Month: August 2011

Posted on

Ranked Choice Voting: Mea Culpa

Mea Culpa: latin, “my bad”. I made a mistake in my last post that was quickly pointed out to me by the people at Fair Vote. I made the correction on my last post, but felt that it needed a post of it’s own to explain it. Yes, you can vote for the same person in first, second or third places, but if they are eliminated in the first round your other two votes don’t count because they are considered to no longer be in the race. So while your vote isn’t eliminated you just don’t have a chance at your second or third pick, or so I thought…

I did some further research and it turns out that that according to sfelections.org this is the way it works:

To start, every first-choice vote is counted. Any candidate who receives a majority (more than 50%) of the first-choice votes is declared the winner.
If no candidate receives more than 50% of the first-choice votes, a process of eliminating candidates and transferring votes begins.

First, the candidate who received the fewest number of first-choice votes is eliminated from the race.

Second, voters who selected the eliminated candidate as their first choice will have their vote transferred to their second choice.

Third, all the votes are recounted.

Once the votes are recounted, if any candidate has received more than 50% of the votes, he or she is declared the winner.

If no candidate receives more than 50% of the votes, the process of eliminating candidates and transferring votes is repeated until one candidate has a winning majority.

Now I can see why some people who have spoken out against RCV/IRV [Instant Runoff Voting] don’t like it and it lends a bit more credence to my less than perfectly researched previous argument. If you vote for a losing candidate in the first round your first vote gets passed to the second round. [UPDATE: I did get through to the Department of Elections and they confirmed that if your first choice is eliminated that your second choice is selected. They admitted that the working was bad.]which makes me wonder what happens to your second round vote. Since you can only vote once. That would be invalidated if your first vote gets passed to the second round along with your second choice vote then you’ve voted twice. From what sfelections.org is saying your first choice vote is passed to your second choice which means that making a second choice won’t matter if your first is eliminated. They don’t really say much about your third choice other than if 50% is not reached by a member that all votes are recounted.

If after the second choice no one has 50% then all votes are recounted and recounted again until someone finds the mistake and a winner is declared. This is were I see a flaw in the system and I expect to have lots of comments from fairvote.org on this one correcting me. [and Robert Richie did and I’ve made changes to the article]

Sfelections.org in their FAQ though contradicts itself by saying:

If I really want my first-choice candidate to win, should I rank the candidate as my first, second and third choice?
No. Ranking a candidate more than once does not benefit the candidate. If a voter ranks one candidate as the voter’s first, second and third choice, it is the same as if the voter leaves the second or third choice blank. In other words, if the candidate is eliminated that candidate is no longer eligible to receive second or third choice votes.

So which is it? Well, I think I’ve got the answer now, but the department of elections needs to work over their wording so it’s easier to understand. These contradictions are the main reason I don’t like RCV/IRV. On the sfelections.org website they have a link for more information at http://ww.sfgov.org/election/rcv that when you click on it takes you to a 404 page not found spot. The flash version of their website which I tried first doesn’t work at all. The website is registered to San Francisco Department of Elections so I can tell it is legit, but they seem to have a problem explaining how they work.

Now to be fair, Fairvote.org is run by Robert Richie [no not Kid Rock] and is based in Maryland, so the responses I received  to my last post were not from a San Francisco citizen. I did receive an email from Robert in addition to the comments. Mr. Richie apparently has a lot of clout behind him  having appeared on C-SPAN, NBC, CNN, Fox [I won’t hold that against him] and MSNBC as well as writing articles for a number of high profile magazines and newspapers. He has helped me a lot in getting a better understanding of RCV. SF has never needed to hand count ballots and unless we get something like the hanging chad incident or one of the candidates refusing to accept that they lost there probably won’t be any hand counting used at all.

It always amazes me that baghdadbythebaysf.com has such a long reach that I pull a prominent East Coast political activist to send me an email [he worked for three winning congressional campaigns in Washington State].

[ad#AdBrite]

Posted on

Ranked Choice Voting: I don’t like it

This is the first #SFMayor election that will use ranked choice voting. I never liked it for the supervisor elections and I don’t like for the mayoral race and now I’m going to tell you why. First, I cite Oakland who had Jean Quan elected as mayor that was a dark horse from the start. I won’t knock her or Oakland because I don’t live there, but it was obvious from the news reports that they were all reacting as if Chicken John became mayor. The second reason is that ranked choice voting hasn’t been explained very well. If you like one candidate and no others don’t vote for them as your first, second and third choice. You vote will be disqualified. Even if you put the same name down for two categories your vote will be disqualified. This lowers the amount of people who will be able to vote because not everyone knows that rule [thank you Michela Alioto-Pier for pointing that out at one of the debates]. I was informed that the previous statement was incorrect. That you could put the same name down for all three, but if your first choice makes the cut your other votes won’t count again. So if you have three people that you would like to see as mayor vote for three, but you can just put one name or the same for all three.

Bruce Reyes Chow [@breyeschow] who also endorses John Avalos has challenged me to list my second and third choices and I am taking him up on that challenge. It is a difficult one because it’s more about who I don’t want than who I do want. Let’s look at who I don’t want as mayor first:

  1. Mayor Ed Lee: He became mayor by choice of the former mayor Gavin Newsom and the board of supervisors because said he would not run again for mayor, yet he has gone against the premise that got him into office and is now running for mayor. He has gone back on his word and I cannot vote for a man who cannot keep a promise.
  2. Senator Leland Yee: I cannot vote for a man who calls me a racist. As I tweeted yesterday he or one of his minions used the hashtag #racism in a comment to me speaking out in favor of AB376 the ban on shark fin sales in California because he feels it is a threat against an Asian cultural tradition. It isn’t at all. It’s against an Chinese cultural tradition, that should be put aside because of the damage it is causing to the world’s oceans. It is a Chinese cultural tradition just like foot binding and eating of dogs that has been cast away in the U.S. and most parts of China. I cannot vote for a person who plays the race card when what I speak of is about conservation and ecology and not race. I also don’t like the fact that he filed to run as Mayor of San Francisco a week after being re-elected to the Senate. This makes me think that he sees being a Senator less valuable than being the mayor of San Francisco. There was also the shoplifting arrest in Honolulu that he talked his way out of along with being pulled over for cruising Capp street under suspicion of looking for prostitutes. One thing I know about Capp street is that if you aren’t in a band heading to rehearsal space you’re either there for hookers or drugs.
  3. Phil Ting: I cannot vote for a man who wants to reset San Francisco beyond his abilities. He wants to repeal Proposition 13 as Mayor of San Francisco to make housing more affordable. Prop 13 is a state law that the Mayor of San Francisco can speak out about, but not change.  He also misses the point that while San Francisco is listed in the top 10 expensive cities to live in, it is only one of two cities in California under Prop 13. New York, Miami, and Honolulu being the top three all in states with no Prop 13, but they do have addition school taxes to help students that California doesn’t.
  4. Bevan Dufty: He’s on my not sure list. He has worked for the underdog for most of his political career. He worked for Shirley Chisolm and Billie Holiday was his godmother. He seems like an alright guy, but I don’t see anything outstanding that makes me lean in his direction.
  5. Jeff Adachi: Last minute entry into the mayor’s race just like Ed Lee. That’s a showboating maneuver I don’t like. While I like his ideas on pension reform I don’t like the grandstanding.
  6. David Chiu: He’s on my short list since he was temporarily mayor and didn’t push to be full time mayor after Gavin Newsom was elected Lieutenant Governor. He kept to the letter of the law and that’s a good thing in my book. He doesn’t own a car which gets my green side going, but in an emergency is he going to call a cab?
  7. Michela Alioto-Pier: Jesus, she has politics in her veins like no one else running. First she’s from the Alioto family which she reminds us of on a regular basis as well as the fact that Joseph Alioto was her grandfather. She started in politics at 17 by being appointed to the President’s National Council on Disabilities Advisory Board by President Ronald Regan. She went on to work with Vice President Al Gore and many other politicians. She hasn’t had the best attendance record for the Board of Supervisors meetings part of which could be attributed to her being in a wheelchair, but she’s a sweet girl who looks a lot younger than she is and part of me feels that the next SF Mayor needs to be a bit more hard assed to get the job done.
  8. Joanna Rees: Not a politician at all. She’s an business woman, an entrepreneur. She makes a living making money. That’s a good thing.Maybe this city needs a Mayor who isn’t a politician. She also has been getting out to all the neighborhoods, though I do have a bit of pet peeve that she spent most of her Sunset time in the inner Sunset and didn’t get anywhere near my part which is a whole different breed of people. She’s still on my short list.
  9. Tony Hall: This is a guy who is old school San Franicsco politics and this man has the cohones to admit he’s a conservative. This guy will not hold back his punches when necessary and he has done a lot for all parts of San Francisco. I admit that I’m a Democrat and he’s not, but he’s an old school conservative, not a get your hands off of my money, tax the poor type of republican that’s destroying the party of today. He has a great presence and a voice like velvet fog. Tony is on my short list as well pushing for the second or third spot because of his past work. I do think he has a chance at getting the job done.
  10. Dennis Herrera: Dennis has also done a lot for San Francisco. It’s all over his website. He’s also traveled to all parts of the city to meet with the residents which I like. He’s taken some tough problems in San Francisco head on and against all odds that could break a person’s career, yet he’s still kept it together. He works for the working class that is a fast shrinking part of San Francisco and he want to bring that back. Dennis is also on my front runner list for my second and third choices.
So there you have it. While Tony Hall and Dennis Herrera look like they might be my second and third choices, I still can’t count out Michela, Joanna or David. John Avalos has won me hands down as number one, but these other five will have to step it up now for my second and third choice votes.
If you have a chance please vote for me as the Best Local Politics Blog on SF Weekly.

[ad#AdBrite]

Posted on

The Rat Pack: Three Guys Who Influenced How I Think.

I was a kind of strange kid growing up. I had older tastes for a young kid. While I always liked rock music there was something about a bunch of guys on TV that made me want to be like them and that was the Rat Pack. Started as a group of guys who hung out with Humphrey Bogart, they came down to three guys that were the main attraction, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. Peter Lawford and Joey Bishop were kind of honorary members who were included at times, but it was the big three that I wanted to be like.

Being a member of the rat pack wasn’t very healthy by today’s standards. In almost every picture of them they all had cigarettes and a glass of scotch. I’m convinced that’s where I got my love of scotch. I would sneak a beer or two as a teenager, but when I turned 21 there was nothing like the look of sitting and talking with other people with a glass of that dark brown wonder swinging from your hand. I started smoking as well, both of which aren’t good for you as my liver told me one day and when I started to have trouble breathing. So I had to cut back. Besides, having your friends refer to you as someone who drinks old people drinks didn’t help my character as much during everyone else’s beer days. I was always of the mind that real men drank scotch or bourbon, not cosmopolitans.

This isn’t what this article is really about though, this is about the old times and some things that we used to do that we don’t anymore and we might be able to save ourselves some money in this economy if we thought about some of them.

One of them to me was shaving. When I started shaving they had two bladed razors that were pretty good. I never had to used the old safety razors, they were starting to be on the outs then so you went with what was available. Then came the three blade, four blade and now five blade razors. I moved up with each one and realized the other day that even when I’m buying my razor blades online I’m still paying close to $5 for a blade that doesn’t last me a month. With the three blade razors I used to get around 2-3 months out of them before I had to replace them. I learned at an early age how to take care of a blade.

The five blade razors don’t seem to last as long though and I notice that not only is it harder to get the hair off my face, but after a week I start to get more nicks from them. I’ve always taken good care of my skin and I rarely have gotten cuts from shaving, but now I’m noticing them appearing more often.

I want to go back to the old safety razor days. I’m not willing to go for a straight razor as I’d probably slit my throat since you have to manually sharpen them, but the single bladed Gillette and Wilkenson blades of yesterday seemed to be just fine for my Dad and they were cheap as well. You could get like 25 blades for a buck and you’d just replace them once a week. To me that’s a deal.

When King Gillette started the disposable blade business in 1904 he started a revolution. He sold the holders at a loss knowing that men would pay more over time for the blades. It was a success and I heard the other night that because of Gillette and the disposable double edged blade that that is part of the reason all Presidents to this day no longer have beards. It used to be a cumbersome act to go to the barber where a person who was professionally trained with a straight razor would carve the hair off your face. Now everyone could do so in the convenience of their own home.

Another thing that I miss that I did use at one time was shaving soap. Sure it’s convenient to pull out a can of shaving creme and spray some into your hand, but during a period living on my own when money was in short supply I switched to shaving soap with the old fashion boar bristle brush for applying the soap to your face. You know what I found out? It wasn’t much different than the spray foam and a bar of the stuff would last me over a year and cost me a couple of bucks. There was just something more manly about using the soap on your face before shaving. It was old school before people used the word old school. It was a relaxing methodical process that had the benefit that if you wetted your soap with hot water you got a hot lather on your face to make the shaving easier.

So now I’m on a quest. The going back to old schools single blade shaving with shaving soap is making a bit of an odd comeback, but at a higher price. I think I can find something out there that is affordable and will do the job right. If you’ve got an old safety razor you don’t know what to do with let me know. I’ll take it off your hands. I’m going to find the blades and soap out there somewhere, then I’ll have to go purchase some new cufflinks to go with my French cuffed shirts.

[ad#AdBrite]

Posted on

Interim Mayor: When a Temporary Tattoo Becomes Permanent

OK, I like many of you out there have been wondering, scratching their heads or screaming out loudly during public assemblies [Leland Yee] about the Interim Mayor of San Francisco running for being a real Mayor of San Francisco. I decided I should look this up. Here is what I found for the definition of interim. This specifically refers to a person in an interim role:

An interim official is a person who is filling an official role temporarily. This can be in between two other people, or when the normal person is temporarily unable to do it and somebody else must fill in temporarily or without following the ordinary protocol. For example, a school can have an interim principal, or a country can have an interim prime minister. The interim person may also be called an acting principal or acting prime minister, as they do not have the official position, but serve in the same manner. A specific usage of this term is the interim leader in Canadian politics. The Episcopal Church uses interim clergy to support parishes following the departure of a rector (senior priest) to work with the parish on grieving, the development of new leadership, a rebirth of relationships with a Bishop and diocesan staff, and to encourage discernment for the future without the influence of the former rector – the people of the parish being the “Church.” This helps with the call of a new rector.

Source: Wikipedia

So essentially what we are looking at is a person who has been asked to fill a temporary position that will relinquish said position when the time comes. I have to admit that I’ve liked Ed Lee as the Interim Mayor of San Francisco, but he was just that — an Interim Mayor, not meant to run for re-election [are you hearing me Rose Pak? or ????????????] The term Interim is the equivalent of the term temporary. If you went to a booth at a fair and got a temporary tattoo only to find out that people later voted to make it permanent you’d be a little upset wouldn’t you?

Ed Lee was not supposed to run, nor is he supposed to run for re-election. His post was temporary otherwise he would have been called the Mayor of San Francisco, not Interim Mayor of San Francisco. I am at odds with Senator Leland Yee’s demand that Interim Mayor Lee resign if he wants to run for Mayor, I believe he should step out of the race all together and let a Mayor be elected from those who were bound by the title to not continue on past their selected time was up as was originally stating in his choice for being the Interim Mayor.

Then during the next Mayoral election, Former Interim Mayor Ed Lee can make an attempt to run for Mayor without having to feel like he is reneging on his original agreement. Bruce Reyes Chow asked me in response to my endorsement for Supervisor John Avalos for Mayor who my second and third choices will be. While I am still deciding on my second and third choices and I will post them here [especially since I’ve been nominated as one of the best local politics bloggers by SF Weekly] I can say for sure that Interim Mayor Ed Lee will not be either my second nor third choice in this election. When he took the office there was a promise that he would not run again and he has broken his promise. Therefore he will be crossed off my list.

If you haven’t already, please go to SF Weekly and vote for me as the Best Local Politics Blogger. You have until 8/30/2011 and I’ll appreciate it if I only get into the top three.

[ad#AdBrite]

Posted on

People leaving San Francisco? Fine my me.

I read Carl Nolte’s article on sfgate.com about people who have left San Francisco because of fog, high crime, fog, change and fog. These people obviously don’t get San Francisco. Did they fly in from Corpus Christi on one of our few sunny days and then moved in to experience the fog and thought they were a part of a bait and switch?

I don’t think so. My mother was lucky enough to start to go blind and then die before she really got to see the changes in San Francisco. I took her down by AT&T park a few years ago and she couldn’t believe that people wanted to live there. I agreed, but for a different reason, the price of housing down there. Change happens. I was looking at pictures today of the Sunset District in the 40’s and what I saw were mounds of sand everywhere. Today, you don’t see that. That last bit of inland sand dunes were changed into a soccer field years ago.

What doesn’t change is the fog. Once touted to have medical benefits by doctors they may be right. My father smoked a pack of non-filtered cigarettes a day and drank a 12 pack of beer and lived to be 83 — longer than the current expected life span of a man. Some parts of SF have less fog than others, but they usually have overcast weather at least. I was sitting on the deck of my employer yesterday in Mill Valley looking back on San Francisco. What I saw was a wall of white really, no skyline or anything. It wasn’t until 6pm that the fog started to move over the hills in Mill Valley and I got a mild feel of being in San Francisco.

Now out in the Sunset District we have fog on a daily basis. The kind of fog they made in the movies for all those horror films where you couldn’t see 20 feet in front of you. I experienced that full on during my drive home yesterday. After exiting the Waldo tunnel at around 60 mph I had to hit the brakes because the cars around me were fading out with ten feet. Once I got across the bridge and away from the inlet of the bay the fog was pretty much gone. The reality is that the fog here isn’t as bad as in other places in California where you get what they call tule fog that’s thick and to the ground and you really can’t see five feet in front of you. My Uncle Al used to talk about a trip up to the country where he’d have to get out in front of the car with a lantern so the car could follow him. THAT is fog.

I like fog. It’s kind of an insulating blanket that keeps in some heat, but not a lot of heat. It’s makes us have to use sunglasses less than other cities and if you’re a goth you look better in San Francisco than in say, Honolulu [yes, I have seen Hawaiian goths and they look pretty funny].

I like the fact that I don’t have to hop in my car to get to the corner store or grocery store or if I do get into my car I can eat food from at least 30 different countries within five minutes. I like the fact that when I call 911 I’ve got a fire station two blocks away and a police station a quarter mile away. Response is fast. In Mill Valley I looked on a map and couldn’t find a police or fire station within a five mile radius. When my wife went into labor in the middle of the night we were at the hospital within ten minutes and didn’t need to use a freeway to get there.

The crime rate is localized to a couple of areas of the city. Out here in the Sunset there’s an occasional robbery or car theft, but most are pot grow houses. It’s really not so bad here and I live having the close amenities and weather predictable. For the people who don’t like it here, try a year in say, Phoenix or Houston, then tell me how much you hated it here.

Posted on

I’ve been nominated for the SF Weekly Web Awards!

Yes, yesterday I received an email from SF Weekly’s web editor Jake Swearingen informing me that I have been nominated by them for the Best Local Politics Blogger. I wasn’t really surprised because even though I like to write about all things San Francisco, when it comes to local politics I do like point my finger at the good and bad. I’m not sure what it was that earned me this honor, but I will gladly accept the challenge to see how I pan out.

It could have been all my talk dispelling the myths that the local and state politicians have been putting out about AB376 some of whom weren’t aware that sharkskin suits are made of out cloth and sharkskin wallets are made out of patterned cow hide. I am very against fishing for sharks period because of their place on the food chain that will change the food pyramid of the seas. When some of the people have said, why not ban all shark fishing and not just the fins? I totally agree. Sharks are full of mercury and are listed as a fish not to eat. You can barely find it anywhere in the first place even though Fiona Ma did a google search that I did as well and found that you aren’t finding much shark available for sale in the US, period and I talked about that here.

Maybe it’s the head scratching of politics such as the replanting of the Sunset Boulevard medians with golf course grass that is actually higher maintenance than was mentioned and needs to be trimmed regularly or it gets as unsightly as it is today. Much of it is starting to turn brown and it’s growing over 8″ in many parts of the small section of Sunset boulevard that received it.

Or maybe it’s when I talk about some of the good guys in San Francisco, like my article the other day on Mayoral Candidate John Avalos. As I’ve said before, he’s a good guy that makes you feel like you’re talking to a person, not a person with an agenda.

Well enough of the why’s and wherefores. I’ve been nominated and now it’s up to all of you to vote. I suppose it could be the fact that I’ve lived in San Francisco for over 48 years [which is all my life] and I’ve seen the way the politics have gone over the years that might have got me there. I believe you can vote daily if you like not just once. So you could click on the picture up above that will take you to the site to cast your vote for me, or if you don’t like clicking on pictures for some strange reason you can click on this: http://polls.sfweekly.com/polls/san/webawards11/index.php

[ad#AdBrite]

Posted on

Why Being a Meteorologist Sucks in San Francisco

Louis Black once said that the best job in the world would be the weatherman in San Diego, “How’s the weather today Bob?…Nice.” Now I don’t want to put down our local meteorologists [the new way to de-sexify weatherman], but our people who handle the weather have their work cut out for them and they should get paid more than the same people in San Diego where it’s nice.

I love my weather app on my iPhone and since my wife is from the East Coast I’ve learned that the Weather Channel is sacred to them back there. Whenever someone from the East Coast comes to SF they always want to watch the Weather Channel for some reason. I always tell them you can watch, but don’t expect them to get it right all the time.

San Francisco has four micro-climates, The Fog Belt out by the beach, the Banana Belt out in the Mission, The Wind tunnel of downtown and I’m not a meteorologist, so I don’t remember the name of the fourth, but I believe it’s on the Bay side of the city. When I lived out in the Mission district for six years I don’t think I put on a sweatshirt once unless I was traveling over the hills to get to my parents house in the Sunset where I gladly live now. Here in the Sunset I sometimes get to wear a short sleeve shirt, but it’s usually under several layers because the morning start out cold and wet and sometimes actually warm up so you have to shed your layers of clothes until around 2-3pm when the wind starts to kick up and then you put on heavier clothes if you have to spend time outdoors at all.

Meteorologists always have to give a forecast for the coasts and inlands because you can see as much as a 40° difference in weather. When I go to work it’s cold and wet out here in the late morning and when I get to work in Marin it’s bright and sunny. It was warm there today and for once they got it right. It was supposed to be hot on Friday, but then the wind changed direction and it got cooler and foggier. Then yesterday it was supposed to be heavy fog at the coasts and it was more like an overcast day with high clouds, at least in the Sunset. Richmond District may have been worse.

We all know that the best way to spot a tourist in San Francisco is anyone you see downtown in Summer in shorts. May, if we’re lucky and then usually September & October are the times for wearing your tank tops and shorts [usually]. Sometimes like when we had the big el Niño in the late 90’s we had to wear our winter coats in July and I was grilling in shorts and a tank top on New Year’s Eve. There’s a lot of things that screw with our weather here, but it’s mostly the winds on the coast and the hills. I called my wife from work today to see how things where going, “It’s cold and wet”. I didn’t really want to tell her I was basking in 78° bright sun in Marin, so I just left that out, but she likes the fog here anyway.

Predicting the weather is a hit or miss option in San Francisco so make sure the next time you listen to a weather report to cut your weatherperson a little slack. If they could control the weather they wouldn’t care what you think because they’d be Gods. Oh and contrary to popular belief, Mark Twain never said, The coldest summer I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.

[ad#AdBrite]

Posted on

I Endorse John Avalos for Mayor of San Francisco!

Concerning politics when I was younger, I did what I had to. I voted but I usually went along with party lines and didn’t get to involved with getting in any deeper. This year with a large number of people in the Mayoral race I started to dive in more. I have met several of the candidates and one of them has stood out above all others and that is John Avalos.

He held a meet and greet, not a fundraiser at the Pizza Place in the outside lands of the Sunset. Not exactly one of the best places to choose, but he was one of the few people to venture out that far into a hard working class neighborhood. He offered beer and pizza who all who came and made a point of talking to everyone there. When I had a minute I was able to pull him out of the crowd to talk with him. My first impression is that he didn’t talk to me like a politician running for office. He talked to me like a person who lived in San Francisco and wanted to fix the problems in all parts of the city. We both have something in common in that we both have a child with special needs. We talked about that and found we had a lot in common. We talked about jobs and how unemployment needed to be turned into employment and people who were skilled laborers shouldn’t be lumped in and given the same bare minimum offerings as unskilled laborers. I already have a college degree, so there was nothing that the employment office could offer me in training because it would cost too much.

The best part of all was at the next Mayoral debate I attended and tweeted heavily until my fingers were sore I walked in and when John saw me he came over and shakes my hand and was glad to see in addition to actually remembering my name. I can’t say that about any of the other candidates who I’ve met.

John is one of the few people who on his website lists the issues he wants to address as Mayor of San Francisco. This is rare in the current race where instead of talking about what they want to do for San Francisco all of the candidates have been taking swipes at Mayor Ed Lee for deciding to run for re-election to a seat he got by promising not to run for re-election. Sure John took a swipe too, but it was a small one during the debate in the Castro. No where near as strong as Leland Yee who called for Mayor Lee’s immediate resignation if he wanted to run which is ridiculous or Dennis Herrera who attacked his character repeatedly for not being a man of his word while saying little else about what he planned for San Francisco or lastly Joanna Rees who thought that the empty chair on the stage had been saved for Rose Pak to tell Mayor Lee what to say.

John Avalos has received the top endorsement of the San Francisco Democratic Party. For someone who has been labeled a progressive and gets the top support of the Dems what exactly does that say about the other Democrats running for Mayor. Avalos is also back by the United Educators of San Francisco, because John whats to fix what is wrong with our schools and knows that that is an important part of the cities future. He also received the number two endorsement by the Sierra Club which I feel he should have gotten the top spot since he does not hold a love for any part of a shark that the Sierra Club agrees with, yet endorsed Leland Yee as number one who is in favor of shark fin soup made from a fish that is a top level predator whose body contain enough mercury from pollution to make them unsafe to eat.

Now let’s take a look at the issues John Avalos wishes to address. I’ll only list the topic headings, you can read the rest on his website under issues:

  1. Championing a Just, Equitable and Balanced City Budget
  2. Preserving Neighborhood Character and Supporting Small Businesses
  3. Enhancing Opportunities for All San Franciscans,
  4. Creating Affordable Housing and Protecting Renters
  5. Protecting Our Health and Environment
These are all things that our city needs and it is my believe that from his previous track record that John Avalos is the man to do it. Now lets look at the lesser reasons to vote for him.
  1. He is a Latino American. He can help bridge the gap between races and bring the city together.
  2. He got a rocking hairdo that looks like it takes half the time to get together than Gavin Newsom’s shellacked to perfection hairstyle
  3. He rocks a goatee like no other
  4. He’s got a touch of grey hair which gives him a distinguished look
  5. He looks good in a suit.
Looks mean a lot in politics and John Avalos would be a good face to put on the city of San Francisco. He’s got that look of a business man who’s not afraid to throw back a beer with the people around him and he doesn’t look down on others. To me that means a lot in this city. I urge you all to vote for John Avalos in the coming election because he will bring back San Francisco to being the great city it once was and I sincerely believe that he will carry through on his promises unlike others before him. He has never gone back on his word and he will be there for the city. While I’d like to think I carry a lot of clout in San Francisco, I hope to at least affect a good number of you into reading my words and thinking about what I have said.

[ad#AdBrite]

Posted on

Bringing my Music into the 21st Century

As many of you have been aware, I’m a musician. I started playing piano at seven years old and moved over to guitar at 15 and have played in addition trumpet, flute [which taught me how to fight], harpsichord, organ [no jokes!], clarinet and cello and got into symphonic music so I moved on to synthesizers. In the beginning synthesizers sort of imitated the instruments they were supposed to sound like, but never quite did a perfect job. There were a few people like Isao Tomita and Wendy Carlos who could do classical music that was passable. It even got them quite a bit of fame. Tomita was my inspiration behind my version of Mars, Bringer of War by Gustav Holst.

Inspirational people like this led me to study music composition in college. I ran the electronic music studio as San Francisco State for a couple of years that led to me creating a piece called Armageddon that was featured at a World Electronic Music Convention in Italy in the early 80’s.

That still wasn’t enough. That was electronic and experimental not orchestral. He’ll, I didn’t want to be the orchestra leader, but the entire orchestra myself. So I decided to start out easy in the SFSU Electronic Music Studio by recomposing the Brandenburg Concerto by Bach. I wasn’t really playing anything because back then I didn’t know enough about being an orchestra to play parts of a larger piece that weren’t the melody. So I actually typed in the entire piece on a musical keyboard. Instrument, by instrument. It took me a couple of months and when I was finished I played it and realized, I had lots of typos that while you can excuse them a bit in writing, in music it becomes painful to the ears. So I went back and checked my musical typing into the sequencer, found the mistakes and corrected them. Then I carefully chose the sounds to use to for the strings, flutes, clarinets, trumpets and all the other instruments. Sometimes I had to tweak the patches to make them sound better. In the end, it sounded electronic, but much better that what I had heard before. I felt like I was now in the same category of Tomita and Carlos. Then the day came that I presented it to the class.

The teacher scowled at me, THAT’S NOT ELECTRONIC MUSIC! THAT’S JUST REPURPOSED CLASSICAL! He and everyone else in the class thought it was very good though. He did have a point. Most of the other electronic music was atonal, arhythmic and sort of sounded like banshees and noise on a bad day. But what could I say, I was a pop star of a weird music genre.

OK, I didn’t write it, I didn’t even play it, but it was a start. When I finally got my first pair of real synthesizers and now had an understanding of how to create the sounds I started tinkering with them. It was late one night on a weekend and I had a few shots of scotch in me at the time and a melody came into my head. It had me at first thinking of a battle scene in a movie starting out slowly like when you hear the sound of horses running off in the distance and then they get louder as they get closer and closer and the music get’s louder until you see a large group of warriors on horses coming over the hill screaming and entering battle. All the other parts just fell into place and I think the entire piece was finished in an hour. I called it Victory. It had a feeling of some of the impressionist composers that caused riots when their music was first played along with a nod to Danny Elfman’s orchestral work. It was only about four minutes long. Not exactly enough to be released as a single, so I thought up an idea of turning it into a nine part symphony even though most symphonies had four parts and sometimes three. In the end it was called Symphony of the Nine Angles and I ended up using inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft and the derivative writings of Dr. Michael Aquino and Don Webb. It’s a pretty dark sounding piece of music, but since I was into the darker shades of hard rock and metal it sort of fit.

Next came my CD the Vampyric Suite which was four pieces expressing different aspects of vampires [Anne Rice and all her spin off fanatics were popular at the time] plus Munsalvache [a torrential sounding solo organ piece] and my versions of Night on Bald Mountain and Mars, Bringer of War. So there I was surrounding myself with darkness once again. After that I sort of hung up my classical composing for a long time focusing on getting my hard rock album out. Now that I have a daughter she likes to play on my keyboards and make her own music that I have to say at four years old sounds a whole lot better than some of the stuff that was coming out of the SFSU studio in the 80’s.

This got be back to playing with the synths again and there’s always been one piece that I’ve always loved as a child that I’ve tried in the past, but never been able to do well — The Sorceror’s Apprentice by Georg Dukas. I present that to you now. It will need to be reworked though because unfortunately my synths are at least 15 years old some even older. So the sounds, while good aren’t that good. Hell, you don’t even need synths now, just a keyboard to trigger the sounds on a software synth or sampler that’s running on your computer. So I’m saving up my money to get a copy of MOTU’s Symphonic Instrument. These sound great and they will do this piece justice so that I won’t have to deal with the woodwinds sounding like an accordion. I’ve always been a big fan of MOTU’s products and have used them since the beginning. I run Digital Performer and use their MOTU 828 interface to my computer and the sound is excellent. I’m not going to ask you for donations to get it. I’ll find a way to do it. Hopefully this will inspire me to produce another orchestral album in the near future. While retro music is great for some people, I really need to get my sounds into the 21st century. Give a listen to my version of the Sorceror’s Apprentice and tell me what you think. It’ll get better with the new sounds.