San Francisco is My Home

29
Feb

Sometimes the best apples are at the bottom. Right?

Author: kris, Category: News, People, Politics

From out of the bowels of San Francisco, Nader has chosen Matt Gonzalez as his running mate. (Nader’s running again, did you know this? That sound you hear is the sound of thousands of conservative Democrats groaning in unison. They’re so cute, like little synchonized knee-jerkers.)

According to the Chron, Gonzalez, who has served on the SF Board of Supervisors and lost to Newsom in the 03 mayoral race, “is a hero to the Bay Area left.” The local anarchists I know mostly don’t like him much, but I’m guessing that’s not the left the Chron is talking about. All I know is that while playing for the Supes, he did enact legislation that forbad the SF Zoo from keeping elephants, for which he has earned my eternal love. And he used to hold wine and cheese parties in his office for any members of the public who were interested.

As a complete unknown to most of the country, even the three of them who still read the news, I don’t see how Gonzalez could possibly help Nader. And as Public Enemy Number 1 in the eyes of many Demos, I don’t see how Nader could possibly help Gonzalez. In fact, their race for the presidency will be way less interesting to watch than their race to see who can shoot the other one in the foot faster.

This image of Nader is from here.

27
Feb

SF loses a character

Author: kris, Category: Celebrities, Food, News, People

Famed restaurateur Tommy Toy died. He was known around town, and catered to several local celebrities including Coppola. His food was art (so I’ve heard), and the fact that his haberdasher described him as “outgoing” is way less telling than the fact that he had a haberdasher at all.

(If you are wondering, haberdasher = a retail dealer in men’s furnishings, as shirts, ties, gloves, socks, and hats.)

You can read the full article here, but I especially liked the ending:

“Mr. Toy is survived by his wife, Veronica, a son, Darrick, and a grandson, all of San Francisco.”

29
Jan

The It Girls of San Francisco

Author: kris, Category: People

On Saturday, some friends and I got together to watch the Miss America pageant. All the participants dutifully stuck to the party line in their pre- and post-contest interviews: This year’s Miss America will be the “it girl,” confident, strong, smart — and, of course, thin enough that you could add her to your cheese plate when you run out of crackers. (”Carbs! Carbs!” the host shouted to the contest losers, waving a plate of muffins in front of them like snausages in front of a good dog.)

Well, I enjoy beauty pageant irony as much as the next it girl, but let us take a moment to enjoy a brief reality check. Allow me to present a few of the real “it girls” currently haunting San Francisco and environs:

Carmen Chu

Replacing the notoriously corrupt Ed Jew on the SF Board of Supervisors, Chu had worked as the deputy director in the mayor’s office of finance before he offered her the job on the Board. Many were skeptical at first, given her age (29) and lack of hands-on political experience, but most have since admitted that she is smart and capable. Chu is the daughter of Chinese immigrants, and worked in her parents’ restaurant growing up before graduating magna cum laude from Occidental. She will kick ass, take names, and eat carbs.

Image from the Chronicle website, by Deanne Fitzmaurice.

Janie Spahr

You might not expect a 64 year old mother of two to be a Presbyterian minister. You certainly wouldn’t expect her to be an out lesbian who has spent much of her career fighting tirelessly for the rights of “all second-class citizens,” from LGBT people to women to people of color. But all of this is true about Janie Spahr.

Spahr founded the Spectrum Center in Marin, which provides HIV awareness training and support, youth counseling, and political advocacy. She has also spent most of her life working with conservative religious groups to gently open their minds to the notion that LGBT people are just as human and normal as everyone else. You can check out the full bio of this amazing woman here.

Photo was taken from The Bay Area Reporter website.

My mom

The Vice President of a local software company, Eydie Larson began her career as an ordinary programmer. Because of her dazzling technical skills, her strong work ethic, her intelligence, and her eerie ability to manipulate people into doing what she wants, Larson rose through the management ranks to become a VP and Board Member. She also spent many years during my childhood leading my Girl Scout troop, and if you think it’s easy to steer four kids through the rocky shoals of adolescent backstabbing and insecurity, think again.

Larson is currently rehabilitating a neurotic rescue dog, and has spent the last few years tirelessly campaigning for grandchildren.

28
Dec

Sad news for a city legend

Author: kris, Category: Charity, News, People, Volunteering

Pali Boucher is the woman who made me want to be a journalist. I’d already been freelancing for one newspaper for a couple of months when I interviewed her, but it was something I’d kind of fallen into and I wasn’t sure how much I was liking it.

Then I got assigned a story on Pali, the founder of Rocket Dog Rescue. Pali is an amazing firecracker of a woman: warm, articulate, energetic and fiercely caring, she’s dedicated her life to finding homes for dogs that other shelters would euthanize for being “unadoptable.”

Pali spent much of her childhood homeless, and when she grew up she suffered from a drug addiction. But when she got her first dog, Leadbelly, she knew she’d have to get clean to take care of him. The amazing part is that she did: she kicked her habit, found a home, and founded Rocket Dog. After talking to her I knew I wanted to stay a journalist so that I could go on meeting people like Pali.

Recently her apartment burned down, killing the three foster dogs inside, as well as her beloved talking parrot. It happened just before Christmas. The last I heard, she still wasn’t sure whether she’d be allowed to move back into the apartment.

If you want to help out Pali or Rocket Dog Rescue, either with a donation or by volunteering to foster a dog, visit the Rocket Dog website and click “volunteer” or “donate.”

20
Dec

Family Link and a friar’s belt

Author: kris, Category: Charity, People, Seen

I saw the friar again today, still in his robe and baseball cap. He was coming out of a door on Castro Street that I’d never noticed before next to a sign that said Family Link.

A few minutes of internet research later, I learned that The Family Link is a non-profit that serves people with AIDS in an interesting way: by offering hospitality to their visiting friends and family members. It provides a space for people to come and have some coffee or a meal, talk to others going through a similar experience, and decompress a little in a nice atmosphere.  An admirable way to find a very real need and fill it, I say.

I’m fascinated by this friar, who I imagine works with Family Link in some capacity. As the newspapers flare up with stories about the Catholic Church denouncing the good-doing Sisters of Perpetual Mercy, and books like The End of Faith and The God Delusion become best sellers, it’s interesting to find the places where religion is still being a help and comfort like it’s supposed to.

I’m also fascinated by the friar’s belt, which looks like rope but I think is not actual rope, not the kind you’d use to tie something up on a ship or lead a mule to market. I’m sure the rope belt began as actual scraps of rope, because the friars had taken vows of poverty or whathaveyou and were just using whatever came to hand to tie their robes together. But I wonder if in the modern world you actually buy your rope belt from a manufacturer who makes you a nice smooth synthetic version or something.

None of this should be taken as any reflection on the friar, whose supportive presence at LGBT rallies and AIDS charities makes him one of our unsung local luminaries in my book. I’m just curious about the rope.

08
Oct

Jon Caroll

Author: kris, Category: People

Probably the most famous SF columnist of all time was Herb Caen. He was before my time, but I’ve read some of the archives and I’m not sure I see what the fuss was about. I asked my dad, who lived here in the days of the original anti-war marches and all that jazz.

“I read Herb Caen, everybody read Herb Caen,” Dad said. Pause. “You know, I’m not too sure why.”

A lot of what Caen wrote about was well-known SF residents. He wasn’t exactly a gossip columnist, I gather, but would often wind up chatting with our local luminaries and then would put the conversations in his column. I can see how this would be exciting to read, as a resident, partly because we have (and had then) some truly weird local characters, and partly because it makes you feel a sense of comunity when you know what other people in the community are up to.

Still, for my money Jon Carroll is the best columnist this city has ever seen. He’s got a daily column in the Chronicle which is usually interesting, often thought-provoking, and sometimes downright transcendent.

Today it’s just some thoughts about TV shows. On the transcendent meter, today’s column measures less. But he writes with wit and tremendous style and obvious love for this area. I hope someday he’ll get a city street named after him. Maybe we could re-use the one they named after Herb Caen.

07
Oct

Gas station Kabuki

Author: kris, Category: People, Seen

I stopped at a gas station by the city-side entrance to the Bay Bridge yesterday evening. There was a homeless man with a great shopping cart at the gas station: it had an eerie, Kabuki-esque mask mounted on a pole on top and pinups from a Japanese girlie magazine stuck around the sides. If it were coming towards you on a sidewalk it would look like a strange girl-monster headed your way, the terrifyingly fixed expression of its mask-face portending your certain doom at the hands of a hoard of underdressed teenagers.

The homeless man was apparently buying gas at the station, though whether he needs it to power his pimped-out cart remains a mystery. Another mystery is what I was doing at a gas station, since I have no motorized vehicle of my own. We may never know the answers to these questions.

18
Sep

And now, your moment of men…

Author: kris, Category: News, People, Seen

Assemblyman Mark Leno held a press conference at the LGBT Center, urging the Governor to sign a bill that would validate gay marriage. There was a Franciscan friar standing up near the front (they’re the ones in the brown robes, right?) taking pictures.

I left when people were starting to prepare for the march down Market Street, and overtook the friar, who had left before me. He was standing on Market in his robe and a baseball cap, chatting amiably with a homeless man.

“Chinese girls get me hot,” the homeless guy was saying, sounding confessional and a little worried. “But white girls are great, too.” It was obvious from his voice that he was on the horns of a real dilemma.

“Well, good luck with that,” the friar said cheerfully, straightened his cap and walked on into the falling dark.