Month: September 2011

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Leland Yee: Outraged over animal abuse, but not shark abuse

I received an email from Senator Leland Yee yesterday about his outrage of the funding of a $750,000 grant for a Brooklyn artist to create sculptures for Muni who in the 70’s made a film where he made an art film in which he adopted a dog and chained it to a fence and then shot the dog.

I have to admit that I had heard of the film, but never saw it, but not only am I disgusted by the idea of this film, but so was the man who made it. He remarked that what he did was wrong and it was the stupidity of his youth that made him unable to see the bigger picture, yet at the same time, we have a California state Senator who while being disgusted by the shooting of a dog, sees nothing wrong with the dismembering of a shark and throwing its writhing, living body back into the ocean to die as being a Chinese cultural tradition.

To quote Senator Yee from his email:

This week, Ed Lee and the SFMTA approved spending $750,000 of taxpayer money on a central subway contract for Brooklyn artist Tom Otterness, who made a 1977 film in which he chained a dog to a fence and then shot and killed that dog on camera.

Yes, you read that correctly. He chained a dog to a fence and then shot and killed that dog.

This is a completely unacceptable use of taxpayer dollars.

I woke up early this morning to find a youtube video had been sent to me by an old friend of mine, Dave King. This is a video of Chef Gordon Ramsey tasting Shark Fin Soup for the first time to see what all the fuss was about. Not only do you get a chef’s analysis of the soup, but Ramsey also goes out to see how the shark fins are acquired. Warning for those friends of mine who are defenders of animal rights, while sharks aren’t all warm and fuzzy like a dog or a cat [which also happen to be eaten as a part of “traditional Chinese culture”  in China that I have written about before] this video does show the finning of sharks, in which case you might want to stop the video after Chef Ramsey leaves the restaurant.

Senator Yee, who is a candidate for mayor of San Francisco [which I might add he filed for just a week after being re-elected as Senator of California] has a problem with animal abuse as long as the animal being abused isn’t a shark. He talks about how shark meat is available everywhere, yet you can’t find it anywhere and the basis if AB 376 is an attack on “Traditional Asian Culture” when Chinese citizens are the only Asians who consume shark fin soup. In reality, this email isn’t an attack on a man who shot a dog, but an attack upon another fellow Chinese citizen of San Francisco, Mayor Ed Lee. While as you all know I am not in favor of our interim Mayor running for re-election because it goes against the promise he had made that he would not run for re-election, I also do not like the focus that our Chinese candidates for Mayor are using to focus on getting the Chinatown vote. While Chinese make up 33% of San Francisco’s population, only 18% of them actually vote and the majority of the Chinese population isn’t living in Chinatown, but the majority of non-voting Chinese is.

Supervisor John Avalos and Attorney Dennis Herrera are making huge jumps in polls because of the fact that they are focusing on the population of San Francisco, not a small eight block area of San Francisco. We need a Mayor that will focus on all of the districts to bring about change. From the Sunset to the Bayview, from the Mission to North Beach and yes, also Chinatown, but not appearing to be only in favor of helping Chinatown.

Now with that being said, on to the movie:

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Ortega Library/West Sunset Playground

Tuesday my wife and I were out running some errands when we decided to take a trip to the newly reopened Ortega Library. I spent many a day there when I was a student at A.P. Giannini and I have to say it wasn’t a very inviting place back then, but it had books.

Well, libraries today have lots more than books. They’ve got CD’s, DVD’s, Computers and oh right, books.I have to say that the new Ortega library that one resident was trying to keep from being built to preserve an antique [and that’s generous] piece of sh*t building in tact is very nice. Like many of the new libraries there are lots of tables with pop up electrical sockets for your laptops and free WiFi that’s got a pretty decent bandwidth. While being bigger than it’s former self it’s still not that huge, but if you have a computer you can go online and find a book and have it delivered to that library which makes it very convenient to us since it’s closer to our house.

I’m really sorry I didn’t take pictures of the place, but I was busy doing so much else that my time ran out before I had to run off to get to work. On the other hand the playground outside the library I had to say is really spectacular. My wife and I oohed and aahed as we walked across the newly installed spongy anti-faceplant-then-run-to-mommy foam that was down. The play structures are well built, up to date and not the eyesore pile of sand with Russian Industrial Complex™ fixings like there used to be. I really wanted to be a little kid again and when my wife wasn’t looking I actually did begin to play around on the stuff. I figured I shouldn’t work too much since there were three elderly Chinese ladies all sitting on the triple see-saw so I suppose in there eyes I was a kid.

They’ve really done a lot of work around the library and playground to beautify the area, but we’ll all have to wait a year when all the newly planted greenery has had a chance to fit in or die. One downside I did see was that the plants all had thick layers of fine redwood mulch around them which I suspect will be grabbed by the handfuls by pixie stix amped up kids and thrown all over the place very shortly.  While it’s a new playground I have to keep in mind that it is a new playground and hasn’t had to take on the wear and tear of a few years and drunken weekend teenagers who have a love for hanging out in playgrounds and acting like 8 year olds while drinking Old English 800 [not that I have any previous experience in that sort of thing of course.]

I seriously hope that the whole area holds up well because we have lots of kids in the Sunset district and the playgrounds are always used by private pre-schools around them as well as the kids, so many of them get crowded. It’s nice when you’ve got a special needs child that you have a place to take them where they can run around and play without feeling like 30 other kids equals 1000 other kids and overwhelms them. We’ll be giving it a shot with our daughter this weekend so I’ll have more to report about a weekend there when there’s more than just the Tai-Chi clan out there doing their morning workout.

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Muni Can’t get out of First Gear

Well I have to say it’s been a couple of months since I’ve had to take Muni and now I have something to compare it to and I have to say that I have to side with Greg Dewar of NJudah Chronicles on the sad state of Muni.

I have a job in Mill Valley, California. I have roughly 12 miles to travel to work by car and I can drive from the Sunset District to Mill Valley in about 20 minutes. When I  went to the SF Weekly awards last Friday I drove up and parked at West Portal station to get the quick route downtown to Montgomery station. Total travel time…35 minutes, total distance, less than 5 miles.

I don’t understand how a metro service that is located underground and with no traffic interference would take longer than getting in a car to cross the Golden Gate Bridge where there is traffic and narrow lanes and tourists that don’t know the area so they drive at the speed limit or less sometimes. I have previously written about my hatred of crossing bridges in San Francisco because it was easy to get out of the city, but hard to get back. That mostly applies to the Bay Bridge. The Golden Gate is a pleasure to drive in comparison.

To take a cab downtown equals about the same time as it does for me to drive to Marin. It’ll cost you more, but if you’ve got to get somewhere quickly why is it a car does it better than a Mass Transit System? Isn’t the idea behind a Mass Transit System is that it does a better job of moving people from point A to point B more quickly and efficiently than a gas guzzling car?

You also have to remember that we’re talking about a subway system here and not buses. If you had to take a bus from point A to point B it would take you at least an hour.

Muni has been in the papers lately due to the fact that they’re paying their people a lot of money, but not delivering a good on time rate. Then there is the Central Subway debate that is supposed to run from King St. to Chinatown [which to be honest, I used to walk from Market St. when I worked at 500 Washington St in about 15 minutes.] It was originally supposed to run from King St.. to Fisherman’s Wharf and then cut back to North Beach which would make more sense as you would have gotten more tourist dollars into city coffers instead of running from Market St. to a ten square block small area of the city. I honestly can’t be in favor of any expansion of Muni lines at this point in time until they can get it right with what they already have.

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SF Weekly Web Awards

Ye Gods! My head is still pounding from Friday night. After working for years right across the street from 111 Minna I finally had an excuse to go in. I definitely would have to recommend the place for people to visit if you want to get the hipster vibe of San Francisco.

There is so much going around in my head that I want to cover I hope I get to all of it. First the hip vibe of the place. Two bars with a wide selection of liver degrading beverages to offer. On this night it was open bar on Blue Moon Beer and fair trade Quinoa produced vodka. I started with samples of the vodka and then their goji berry infused vodka. Pretty good stuff I have to say, but since I hadn’t eaten anything yet I definitely started to feel it quickly. Everyone in the place had a smartphone [usually an iPhone] in their hands the entire time.

I ran into Greg Dewar of the NJudah Chronicles and then the Blue Moon started to flow. Greg made me realize that there is a part of social media that we often leave out, that’s the part where you get away from your computer and go outside your house and actually meet the people you tweet/facebook/foursquare with. Greg knew just about every blogger of influence in San Francisco and he introduced me to them [if they were there and not home writing their blogs].

My first introduction was to the most fabulous [and tall] Beth Spotswood. I frequently read her blog at sfgate.com and I think I’ll focus more on checking it out after I’ve met her. She is bubbly and vivacious and when she walks into the room you know she’s there. You don’t have to look for her. I couldn’t even get a picture of her because she always had a crowd around her.

Then I got to meet Broke Ass Stuart. WOW, what can I say. I had never seen a picture of him but he was exactly what I expected him to look like. Rockin’ a suit and tie I had about 60 seconds before a wave of hotties crashed all over him and he was swept away. I didn’t even have a chance to remind him that I was featured as the broke ass of the week on his blog a few months ago when I was a broke ass, but he was definitely the pimp daddy of the evening. Ah I remember the days when I had that kind of mojo. I need to get out more and meet these people.

There was Tom Prete of Ocean Beach Bulletin and Woody LaBounty of the Western Neighborhoods Project who I’ve know for a while. I was a bit honored when Woody referred to me and the local bloggers of the Sunset as his media reps. These are two blogs that people with an interest in the Sunset District and the Old San Francisco should definitely check out. I was sorry that I didn’t get a chance to meet Breanna Lambert of ScoutMob since we tweet back and forth with each other frequently, but it was probably an in/out for her since ScoutMob had their own party going on in the Haight.

Now let’s talk about the food. Inside there was The Heartbaker offering up some yummy desserts and luckily I got to them when it was early and I was their first customer. I tried one of their carmel brownies with sea salt. Now I’ve seen sea salt as an addition to chocolate, but I haven’t had a chance to try it. I have to say, it’s not weird. It’s great. I started to feel like one of the judges on Chopped while I was talking with them about how you’re first hit with the chocolate then the carmel slides onto your tongue adding sweetness to balance the tart of the dark chocolate followed by a salty burst at the end. Just as a side note, I have to say that seeing a group of pretty girls with lots of tattoos that could cook was a real treat. 15 years ago pretty girls with tattoos that I knew couldn’t make a cup of coffee.

Outside was where the real action was. The Bacon Bacon food truck was working the alley and they were a big attraction. Bacon, Bacon and more Bacon. Once again, they had Bacon dipped in chocolate, dredged in toffee. It was very, very good, but I could barely taste the bacon with all the great chocolate that was on it. Just so you all know Bacon should always be capitalized. That is not poor grammar on my part.

The only downside of the evening was the DJ. Not that the music was bad, but I decided to pull out my decibel meter to check and I can give the rating at Motorhead loud. It was definitely past 120db’s which isn’t very good for your hearing in the long term. Plus you pretty much had to scream to talk with anyone or go outside.

All in all it was a fun evening that warranted not just one photo, but a gallery all to itself. I would have taken more pics, but after I started meeting people I had to stop for a bit.

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111 Minna tonight!

SF Weekly is holding it’s web awards party tonight at 111 Minna Street in SF. I will be there to celebrate my finishing in the top three for best local politics blog in SF even though I didn’t win.

I’d like to invite you all to come along and celebrate with me. When I started this blog over four years ago I was writing about San Francisco and apparently my take on San Francisco politics stood out and got me nominated for the change to be the winner. At the very least I’ll be there with tons of cards in hand to promote this site and hopefully get a few more people to read my posts on a regular basis.

i’ve decided I won’t cop an attitude because I lost to a blog that’s an aggregator. I was still in the top three and next year I will crush the competition. So if you have an extra $10 in your pocket come out and enjoy the open bar with me and all of the fabulously hip San Francisco people.

Oddly enough I used to work right across the street from 111 Minna, but this will be my first time actually going there. I’m looking to have a great time and I hope some of you will join me.

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AB376 passes! On to the Governor!

I was informed by the California Director of the Humane Society of the United States Jennifer Fearing yesterday that AB376 passed through the senate 25-9 and now proceeds to the Governor for final sign off to be made a law making California partner with Washington, Oregon and Hawaii on the ban on the sale or possession of shark fins.

To me this is great. In our oceans the sharks are the top of the food chain. We kind of take the food chain for granted. On land, humans are considered to be the top of the food chain. 90% of  the shark population has been decimated by shark finning. If  90% of the human population was decimated by some sort of fate how do you think we would be living? Not too well is my suspicion. The food chain is much more fragile than a chain and when you remove the majority of the top of the food chain it becomes destabilized and starts to fall apart.

This can be seen in parts of the world where animals not from the area have been introduced. Crops fail, livestock dies and people go hungry. Shark is not a popular fish to eat and hasn’t been for almost two decades. Sharks because of their nature living in salt water do not excrete urine and their flesh when caught has a very strong ammonia content making them difficult to prepare. Their flesh is also high in mercury making them and their fins unsafe to eat.

As expected there were a few people against the ban. To quote our local Senator Leland Yee’s comments on the subject:

the bill would not save a single shark because there is no ban on taking the rest of the body other than the fin.

If it won’t save a single shark, then why not vote on it? His logic is fueled by the idea that people still eat shark meat. They pretty much don’t. Chefs are even working now to come up with a substitute for shark fin in the mostly tasteless shark fin soup because it should be more ecologically sound to reproduce a tasteless dish than to destroy our oceans to preserve a tradition that only one type of people enjoy. Shred up some tofu and add some dried shaved tuna flakes to the broth. I am truly sorry that this bill does seem aimed at Chinese people who eat shark fin soup to celebrate at weddings or the birth of a child. It does seem like a cultural attack, but it is an attack on a practice that is destroying our oceans for a small piece of meat that is high in uric acid and mercury. Doing away with this dish will probably bestow longevity on the Chinese people who previously consumed the dish.

I was at my doctor’s office a few years ago and thought I was reading an episode of Time magazine when I realized it was China Today and noted an article on the Chinese fighting against the cultural tradition of eating dogs. You would think it was an attack by PETA to see the pictures,  but these were Chinese citizens who would rather pet dogs than pot them.

Cultural traditions change over time. White people once owned slaves, but they do not anymore. Chinese once bound the feet of their women to make them attractive, but they do not anymore. Shark fin soup has had it’s time and should not be relegated to the history books. California is the 2nd largest consumer of shark fin soup outside of China and is fastly rising to the number one position. Even China is backing away from shark fin soup.

In my travels around San Francisco it is common for Chinese restaurants to post their menus in the window and so far I have only a small number that serves shark fin soup. I’ll admit that I haven’t been to Chinatown that probably has more, but that’s only a supposition on my part. It does seem a bit strange though that there was such a big fight to uphold a Chinese cultural tradition that is rather hard to find.

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New Album: Exile in the Sunset

Well, I spent my labor day weekend laboring and I’ve finally got enough songs to put out my next album. It is going to be called Exile in the Sunset because no matter where I go I always end up back in the fog and gloom of the Sunset District. This is another hard rock album that if the names Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Yngwie Malmsteen and Stevie Ray Vaughn are names you know then you’ll want to check this one out, because they’ve all influenced me.

I’ve got thirteen songs this time and they cover the hard rock versions of blues, classical and just plain guitar wanking/shredding. Part of this is probably due to the fact that for awhile in the late 70’s/early 80’s I had a guitar teacher when I was a teenager who was Joe Satriani. He came out to San Francisco and with a band called the Squares and was teaching guitar to earn a few extra bucks. It was the best money I ever spent. Joe taught me how to move my fingers on the guitar as no other person could. He also taught me how to coordinate my two hands on the guitar to work together which took me awhile to figure out how to make two different parts of me do the exact same thing at the exact same time which made me play much cleaner.

I also have to thank my college professor, Dr. Robert Mortenson who taught me composition. Granted, it was from a classical background, but he taught me how to think about what the other instruments would and should be doing when you composed a piece of music.

Note that the picture isn’t the actual album cover, but more of a place holder for the actual cover that I’m working on right now. If you click on it you can get a free copy of a song on the album called Day in/Day Out. It’ll give you an idea of what the album will sound like. If you’re interested in my music you can find it in iTunes and you can purchase CD’s if you still believe in that ancient format can visit my website: wwww.saundhaus.com and actually purchase CD’s by clicking on the cover photo of the album. Not all of it is rock as I’ve got an odd Danny Elfman, orchestral composer side to me, but check it out. I hope you enjoy it!

Oh and last, but not least…HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! I’m another year older, but I feel like a kid.

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I WON! I WON! I, what?

I received a very apologetic email from someone who I will allow to remain nameless at SF Weekly that for a whole ten minutes yesterday I was declared the winner of Best Local Politics Blog. This person apologized for their mistake which is why I am leaving their identity anonymous, but said that I am in the top three run off candidates for the position.

Hmmm…maybe we could have a little ranked choice voting here. There are now three people in the running and I am one of them. I am wondering if SF Weekly will go with the person with most votes or if they will do a ranked choice voting method or if they will just say, screw it, this person will make us look the best.

I woke up this morning in my usually morning fog that I get from living out by the beach and started to do my best thinking in the shower [because waking up in a foggy climate and dowsing yourself with water sets the brain in motion quickly]. Why was I announced as the winner prematurely? Could it be because I got the most votes? Probably that is the case, but since we are a Federal Republic and not a true Democracy the voice of the people doesn’t count, but it only suggests who is the winner. My fate is in the hands of  SF Weekly’s illuminati who decide the fate of the world or at least San Francisco which is the major part of the world for those of us who live here.

That being said I would gladly accept the bronze medal and take third place if that is the case and I will definitely be in attendance this coming September 9th at 111 Minna Street [5-9pm $10 ticket charge] to accept my fate. I had planned to have a Baghdad by the Bay meet up party in September and I’m glad that now I don’t have to foot the bill. I encourage all of you to come to to celebrate the power of the pen [or keyboard in my case] with me at the SF Weekly awards. I will be there in full regalia wearing duds from Harry O’s Menswear across the alley, because no one knows dress for success better than Harry O.

Maybe if we’re lucky we can get Public Safety CTO of Xentrans, David Cruise to pour his award winning Virgin Bull for all of us [vote for his drink at http://virginamerica.com/vx/next-top-cocktail to keep him the lead by a long shot right now]. I would love to meet as many of my readers as possible. Let’s all get together and be rockstars for the evening at one of the coolest hangouts in Baghdad by the Bay!

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Recology needs to step it up

GARBAGE! The tainted word on the street. My mother always told me that if I didn’t get good grades I would end up as a garbage collector. As it turns out the garbage collectors make a better wage than I was making with my college degree for some years. Now I have to admit that with technology’s evolution garbage collection has gotten much better and our streets are cleaner, so I’m not going to totally blame Recology who collects our garbage problem, but they are a part of it.

In my unemployed times I spent my mornings at home getting up early and pretty much doing nothing in the mornings except look for work on craigslist. Come garbage collection day I would hear the trucks come by and the guy would haul the bins to the truck that would pick them up and dump their contents into the garbage or recycle areas where they would be crushed down a bit.

These were still open areas and just as we all know when you stomp down your garbage to fit more in it expands back a bit afterwards. The problem with this is as the trucks pick up speed some of the garbage blows out the side of the bins back onto the street. San Francisco being the windy city that it is causes the garbage to be blown back across our lawns, houses, sometimes into our entryways.  Just yesterday I pulled a receipt out of my entryway that turns out came from cafe out in the Mission. After that I picked up the lid and straw from a McDonald’s cup that the closest one was a couple miles away.

This isn’t discards from people driving by, but they come from one of two places: Recology trucks that let some of their garbage fly off or from recycle raccoons. The second are the people that at night when you put out your bins go through them to find anything of value to take and sell back at the local recycle areas in the neighborhood. Maybe that lid from McDonald’s came out of our bin from our last trip there, but we didn’t throw it on our lawn, the recycle raccoons who go through our bins, some of which I’ve seen stop and wait for you to bring your bins out and even say thank you before raiding your bins have forgotten to put back.

These people are essentially stealing money from the city by foraging in your waste bins for aluminum and glass. They’ll pull out the bags of recycling you’ve deposited and go through them to find what they need and the nice ones put back what they don’t. Some on the other hand leave the bags outside to move on quickly, or just give it a toss back without bothering to pick up what falls out.

These tend to be elderly citizens looking to make an extra buck and I don’t necessarily blame them for looking to make an extra buck, but they need to either understand that their presence is making our neighborhoods look ugly or Recology needs to find a way to keep them from raiding the bins. PG&E has a system that if you have a gate on the front of your house that the meter readers have a key to get in to read the meters, so perhaps Recology could create locked bins that the collectors would have to unlock before dumping in the trucks. It would also be nice if the bins were made of a more sturdy trapezoidal shape that would keep them from blowing over in the wind dumping their contents on the street rather than the inverse trapezoid shape  that makes them top heavy and bottom light that doesn’t work with our winds.

I love my neighborhood, but it really burns my ass [thank you Terry Baum for that phrase] some days when I see my neighbors hard work and money invested in making their front yard look nice only to see it littered with paper and twine wrapped around their eco-friendly, low water consumption, San Francisco values plants.

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