. The Russ building and the Shell Oil building, both constructed in the late 1920s, were the tallest structures in The City until the mid-’60s. The Transamerica building, still the highest skyscraper in San Francisco, was completed in 1972. The soon-to-be finished One Rincon Hill condominium tower has been a target of some criticism because it seems so out of scale with the surrounding neighborhood. But that’s in large part because it stands alone — a South of Market architectural orphan — and it would fit in much better once the rest of the cluster of buildings in the Transbay Terminal plan were added to the landscape. Of course, designs for those buildings will go a long way toward redefining the skyline, and San Francisco doesn’t have a great track record for selecting architectural gems. Still, that’s not a reason to resist attempts to remake the South of Market area into the new downtown core as long as planners can figure out the right mix of light and shadows cast by the buildings and still make the streets around them user-friendly. “I think people understand that density, if carefully planned, makes sense for a city of our scope,’’ Macris said. Yet logic and good planning won’t stop the naysayers from trying to block the future — you only have to think back to the fight over the new de Young Museum to understand that. But progress has a way of surfacing with its pointy head. In San Francisco, it just takes a few years longer to make its presence felt. The original plan for the Transamerica building called for the pyramid to be much taller and slimmer and more elegant. But some personal tastes intervened. A proposed 1,000-foot-high Transbay Terminal tower could be good for The City’s stagnant skyline. (Courtesy rendering) |
Find out who did what, why they did it and what it all means from the San Francisco Examiner's Ken Garcia.
- Gauging mayor’s engaging future
- I’m ready to eat my words
- California public-college fees feeling budget pain
- Ugly silence toward Prop. F backer
- (Proposition) F is for fantasy, (Proposition) G is for gift
- Memories of Robert Kennedy
- Charity event packs a bite
- Decorative mansion pays host to Decorative Showcase event
- Just an old-fashioned neighborhood water-gun fight
- It’s high time for SoMa to soar above San Francisco’s skyline
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