Author: Eric Kauschen

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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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Phil Ting for Mayor: My Thoughts

I have tried to post regularly, but now with a crazy work schedule and creeping overtime I have had to pull back a little. Once I get adjusted and settled in this should change. Now onto the article.

When I first heard that Phil Ting was running for Mayor of San Francisco I decided to keep an eye on him. He was the county assessor, so he knew about real estate, finance and taxes. He started off with a great title for his campaign, Reset San Francisco. I kind of liked that idea. He also talked about Muni reform, score again. It wasn’t until I attended my first Mayoral debate that a few questions started to rise.

He stated that while he has been in office that the city has come in under budget every year. OK, then why is our city in the red? Is someone budgeting more funds than we can afford to pay for? In my mind I don’t care whether or not San Francisco comes in under or over it’s budget, but whether or not San Francisco comes in at the end of the day in the black.

His statement that Muni needs to change is something everyone is talking about. When I worked downtown I didn’t have too much problem with Muni. The buses and streetcars I usually get from my house take me downtown in about 40 minutes without much walking. I have other friends such as Greg Dewar [@njudah] who would beg to differ with me, but he doesn’t use the same Muni route as I do so I won’t argue with him on that. Apparently the N-Judah has lots of problems that need to be fixed since it is the busiest muni route in San Francisco.

Where Phil Ting really got me was on his repeal of Prop 13 so that people of San Francisco would be paying the real property taxes they owe. I took offense at this because the comment was targeted at me, even though not only is everyone in California benefitting from Prop 13 and that it is a state law that a Mayor cannot overturn his comment was aimed at those people who purchased a house before the first dot.com boom and have lived in them ever since. It takes about 10-15 years after purchasing a house to notice a difference in your property taxes. That is, if your home value continues to increase. Currently we’re in a down swing so it might take closer to 30 years now.

Phil used this as the excuse for why we are so low in state school ratings for achievement. I suppose he forgot that when the California State Lottery went into effect that a major portion of the profit was to go towards school funding. It was originally specified that it could not be used for teacher pay raises, but that’s where it went at first because the teachers were so underpaid that not too many people wanted to be teachers.

But let me move back to Proposition 13. Currently the taxes on your house can be raised only 1.1% per year. People are saying that is the reason that San Francisco is one of the most expensive cities to live in. I did a check of  the top 10 most expensive cities in the US to live in and yes, San Francisco was listed as number five, but out of the 10 cities only two were in California and those were San Francisco and Los Angeles [which according to the report is even more expensive to live in that San Francisco], so can Prop 13 be blamed for the failing of our schools and how expensive it is to live in California? No. New York City, Honolulu, and Miami are the top three. All in states without a Prop 13, but much higher taxes. I have a friend who I am sorry to say that his mother died recently and he received his mother’s house in upstate New York along with her rent controlled apartment in downtown Manhattan. The rental property is a deal since his mother has lived there for many years and due to rent control he doesn’t even pay $1000/month for his gorgeous almost penthouse like view of Manhattan. The two bedroom house on the other hand he has to pay $12,000 per year in property tax as well as $4,000 per year in school tax. His parents have owned the house upstate for many years longer than when my parents purchased our house in the Sunset District back in 1954. My friend has also been unemployed for longer than myself and he has to pay $10 for a pack of cigarettes in downtown Manhattan. This is not a cheap place to live and even though they have no equivalent of Prop 13, it is still the most expensive city to live in. Two bedroom condo’s sell for close to $2,000,000 there not including the HOA monthly fees. My friend has about enough cash to last him a year and half and then he’s in big trouble if he can’t find a job.

So let’s say we repeal Prop 13 like Phil Ting wants to do and say property taxes increased to 5% each year with a reassessment to bring homes benefitting more it being brought up to modern day reality. I could possibly live with that even though it would triple my yearly property tax, but from what I understand, if you home goes down in value the tax doesn’t really, it just doesn’t increase. The idea behind prop 13 was to help residents remain in their homes by not having to pay more in taxes as they got older and on a limited income. This was hijacked by businesses who got added in and they don’t want to sell their spaces they own because they can rent them out for more [rental control doesn’t apply to businesses] and gain more on their investment. Since we have a much higher turnover rate in businesses who are renting their locations in California, not just San Francisco this means that business property owners gain more than homeowners.

Therefore, I think Phil should start by speaking more directly about his plans for prop 13 by trying to amend it to include only homeowners and not businesses. That way some of the businesses that were cheap in say the SoMA area when they were purchased that now charge a fortune to rent out would be paying more into funds of the state so that which would trickle down to San Francisco and San Francisco wouldn’t have to tax businesses to be here like most cities in the US. This would help San Francisco more than a total repeal of a state law that an SF Mayor can’t do, but Phil Ting could work toward that. If prop 13 were removed completely people would start to leave San Francisco, but not by a lot so property prices might drop a bit because of the tax increase. It could also theoretically drop California from it’s current ranking as the 8th largest global economy. Phil, keep this in mind.

Monday, I will announce my official endorsement for the Mayor of San Francisco and my reason why.

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Empire Avenue: Stock Trading for Social Media

I don’t have lots of money to play around in the stock market as those who saw my broke-ass of the week feature on the brokeassstuart website. If I did, I’d put it into Apple because even when things suck, they go up. Now there’s a website for people who would like to buy stock in their social media friends and hopefully gain a profit. It’s kind of like fantasy football for the stock market lovers.

What you do is sign up and connect all your social media sites to it so they can check it out and see how much you’re worth. After I finished I had started at somewhere around $11e [e being, eaves, the name of the empire commerce currency] and noticed that people started buying shares in me. I’m hooked up in a lot of sites, not just twitter and Facebook, but instagr.am, youtube, foursquare, LinkedIn, etc so I guess that’s why it showed my value at an increase of +7.217. That’s a lot higher than some of the bigger names out there.

I’m still not sure what you can do with what you earn, but I started to buy shares in friends of mine who are on twitter and Facebook who have good increases. I’ve never had money to invest in the stock market, though I did have an great-aunt who gave me her shares in a steel company that was sold and cashed out and I got $10k with no money invested so I can’t complain there, especially since he put me through college way back when…

This seems like a very interesting experiment since after I joined klout.com within a week I was asked in five different interviews what my klout score was. Who knows, in the future people will be asking what your social media stock price is at. Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll break 400 like Apple at the end of the month, but I have no idea what the highest valued social media geek is worth at the moment. I’ll need to do more research. If you join and want a good return on your investment with the e that they give you look up BBTB since that’s the abbreviation of my stock. It’s climbing quickly. Since I’ve started writing this article my stock has jumped over 10 points overnight.

 

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BART Protest: When good ideas go bad

I have to count my blessings that I don’t work downtown at the moment because yesterday’s protest would have done the exact opposite to me of what the protesters wanted. Yesterday was a day when a good idea when wrong and I’m not even sure it was that good of an idea.

There is still a little dispute about whether it was because of the shooting of a homeless man who while being drunk threw a bottle at BART police and then drew a knife and started to come at them or whether or not it was BART cutting off cell phone service last week. There’s a couple of problems with each of these.

First, Charles Hill, attacked police officers. Sure, they probably could have done some TV style police moves and disarmed him and got him to the ground, but TV isn’t real life. He had a knife pulled out and after throwing a bottle at police started to come towards them. I don’t know if he ran, lunged or just stood there stabbing the air in the direction of the cops, but he was a threat. Oscar Grant on the other hand, wasn’t a threat. I can see people protesting that incident, but not this one.

The second is the Guy Fawkes masks protesting censorship by turning off cell phone service underground to protestors. Here’s a couple of things. I actually liked going into the station after work at one of my last jobs because the cell reception was crap. I could barely get 3G service on my cell even in BART so to me if BART and Muni kept their mouths shut no one would have noticed. The second is that most of the protesters probably don’t know that Guy Fawkes came to fame by being a religious fanatic in England who was caught sitting on a number of powder kegs to be used to assassinate King James I and hopefully restore a Catholic Monarchy in England. Fawkes ended up committing suicide at his execution by jumping from the scaffold he was to be hung from before he was to be drawn and quartered. Choosing one pain over a more grisly pain. The Brits back then only hung you until you were almost dead, then dropped you, tied you down, sliced off your genitals, then ripped your guts out and if you were lucky as the last act of mercy beheaded you. Actually, now that I think about it, the people who make V is for Vengence should have done some homework as well.

Many people are calling this a denial of freedom of speech. No one was denying their the right to speak, just not on cell phones which work poorly underground anyway. I’m not even sure why you would need a cellphone at a protest anyway since you’re supposed to make your voice heard to those you are protesting against.

Much of this fell on deaf ears. Yes, there were BART Police there and many of the protesters were arrested, but did they get their point across? In my opinion, NO. When you stage a protest your goal is to bring the people around you into your outrage and join you. What this protest did was anger those people who were trying to get home from work to be with their families. No to have their trip home interrupted by a mass of people angry over the death of a man who attacked police or because they couldn’t use their cellphones in a place where cellphones don’t work very well in the first place.

I think the protesters today need to do a little homework to learn how to be more effective. Perhaps it would have been better to protest at BART headquarters, but that would require more work to get there. People will not join your cause if your only purpose is to disrupt the people. BART and MUNI don’t really care too much about that, but the people do.

 

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Sam Mazza and his Castle

I’ve talked about Pacifica before and I figured it was time to talk about it again since I just discovered that Sam Mazza who owned the castle up on the hill and who died in 2001 now has his castle open to tours on the weekend by the Pacifica Historical Society.

I’ve only been able to see pictures of the inside and a few video clips from local news about the place, but I’ve never been able to actually enter Sam’s place. As it turns out Sam himself never lived there having purchased the castle in 1959 for $29,000 it was more a quirky art installation for him.

Sam was a painter who worked for theaters in the Bay Area and collected much of the stuff that in his mind was what a castle should have, swords, suits of armor, coats of arms and of course, a throne. After doing a little digging I found out the history of this castle on the hill and thought it would be interesting to share.

Built in 1908 originally by lawyer Henry H. McCloskey [grandfather of politician Pete McCloskey] it was to serve as a safe haven after the shake up in San Francisco in 1906 we all refer to as the Great Quake. When McCloskey died in 1916 it soon became of all things an abortion clinic run by a man with a history of identity theft. After his arrest his son continued the business until he also was arrested [remember back then not only was abortion illegal, but an extremely risky procedure.]

In the 20’s the castle passed to a miner from Montana who turned it into a speakeasy during prohibition with it expanding into a brothel. I’m sure the roaring 20’s roared pretty loud there since the police were regulars, but they usually entered with battering rams to try and shut the place down. Since the place kept in business even after the police kept trying to close it down I’m sure there were a few very powerful businessmen and politician probably from San Francisco who were caught in the age when they showed up. After it final closing it made a shift in the opposite direction being turned into a Red Cross station.

That would have been fine if the Eakins family which owned the castle and turned it into a Red Cross hadn’t leased it to the Coast Guard. Apparently the military folk didn’t treat the house too well and pretty much tore the place to pieces.

The castle sat in disrepair for years until Sam Mazza had a chance to realize his dream. I remember seeing him on TV once giving a tour to a field reporter for the local news. He was an unassuming guy that did what he did in the castle just because he could. One day, I’m hoping to have that ability too.

After his death he left money to start the Sam Mazza Foundation. Apparently being a painter could make you some decent money back then. Be sure to check out this site to see the slide shows of the inside and outside of the house. Oh and if you like spooky things the castle is also supposedly haunted, but how could it be a real castle without having a few ghosts walking around?

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