Good, bad, ugly - San Francisco Study Center

Inside
FUTURES
COLLABORATIVE
Good-hood
group decides
future role
Clearinghouse, forum –
not proactive or political
BY MARJORIE BEGGS
#23
PUBLISHED
BY THE
SAN FRANCISCO
STUDY CENTER
APRIL
2003
TA-DA!
Entertainment
Commission
tunes up
PAGE 3
I
nformation-sharing — that’s what
the Tenderloin Futures Collaborative believes it does best, and it
looks like it will stick with that raison
d’être a while longer. It won’t incorporate, won’t deliberate on neighborhood issues to reach consensus,
won’t vote as a bloc to push for improvements or to stop uglification.
TFC will remain what it’s been for
19 months, but with a new organizational chart and a mission statement:
“To provide a forum for all those interested in building a better
Tenderloin neighborhood through
the exchange of information and
concerns.”
“We left the statement general on
purpose, so it would be more inclusive,” said Dennis Isner, member rep
of the Northeast Community Federal
Credit Union, at the March TFC meeting. Most of the meeting was devoted to
hearing from small
groups that had met
Neighborhood to muse on different
what’s-next-for-TFC
news, new
scenarios.
Isner was among
businesses,
the six TFC members
pending
who tackled guiding
principles. Minutes
permits, land of their meeting had
a familiar ring: The
use issues
group needs more
TFC’S MAIN
residents, said Susan
AREAS OF INTEREST
Bryan. And fewer
service
providers
who are paid by their agencies to attend meetings, said Michael Nulty.
He and Bryan live in the Tenderloin
and are co-chairs of Alliance for a
Better District Six.
S.F. Late Night Coalition Chair
Terrance Alan, a new TFC participant,
asked: Does the group feel “ready to
wield power? For what? On behalf of
whom?” TNDC’s Katie Mullin said
TFC has “inherent power” that should
be incorporated in a steering committee, and St. Anthony’s community liaison Roscoe Hawkins said TFC has
“changed the culture of the community and moved beyond the in-fighting from Lower Eddy” [Lower
Eddy/Leavenworth Task Force].
This group met again and drafted
the mission statement, then presented it to the full TFC assemblage —
meetings consistently draw 25 to 30
people — and asked for feedback at
the April meeting.
Another working group took up
the issue of who’s missing from the
monthly TFC table and how to get
them to take a seat.
Southeast Asians, said S.F.
Ministries’ the Rev. Glenda Hope.
Tourist businesses, said Nulty. Private
hotels, mom & pop store owners,
and condo owners, said Hastings professor and director of the school’s
Civil Justice Clinic, Mark Aaronson.
Women’s groups and merchants, said
Lisa Shell, one of Aaronson’s students.
Other participants were Michael
Nulty’s activist brother John, Dalt
Hotel resident and TNDC board member John Burkitt, and Ben Santos, another Aaronson student.
➤ CONTINUED ON PAGE 2
CENTRAL CITY
S A N
F R A N C I S C O
T E N D E R L O I N M E R C H A N T S ’ WA L K
OBITS
Tenderloin
mourns 2 of
its own
PAGE 4
CLASSIFIED
MATERIAL
Start of
something
brand new:
Help wanted,
services,
products,
good reads
Ahmed Moniem’s Cafe Hurghada on Hyde is thriving.
Good, bad, ugly
Small-biz tour takes
mom & pops’ pulse,
finds signs of life
BY TOM CARTER
An anthology
of stories by
young Asian
women
PAGE 8
PHOTOS BY TOM CARTER
T
IM Mason is saying that Hyde and
Eddy is the “shiva” capital of the
city, and a “jones” is more than a
nearby street. The dope traffic
here, he says, is constant. Even
now, at 11 a.m. on a Thursday, two furtive
young men just around the corner appear to
be making a transaction.
Stephen Cornell, president of the city
Small Business Commission, which is sponsoring this tour of the Tenderloin, asks Mason
to explain the terms. Shiva is heroin, he says,
and being addicted is having a jones. Cornell,
who owns a hardware store over on Polk,
asks who is selling.
“It’s young Latin kids selling dope. They
don’t live around here,” Mason says.
Mason, program coordinator at the
Bayview Clubhouse at 259 Hyde, was responding to Cornell’s invitation to gripe
about problems Tenderloin businesses face.
Earlier on this gorgeous morning, merchant commission members, plus Supervisor
Chris Daly and several city and nonprofit
agency employees had gathered at the Up
and Away Cafe at Jones and Turk. The group
of 25 was quickly organized into eight groups
to randomly drop in at Tenderloin businesses
and leave the commission’s new, 16page “City Services Guide for Small
Businesses” that tells who to contact for
business loans, and to report bad
checks, potholes, graffitti and sewer
odors. And they wanted the merchants’
feedback on the business climate.
Guide distribution was a snap.
Except for Mason and a few others,
though, feedback was not plentiful.
“Some people expressed that they
had a problem,” said Murrell Green,
SBC program director, who designed
➤ CONTINUED ON PAGE 7
Tim Mason (left) points
out “shiva” central to
Stephen Cornell.
Sprinklers contained Y Hotel fire
A
MATTRESS FIRE in a seventh
floor room at the Turk Street
YMCA hotel (left) was contained to the room in which it started before being put out by Battalion
Two of the San Francisco Fire
Department around 11 a.m. on
Monday, March 10. Battalion Chief
Jim Bolton (right) said that fire damage was limited to the room in
which the fire began, with only
minor water damage to some rooms
below. When asked if sprinkler
heads in each room were responsible for keeping the fire contained,
he responded, “Absolutely! Individual sprinkler heads keep fires from
spreading.”
— Mark Ellinger
for...
PHOTOS BY MARK ELLINGER
F U T U R E S C O L L A B O R AT I V E
Collaborative finally finds its niche
deplorable physical condition of sidewalks; get someone to update the group on the Community Court that
formed last year; ask reps from the Police Department
and the D.A.’s office to confront each other — at a
TFC meeting — about how to reduce drug dealing in
the neighborhood.
The steering committee is open to any
Collaborative participant and doesn’t require regular
attendance. With TNDC’s blessing, Mullin will continue
to staff the Collaborative.
At the March meeting, no one said “nay” to the idea
of keeping TFC an informational forum. But then there
was no actual vote. Tacit approval ruled. ■
➤ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
The best way to pull in new members, all agreed,
was to get their attention. Send them the mission statement and invite them to more accessible evening TFC
meetings [10 a.m. is a killer for restaurant owners], or
meetings in different locations, or approach them oneon-one. Hope offered to pitch the Southeast Asian
Community Center. Shell said she will talk to parents at
the Bay Area Women and Children’s Center.
At the full TFC meeting, Mullin presented a schematic for what the Collaborative might look like, slightly reorganized, and asked members to review it. Monthly meetings would include a major presentation,
updates, events and news, and a report from
a new zoning committee whose members
would stay on top of permit issues and draft
letters of support or opposition that TFC
members could sign, if they wished.
Elaine Zamora, building owner at 118
Jones, reported that she would take temporary responsibility for reaching out to merchants and small business owners.
At the end of March, a fledgling steering committee met to suggest agenda topics for future meetings. Among the many
EW at the March TFC meeting was updates on new
suggestions: Invite DPW to talk about the
small businesses — open, opening or planned —
with the owners invited to tell the group about
their ventures.
Of four owners invited, only one showed, but he
CENTRAL CITY
was greeted warmly. After all the talk about getting merchants involved, this was indeed progress.
“This won’t be your typical Vietnamese coffee shop,”
said Tam Nguyen of the 20-seat restaurant he hopes to
open at 442 Hyde by the end of April. Nguyen was upbeat
but clearly a little nervous about promoting himself to a
S A N F R A N C I S C O
table full of unknown neighbors. “Yes, we’ll have the
strong Vietnamese coffee, but sandwiches, too. We want
C ENTRAL C ITY E XTRA is published monthly by San
people of all races to feel comfortable here, wherever they
Francisco Study Center Inc., a private nonprofit
come from.”
serving the community since 1972. The Extrais
The site, vacant for two years, was formerly a travel
published through grants from the S.F. Hotel
agency
and before that a coffee shop, Nguyen said. “And I
Tax Fund and the Richard and Rhoda
may try to get a liquor license, but I know that would be
Goldman Fund. The contents are copyrighted
hard.”
by the San Francisco Study Center, 1095 Market
Will he hire from the community? he was asked.
Street, Suite 602, San Francisco, CA 94103.
Yes, he said, he plans to hire two people.
P HONE : (415) 626-1650
And the name of the shop? Nguyen laughed. “No
F AX : (415) 626-7276
name yet.”
E- MAIL : [email protected]
Mullin summarized the other new businesses:
E DITOR AND P UBLISHER : Geoffrey Link
Cabbie’s Burger at 393 Eddy that will be open 10 a.m. to
S ENIOR W RITER /E DITOR : Marjorie Beggs
midnight and will serve burgers, of course.
C OPY E DITOR : Gerry Fregoso
Permits are pending for an International Noodle
R EPORTERS : Tom Carter,
House at 690 Van Ness, formerly a Lyons Restaurant.
Karen Oberdorfer, Ed Bowers
And Cool Super Discount at 199 Eddy, owned by
D ESIGN AND L AYOUT : Carl Angel
John and Marie Duggan, who own Original Joe’s,
D ESIGN C ONSULTANT : Don McCartney
opened March 10. On the corner of Taylor, a few doors
A RTIST /P HOTOGRAPHER : Carl Angel
up from Joe’s, Cool Super replaces a longtime liquor
C ONTRIBUTORS : Adrian D. Varnedoe, Diamond
store disguised as a mom & pop.
Dave, William Crain, Mark Hedin, Sherry
Barto, Phil Tracy, John Burks, Jeremy Harness,
Open 9 to 5, the variety store sells cigarettes to baby
Anne Marie Jordan, Lenny Limjoco, Eric
supplies but no alcohol. Mullin said the Duggans plan
Robertson, Mark Ellinger
to restore the store’s projecting neon sign as part of the
E DITORIAL A DVISORY C OMMITTEE :
Façade Improvement Program.
David Baker, Michael Nulty, Debbie Larkin,
“I’ve been in there and the aisles are wide and I can
Nicholas Rosenberg, Brad Paul, Tariq Alazraie
get around really easily in my wheelchair,” reported Ed
Evans, rep of the Mayor’s Disability Council. “It’s really
Central City Extra is a member of the
great.”
SAN FRANCISCO NEIGHBORHOOD
— MARJORIE BEGGS
NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION
4 new TL businesses
Viet coffee shop, burger joint,
noodle house, variety store
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GOOD
NEWS
PEDESTRIANS In 2001, 16 pedestrians
died and 819 were injured in traffic-related
incidents citywide. To cut stats like that, the
S.F. Dept. of Public Health has awarded
grants — from $19,000 to $28,000 — to 10
organizations that will conduct one-year
traffic-safety projects targeting their neighborhoods’ specific needs. [DPH’s money
comes from a California Office of Traffic
Safety grant.] Tenderloin Housing Clinic,
one of the 10 recipients, is using its $23,000
grant to distribute questionnaires to TL and
SoMa SRO tenants. “So far, we’ve gotten out
750 questionnaires,” said Rebecca Dorman,
THC’s project coordinator. “As soon as we
get back 500, we’ll schedule six community
meetings to announce the results and come
up with an action plan based on the responses.” Another TL grantee, the S.F.
Bicycle Coalition, is about to launch a
$28,000 program comprised of two safety
trainings, one to help taxi, bus and truck
drivers learn to share the streets with bicyclists, the other to teach bicyclists safe practices around commercial vehicles.
According to DPH’s Michael Rudetsky, the
bad news for the Tenderloin is that in the last
10 years here, 21 people died and 609 were
injured in traffic-related accidents. The good
news — as befits this column — is that there
have been no fatalities here in the last two
years. For more info about THC’s project,
contact Dorman at 771-9850 x125 or [email protected].
BOEDDEKER PARK Want to see your
park prosper and have some beta testing
techno-fun? S.F. Neighborhood Parks
Council, sponsor of the 100 Friends of . . .
park groups, last year got a $450,000 grant
from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New
York to launch ParkScan, an 18-month pilot
project to improve city parks. Teams of volunteers go into parks in their neighborhood
every couple of weeks for about three
months carrying handheld computers loaded
with aerial photos of the park, routes to follow and park features to observe, all preprogrammed by ParkScan staff. [The computers
use GIS raster images and ArcPad software,
for readers who understand this brave new
world.] Then, with digital cameras, the teams
photograph a uniform set of specific conditions, good and bad, which become part of a
central database that the public can view at
www.sfneighborhoodparks.org. The aim,
says Project Manager Hal Voege, is to have
18 parks — and at least one in each of the 11
supervisorial districts — scanned by
October, when the grant money runs out.
The Parks Council has already begun fund
raising for post-pilot programs: It will scan
the rest of the city’s 230 parks, then pass the
info to Rec and Park so it can allocate resources efficiently and equitably. Because of
its location, Boeddeker Park is a prime candidate for inclusion in the ParkScan pilot, but
that will depend on getting about eight
neighborhood volunteers willing to commit
to the project for three months, Voege says.
Check out the Web site to see what’s been
done at three parks: the 24th and York Mini
Park in the Mission, Precita Park in Bernal
Heights and the James Rolph Playground at
Potrero and Cesar Chavez. Want to get involved? Contact Sam Shaw, ParkScan outreach coordinator: 621-326, [email protected].
— MARJORIE BEGGS
This column needs regular infusions. If you
have some good news (no events, please),
send it to marjorie@studycenter. org.
Curtain going up
Mayor’s Entertainment Commission nominees finally in
BY MARJORIE BEGGS
S
O you want to open a pool hall in the
Tenderloin? File a permit for an entertainment venue today and the
Police Department — technically,
the chief of police — has the final
say about granting and enforcing it and revoking it if you mess up. File come July 1,
and you’ll find your permit in the hands of
the city’s newest civilian-controlled body: the
Entertainment Commission.
By late March, the supes had confirmed
three of the seven commissioners, and two
transition teams were meeting regularly, one
to thrash out administration and budget, the
other to look at implementation.
The genesis of the new commission was
nasty. In the late ’90s, South of Market residents and club owners clashed mightily over
whose rights had priority, those who wanted
to rock ’n roll with amplification into the
night, or those who wanted to live more quietly in their lofts and apartments. Noise wasn’t the only problem. Drugs, fights, drunkenness, public defecation, illegal parking and
more were cited by neighbors.
The struggle came to a head when a civil
grand jury in 1999 recommended that the city
establish a new commission to handle entertainment permits. Among the grand jury’s
other suggestions was that the police publish a
list of permit violations so club owners would
know what could get them shut down. The
jury also requested standardized decibel levels
based on up-to-date engineering criteria.
Supervisor Mark Leno took the lead on
the commission idea. Last July, the full board
voted 8-3 to approve Leno’s amendment to
the City Charter — a new Chapter 90 of the
Administrative Code and changes to Article
15 of the Police Code — creating a sevenmember Entertainment Commission that will
grant and revoke six categories of entertainment permits, all currently under police authority. In November, 56.7% of the voters approved the charter change, Measure F. The
commission will grant the permits; enforcement will remain in the police bailiwick.
ADULT ENTERTAINMENT EXCLUDED
Notably excluded from the transfer of responsibility is adult entertainment. Permitting
and enforcement stay with the police, as do
many non-entertainments — fish peddling
and valet parking, to name a few.
“My goal,” said Terrance Alan, one of the
three commissioners appointed so far, “is to
help usher San Francisco into an era of entertainment with minimum impacts on neighborhoods.” Nightlife, he said, should be supported as a revenue-producing industry, not
regulated into oblivion.
Commission staffing isn’t set yet, but the
legislation requires a mayoral-appointed director, an unspecified number of civil service
“permit administrators” and a sound technician to check noise levels.
The budget, too, is undecided. The only
revenue source is permit and license fees, most
of them paid annually. According to the
mayor’s budget office, this year’s permits will
bring in an estimated $250,000, licenses
$450,000. Currently, those fees go into the general fund, and the cost of administering them is
paid through the Police Department budget.
The permits and licenses add up.
Amending a permit also can carry a hefty tab.
A cabaret permit fee is $908, changing it
$500; a dance-hall keeper pays $1,108 for a
permits and $500 to amend it.
To earn its keep, the commission will
hold public hearings, make permit decisions,
coordinate with other city departments, and
try to resolve disputes between residents and
entertainment entrepreneurs.
The supes appoint three of the seven commissioners — advocates for neighborhood, entertainment and public health concerns. The
mayor gets four appointments — representa-
tives of neighborhood, entertainment, urban
planning and law enforcement interests.
March 18, the full board of supes confirmed
the Rules Committee’s recommended trio:
ENTERTAINMENT: Alan, chairman of the
S.F. Late Night Coalition, a three and a halfyear-old political action committee that advocates for the city’s late-night culture. Alan
owns gay strip joint Club 220 [220 Jones, the
former Campus Club] and produces gay porn
movies. He helped Leno draft the
Entertainment Commission legislation. Alan
and Late Night Coalition legal analyst Jim
Wood are on the implementation transition
team, the group charged with smoothing the
process of moving permit authority from the
police to the new commission.
NEIGHBORHOOD: Jim Meko, leader of the
SoMa Leadership Council, which advocates
for the neighborhood’s mixed-use character
of blue- and white-collar businesses, apartments, live-work spaces. Meko led the SoMa
Residents Association during the disputes in
the 1990s, bringing clubs owners and neighbors to the table to talk through their conflicts.
“Jim Meko will be be a very good representative for our district and for the city as a
whole,” said District 6 Supe Chris Daly.
PUBLIC HEALTH: Joseph Pred, a certified
emergency medical trainer and former captain of EMT services for San Mateo County
and now the emergency medical services director for Burning Man, the 15-year-old extravaganza in the Nevada desert. Pred also is
a consultant for various dance events in venues such as Maritime Hall in the city and
HomeBase in Oakland.
mission’s creation.
With just three months to go before the commission begins operating, Peskin is optimistic.
“We’ve been working to ensure that
there’s an orderly transition among departments, and also that [the new commission] is
budget-neutral,” Peskin said. “Mostly, it’s
been the normal issues of bureaucratic transferring. There haven’t been any large problems — if there had been, I assume I’d have
heard about them.”
Essential to smoothing the way are the
transition teams, he said. The financial team
includes staff from the Controller’s Office and
the mayor’s budget office, Alan and Wade
Crowfoot, Peskin’s aide.
The larger working group team includes
reps from city departments now involved
with the police in determining which entertainment permit applications pass muster —
Fire, City Planning, Public Health,
Building Inspection and ISCOTT
[Inter-Departmenta Staff Committee
“There haven’t been
on Traffic and Transportation].
Under its tutelage, the new commission will be responsible for any large problems —
okaying “extended-hours premises”
if there had been,
and a mixed-bag of permits, some of
which sound downright 19th centuI assume I’d have
ry: “amusements,” which include
amusement parks, ball- and ringheard about them.”
throwing games, billiards and pool,
circuses, masked balls, mechanical
Aaron Peskin
amusement devices, recreational
S.F. SUPERVISOR
equipment vendors and rodeos;
dance halls, itinerant [traveling]
shows; loudspeakers and loudspeaker vehicles; and places of entertainment.
The last includes just about every imaginable venue where someone sets out to entertain an audience — puppets to poetry
slams — but specifically excludes porn and
other possibly prurient pleasures.
“The feeling was that adult entertainment
involves vice, and permits for that properly
remain with the police,” Alan said. “The police, by the way, are being very supportive
and cooperative.”
To follow up on that rosy spin, The Extra
tried repeatedly to contact Capt. Tom O’Neill,
who heads up the police’s permit division that
hears permit disputes. His phone message —
“I’ve been detailed out of the office and am
not sure when I’ll return” — was no surprise. It
was the week of the anti-war demonstrations.
But we did manage to catch up with
Officer Ed Anzore, who investigates noise
levels for the permit office and says he’ll
probably return to regular patrol once the
commission is operational.
“I’m probably the only full-time policeman in the country doing sound tests,”
Anzore said. “I’ve been doing it for five years,
but my job is over as soon as they take over.”
MAYORAL DELAYS
The mayor asked for two two-week extensions to get his four nominees together.
On April 1, as The Extra went to press, he officially named them. For the neighborhood
seat, Mayor Brown wants Dr. Jordan Schlain,
director of S.F. On-Call Medical Group,
which provides free medical services in the
neighborhoods through a mobile miniclinic.
Schlain also is on the board of directors of the
San Francisco Medical Society and is a medical ethics lecturer at U.C. Berkeley.
The mayor’s urban planning nominee is
Bowman Leong, a financial analyst and partner in Founders Real Estate Services, who sits
on the city Elections Task Force on
Redistricting and the Taxi Cab Commission,
and is board president of the nonprofit Pets
Unlimited where he oversaw a $5.4 million
facility renovation.
For the law enforcement seat, the mayor
nominated recently retired SFPD Lt. Bruce
Lorin, a 32-year veteran of the force who for
the last eight years was chief hearing officer
in the police permit department and also was
in charge of the taxi detail.
Audrey Joseph, operator of Club
➤ CONTINUED ON PAGE 8
Townsend at Townsend and
Third Street for the last 10 years,
was nominated to represent the
entertainment community. Her
high-profile club was in the news
recently when Yoko Ono stopped
by to preview her remixed single
“Kiss Kiss Kiss.” Joseph has 20
years’ of experience in nightclub
management and event productions.
The mayor’s press secretary
P.J. Johnston confirmed that
Michael Brown, the mayor’s son,
had been considered as the entertainment rep, but that his name
was withdrawn last month for unknown reasons. Mayor Brown’s
Specializing in the representation of Injured Workers.
nominees are expected to go to
the supes’ Rules Committee next
Work-related injuries only.
week and, if approved, to the full
board for confirmation.
(California State Bar Certified Workers’ Compensation Specialists)
When Leno was elected to the
Assembly last year, he asked col[ By appointment only ]
league, Supe Aaron Peskin, to
oversee the Entertainment Com-
Law Offices of
Zamora & Whynn
118 Jones Street, Suite. 100
San Francisco, CA. 94102
415-440-9611
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OBITUARIES
PHOTO BY CARL ANGEL
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The day the fish floated
to the top of the tank
BY ED BOWERS
Remembering Jay,
Market St.newsie
Longtime
newsie Jay
Broussard often
brought his blue
macaw to his kiosk
at Seventh and
Market.
BY PHIL TRACY
E
VERYBODY remembers the parrots. The business agent for Local
468 Newspaper Vendors Union couldn’t remember much else
about longtime newsie Jay Broussard. But he did recall that Jay
and Herb Hart, Jay’s life partner, had brought birds to their Seventh and
Market kiosk: a bright blue macaw, an African gray, a snow white cockatoo, and a green Amazon.
It’s what the man in the Chronicle circulation department remembered, the woman who works at Merrill’s Drug Store near the kiosk and
others I spoke with about Jay. What strangers remember most
about Jay are his birds.
But for his friends, Jay Broussard will be remembered for
He told me a story much more than the colorful and personable parrots he and
Herb looked after. Jay died March 2 after a lingering illness.
one morning about He was 71.
Jay was an extrovert. He didn’t mind standing out in a
an Englishman who crowd. Most newspaper vendors adopt an anonymous face,
exchanging coins for the latest edition. Herb’s a little
asked him what was quietly
like that, but not Jay.
that he was a glad-hander or a very talky guy. If all
so special about the youNot
wanted was a newspaper from Jay, that’s all you got. But
if you struck up a conversation he’d respond in kind. And if
white parrot.
you got to know him, like I did over the course of a number of
years, then he was warm and outgoing.
“Cockatoo,” was
He liked to wear costumes. At Christmas he sometimes
wore a sorta Santa’s costume. One Halloween, when I
Jay’s one-word
dressed up as a bishop, Jay was an executioner. I had my
answer. “Really?” crosier, Jay carried this huge and utterly authentic doublebladed ax. He joked about bishops in the Middle Ages losing
the Englishman
their heads.
His droll humor could be time-delayed. I’d get up to my
replied. “Two of
office before Jay’s punch line would hit me. He told me a story
morning about an Englishman who asked him what was
them, how odd!” he one
so special about the white parrot. “Cockatoo,” was Jay’s oneanswer. “Really?” the Englishman replied. “Two of them,
said, walking off. word
how odd!” he said, walking off.
Jay first came to San Francisco in 1978. Born in Louisiana,
he had served in the Korean War and lived in other West Coast cities,
holding a variety of jobs. Jay first went to work as a Chronicle vendor
sometime before 1981. Herb, who was originally from Terra Haute,
Ind., met Jay in 1981, when he moved here. They got the first of several
apartments together in the Tenderloin. Herb got a job as a vendor at the
Powell and Market newsstand
P HOTO COURTESY OF H ERB H ART
in ’87, but joined Jay at
Jay Broussard
Seventh and Market the same
first sold the
year Art Penn, who worked
Chronicle on
the stand with Jay, died. By
Market Street
then, the newsstand or shack,
as the vendors themselves
more than 20
called it, was situated on the
years ago.
southeast corner of Market.
Jay moved there after the
flower stand moved across
Market, in front of the nowvacant Hibernia Bank.
For years, what made Jay
and Herb’s shack stand out
were the flags. About 15 of
them lined the top of the
shack and flapped in the
midafternoon Market Street
breezes. Herb says Jay picked
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O
NE afternoon, as I was sipping ale while sitting in front of an aquarium in a roomy
sports bar on O’Farrell, all the fish floated to
the top of the tank. They’d given no warning and didn’t appear to be ill, but all of
them died in unison, floating to the top, as of one mind.
One moment I was admiring their preciously colorful life
forms, the next moment they were dead.
It was just like that, and no one could argue with it.
I called over the bartender, a cute, chubby little Irish
woman with short auburn hair.
“Hey! Get over here!” I shouted. “Look
at this! All the fish died!”
But she didn’t hear me. She was on her
cell phone, talking to someone important in
her life.
I stared at the aquarium in awe — a
miracle in reverse, as though caused by a
demon rather than a saint. There must be a
perfectly reasonable scientific explanation
for this little tragedy, I thought.
But perhaps I was being naive. There’s
really no reasonable scientific explanation
for life or death. Both are kind of crazy, perhaps holy, but nuts, never the less.
The bartender’s phone call had concluded, and now she was busily engaged
counting money. That was an important
task so I didn’t interrupt her. Money is life,
and if it runs out, you’re dead. I waited.
“Hey Myra! Come over here!” I called
when she was finished counting. “All the
fish just died!”
Myra came out from behind the bar,
stared at the aquarium with an open mouth
and big blue eyes, seemed puzzled for a
second, then wailed like an Irish widow
mourning her husband’s demise from an
I.R.A. attack. Whether he died from planting a bomb or being under one, the result
was the same. Death is death on all levels, and so is despair.
“I knew we shouldn’t have named them!” she cried.
That sounded bizarre. Still, I love the bizarre. It relieves
my mind from the sadness imposed upon it.
“Named them?” I asked.
“Yeah, Eddy. We got attached to them, and gave each
of the fish names. I see them all now. There’s Bob and
Mookie, Peter and Saks, and Roland and Woof.”
“And they’re dead because of that?” I asked.
“Too much love,” she said. “We gave them too much
love. Do you want another drink?”
It was over. Myra still had tears in her eyes but had
moved on into the future. I was depressed and felt compelled to go back to my dirty room where I lived with ghosts
from the past. It was a retreat instead of an advance, but
sometimes in a war, retreat is the wisest decision.
I excused myself. “No thanks. I’ve had enough.”
I walked out into the dusk, knowing I’d get no definitive
answers to this event
except Myra’s ambiguous, poetic statement.
Too much love? What
the hell did that mean?
How could you give
anyone too much love?
In my room, I hit
up a half-pint of 100proof vodka and felt
neutralized. But I wasn’t drunk. Having just
been downsized for financial reasons from a
brutal job I’d had for
over a year, I was too
jittery to get high. I laid
down on my bed and
tried to sleep.
I slept. Hours later,
at 8 p.m., the phone rang and I forced myself to answer it. It
was one of my best friends in the Tenderloin, the only sector
I exist in anymore, the area where all who are not wanted go
to live and die.
My old friend Randolph, 58, had just managed to overcome prostate cancer and get his job back as a janitor after a
conflict with his boss. On a sliding scale of 1 to 10, he was a
winner in a losing world where the powerful laugh about the
suffering of the weak, finding them stupid and boring.
“Hello Eddy,” Randolph said. Being a music lover, I
could hear right away in his voice that he was tired and
beat, approaching despair, but afraid to
venture out further than a moan.
“How yuh doin’?” I asked, happy to
hear from him and always surprised to receive a phone call.
“I’m not too good,” he said. “I just
heard that Loca died.”
Loca was only 41 years old, a beautiful
African-American woman I’d met in a
Tenderloin bar on a night when Randolph
and I were drinking heavily. Both of us
were attracted to her, but I’d given up attempting to gain salvation from others so I
didn’t pursue her.
Besides being a drug addict and alcoholic, Loca was a hard-working woman
who’d labored at many honest jobs. At one
point she washed buses at the Greyhound
station, where she was bullied into doing
more than her share of the work by employees who had been there longer. But
working hard while not making a living
wage is a dead-end and often leads the laborer to a cul-de-sac of drink, pills and
hard drugs.
The first time I met Loca was in my favorite bar on the corner of Taylor and
Turk. She was slightly drunk and desperately hustling for the man of her dreams. I
saw it in her eyes, which had developed a Prozac stare in
the direction of any man that moved.
But by the time a woman arrives at this bar she should
know it’s over for romance. This is the entrance to the Other
Side of the Camp, The Last Chance Saloon where you’re allowed to sit and heal or die before going on, either into Life, or
monogamously alone into The Land of the Dead.
Believe it or not, this bar is a corporation and does its job
fairer than most. Many bartenders here have experienced
death and aren’t afraid of it anymore. Whether they come
back from it or not is all the same to them. They’re not particularly worried about being fired or downsized. They’re already
dead. So they’re free to make a living at being themselves, as
most of us are not.
Loca had the smooth, big-eyed face of a model, sorrowful eyes they were, and a gorgeous centerfold body
with liver spots camouflaged by her black skin. She became my best friend’s lover, so I’m writing this for him and
her and others like
them who I pray will
survive, either in the
visible or invisible
world, forever. I’m
writing this to ease
her journey into the
Land of the Dead, to
give her the ammunition to survive past rational thought.
I can’t remember
what Loca and I
talked about the first
time I met her. She
was still looking for
the perfect mate. I had
given up my romantic
quest, preferring to
“Loca was only 41
years old, a beautiful
Afro-American
woman. ... Loca had
the smooth, big-eyed
face of a model, sorrowful eyes they
were, and a generous centerfold body
with liver spots camouflaged by her black
skin.”
PHOTOS BY C ARL A NGEL
➤ CONTINUED ON PAGE 6
the flags for their designs, not the country or anything symbolic: Kenya,
Canada, Japan and Germany, as well as flags from countries nobody
had ever heard of, including Jay. “I don’t know,” was a fairly common
reply when people asked about any particular flag. The flags made the
shack look like a little U.N., much to Jay’s consternation. “Just because I
fly a bunch of flags, why would people think I’d want to sell papers
from Germany?” he would grouse. Jay was not first and foremost a businessman.
Eventually, things began to change in Herb and Jay’s world. The
homeless population was growing, and
many of them were doing their business
in the street because there were few
public rest rooms. Newly elected Mayor
Willie Brown flew off to the pissoir capital, Paris, for a week and was wined and
dined by the JCDecaux Co., makers of
fine public restrooms and equally imposing advertising kiosks. In between
mouthfuls of quiche, the mayor agreed
to a contract with JCDecaux, which
would install public restrooms and clean
them in return for erecting a number of
advertising kiosks on Market Street.
Some of the kiosks would be designed
to accommodate the sale of newspapers,
thus eliminating the “unsightly” wooden
newspaper shacks.
The new kiosk was a fourth the size
of the old shack, with room enough for one vendor, exposed to the elements and forced to squat rather than sit comfortably inside. There
was no space for a portable heater that had kept the two newsies warm
in winter.
Jay and Herb were less than thrilled with their new circumstances.
For Jay the kiosk’s final indignity came the morning a woman
walked up to him and, thinking he was sitting in a pissoir, asked if he
was going to be much longer. The image of Jay sitting there looking up
at this woman is something I will take to my grave.
About 18 months ago, Jay had his first heart attack. He was gone for
several weeks; when he returned, he was ashen-faced and clearly
weak. Wilbert Dow, the Grant Building security guard, got a chair for
Jay to sit in while he and Herb took turns in the kiosk.
Dow recalled Jay: “He was real nice. If you needed something he
would just give it to you.” Jay, born and raised in Crawley, La., would
bring in food and share it. “He use to cook this great Cajun food: red
beans and rice, pork chops, gumbo. Stuff was great.”
Not everybody benefited. Jay wasn’t some saint. As Dow said, “If
he liked you, he liked you. And if he didn’t, well … he didn’t and that
was that.”
PHOTO BY CARL ANGEL
As time went on we
saw less and less of Herb
and Jay. New vendors inhabited the kiosk. Herb
spent much of his time attending to Jay, who was in a
wheelchair during his infrequent visits back to his old
haunts. The parrots were a
casualty. “At the end there, I
was lucky if I were [at the
kiosk] two hours a day.
There just was no time to
bring the birds,” Herb said.
The end came on a
Sunday. Herb took a phone
call from San Francisco
General around 11:30 a.m.
telling him that Jay was fading fast. When he got to the
hospital at 1 p.m., Jay had
already passed.
A service was held on
April 2 for the people in the
Grant Building who knew
Jay.
One of those people,
Roy Crew, director of the Office of Self Help, spoke of Jay’s passing
with deep regret.
“He was an authentic person, someone who stood out and made a
difference in the lives of the people who knew him,” Crew said. “You
can’t replace people like that. It’s like what happened to the news
shack. That was an authentic part of San Francisco’s past and now
they’re just getting rid of all of them. No one’s going to come and take
Jay Broussard’s place. I’m just sorry that he’s gone.”
Asked if he will bring the birds back, now that he’s returned to the
kiosk, Herb simply replied, “Maybe.” ■
P HOTO COURTESY
OF H ERB H ART
Jay often prepared
Cajun food for his
friends in the nearby
Grant Building.
Herb Hart,
in the kiosk,
isn’t sure if
he’ll bring the
birds back.
Neighborhood comings and goings
The central city has the population of a
good-size town; 24,000 people live in the
Tenderloin alone. And our mortality rate is
higher than many other neighborhoods.
The Extra intends to publish notices of
the deaths – and births – of central city residents and longtime neighborhood workers
A P R I L
2 0 0 3
on a regular basis. We are interested in recollections, anecdotes and tributes.
Please send your comments to Central
City Extra, 1095 Market St., S.F. 94102. And
let us know how to contact you if necessary.
We can’t guarantee we will use all the information submitted, but will do our best.
/
C E N T R A L
C I T Y
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Troubled Loca’s final journey — rest in peace
➤ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5
promiscuously penetrate souls rather than
bodies. I wasn’t interested in pursuing a relationship with anybody. I had no long-term
patience with weak women anymore. All I
cared about was myself, and Loca, on a deep
level, knew it.
Deep in conversation with Loca, I saw
Randolph stalk out the door, upset. He felt
left out and frustrated, so he pretended to get
a breath of fresh air on one of the most dangerous street corners in
San Francisco. I understood him precisely and
felt empathy, having
once been a victim of the
virus of jealousy myself.
“I better not talk to
you anymore,” said Loca.
I agreed. When
Randolph came back, I
ordered another drink
and caused myself to disappear. Perhaps Randolph could give this
woman what she needed.
They conversed, about
what I don’t know, since
the goddamned turnedup juke boxes in bars
keep information a secret
whispered between confederates and prevent
fights among disagreeing
tribes. I love music, but sometimes I hate it.
Then Randolph left, leaving Loca behind.
I think they had their first fight that night. I
bought Loca a drink.
“Are you with anybody?” she asked.
“I’m still married,” I replied.
I’d been separated from my second wife
for two years, no chance of us ever living together again, though we still loved each
other. But loving a woman doesn’t mean you
can live with her. Love is a cat taking a bird as
a mate so she can teach him how to fly while
she eats him because he is growing feathers.
Gratefully, I understood this now.
I was alone and married to myself, and
nothing could come between me and me, not
even a woman like Loca, who, if I was still 30
years old, would no doubt have mickey
finned me between her legs while I dedicated
myself to saving her life, a project that would
have been as futile as attempting to prop up a
half-dead cow.
HARD-WON HONESTY
But now I had only myself to prop up and
was free to be honest with those I encountered in this sad world. I was free to inform
Loca of the facts of life, in spite of special interests involving sex or domination.
“My wife and I had to separate because
we were fated to go in separate directions.
But we still love each other,” I told her.
“Give me a hug, Eddy,” she asked, holding out her arms.
I hugged her, depressed because I knew I
couldn’t save her. Inside her eyes I saw a
place I didn’t want to go because I’d been
there before.
During our hug she whispered, “There’s
no love anymore, Eddy. There’s no love.”
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6
C E N T R A L
C I T Y
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A P R I L
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She told me this as though sharing a secret with her child that Santa Claus didn’t
exist and that Christmas was canceled because Daddy died.
I sat back on my barstool, feeling I’d just
escaped the arms of a woman desperate to
mine my life from me. Her own mother lode
had been panned out, otherwise she wouldn’t
be sitting at the end of the road in this bar.
There were rocks in her eyes and impenetrable
forests: to enter them was to die in the High
Sierra alone with her. Her path was suicide.
But I like women and hate to see them
kill themselves, so I tried a form of artificial
spiritual respiration I learned from an old
drunk Indian tantric worshiper of Shiva I’d
studied with in the early ’80s before his alcoholism and lechery got the best of him and he
retired to an American ashram.
“Do you know how much power you
have inside yourself?” I said. “You are Shakti,
Mother of the Universe!” I hugged her, put
my hand on the top of her head and said,
“This is where God lives. You have all the
power in yourself. Don’t give it up to others
unless you can help them. You are sacred.
You are all you need.”
Then I ordered myself another drink.
Unless I wanted to leave, there was nothing
else to do.
Loca looked dazed after I’d informed her
of her true nature. Sadly, she’d been attempting, with the encouragement of addicts who
needed her body and money, to tame and sabotage that sacred autonomous side of herself,
and had surrendered to death long ago.
Too late to change now. She looked me
in the eyes and said, “Good-bye.”
Loca moved in briefly with Randolph but
it didn’t work out. They were opposites, both
addicted in their own ways to alcohol and
drugs. One was a bear who wanted the impossible — a simple domestic life — and his
name was Randolph. The other, Loca, was a
spider woman with eight-legged multiple
personalities and depressions, running in all
directions at once, spinning her wheels,
going nowhere.
They did not live happily ever after. They
fought. I received many
phone calls from Randolph
about this, but having nothing to do with it, I could do
nothing about it.
I have never been able
to stop a war.
One afternoon Randolph phoned me and
asked me to meet him at a
bar around the corner. He
was having a fight with
Loca. This was nothing
new, only a state of nature,
a war between the sexes
that has metastasized from
the myth of Adam and Eve into global war.
War brings people together as nothing
else does, except love.
“I just woke up,” I told Randolph.
“Get over here!” he said. “I’m at the Happy
Daze.” He was in pain. I could hear it in his
strained voice.
WHAT’S A FRIEND FOR?
I got dressed and walked over to the bar.
What else was I to do? Write a poem about a
friend I wouldn’t greet because I was too
asleep or too tired to respond? That would be
weak, and there is no mercy for weakness in
the Tenderloin.
On the way to the bar, I passed dozens of
minds on the corner of Market and Seventh
that could have been geniuses if they had
enough money and true love to pay for it.
Most were involved in dope deals and death,
disguised in dreams. I could do nothing to
help them. We were equal. Whether whore,
junkie, transvestite, wino, bartender or store
owner, all of us were where no one wants to
go, surviving inside The Land of the Dead.
In the bar, I saw that Randolph was fuming because Loca was sitting there and talking
with another white guy, a handsome, darkhaired white guy. Randolph bought me a
vodka cranberry, and I drank it fast to wake
up. I was so depressed that only depressants
could get me up, but I noticed that Randolph
was beyond medication.
Pretty soon I felt good. On one level, I’m a
cold, dead silent man, a stranger even to himself. Chemically altered, I can listen to the problems of others without thinking about myself.
As Randolph glared at her, Loca got up
and left the bar with the handsome white
boy, who probably only gave her enough
money to purchase a hit of crack or the opiate derivatives she loved to down with vodka
and whiskey. There’d be no relationship for
the white boy. No sex. Only sadness and defeat, and a resumption of his life.
Randolph went to the door of the bar and
screamed at Loca as she staggered implacably down the street. There was murder in the
air, and the patrons of the bar shrank into
their drinks.
A few weeks later, Randolph forgot the
incident and let Loca move in with him. But
of all things possible in this world, living in
harmony with another is one of the greatest
challenges. To Randolph’s credit, he bravely
attempted the almost impossible, though it
came to nothing but frustration and arguments that resolved nothing.
He finally accepted the fact that Loca had a
complicated and ruined mind, and he made
the sad, difficult decision to tell her to leave.
She had needs, but he couldn’t afford
them. If he let her stay, her life would take
him down. He wanted to live, so he cut her
loose. He loved beauty, but wasn’t willing to
pay for it with his life.
DREAMS CRUELLY DASHED
When Randolph found out the other day
that Loca was dead of liver failure, his shock
and sorrow were that of a soft human being,
standing upright, wishing to penetrate the
sky, but afraid of space and its infinite emptiness. He’d been bravely hot-rodding into this
infinite Universe in search of beauty and love,
but his journey ended in the death of a lover
he loved but couldn’t control.
“I really wanted a relationship with her,”
he told me. “Maybe it was only a dream, but I
tried,” he said, sounding as depressed as Loca
had been all her life.
When you’re depressed, you’re a canary
in mine shaft and a portent of the future. I quote
from
The
Noonday
Demon: An Atlas of
Depression by Andrew
Solomon:
“Twenty years ago,
about 1.5 percent of the
population had depression that required treatment; now it’s 5 percent;
and as many as 10 percent
of all Americans now living can expect to have a
major depressive episode during their life.
About 50 percent experience some symptoms of depression. Clinical problems have
increased; treatments have increased vastly
more. Diagnosis is on the up, but that does
not explain the scale of this problem. . . .
Things are getting worse.”
Meanwhile, Loca is beyond Earth, while
Randolph and I still walk the planet.
I
t is easy to sit in a bar and drink and talk
about sports until the day you die, forgotten, never to return to order another
round. But I chose to come up from the underground to the top where I wasn’t wanted
in order to scrawl messages and omens on
the sand that no one wants to read. I do it because it’s my pleasure to remember those
who are forgotten.
Being no one, I have nowhere to go but
up. I watch the pigeons soar into the sky as
Randolph and I stand on a shore kissed by a
vast ocean, each of us lighting a torch to
Loca. I light a cigarette. He prays to a hope
that dies last. Randolph and I call to her, but I
sense she knows better than to return to the
surface with us.
Stay away, Loca.
Don’t float to the top of the tank again.
Swim away.
Go to the other shore.
Rest in peace. ■
CENTRAL CITY
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Pockets of brightness on small-business tour
➤ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
behind the glass partition selling perthe commission’s new Web site, sfsbizfume on the side; the New Style Beauty
info. “But they had a hard time getting
Shop (in business 18 years); the 20-yearout what it was.”
old corner grocery (“We’re surviving,”
The most frequent complaints were:
says the owner); and Hai’s Restaurant
slow police response, the creeping
(Chinese and Thai).
scuzziness of Boedekker Park, and
The group continues to the New
problems caused by the drug trade.
Princess Market, where the owner’s retort
Surprisingly, though just about every“summer is coming” is meant to sweep
one said business is down, no one
away any economic dismay; the small
seemed unsettled or angry. Most owners
Vietnamese Sing Sing restaurant, where
had been in business in the Tenderloin
tropical plants dominate the tiny foyer; a
from eight to 30 years, and had become
cigarette store; the Cafe Hurghada; an
resilient in the gloom of the economic
aquarium store with no sign, only a door
downturn.
that the Asian family who runs it keeps
Gwen Kaplan, vice president of the
open seven days a week; the 30-year-old
commission, found it inspiring to talk to Martha Yanez shows Saleem Abbas at the
Lafayette Coffee Shop, where the waitseveral businesspeople who were born Faithful Fools Copy Shop a helpful phone number.
ress has worked 17 years; the Faithful
and raised in the neighborhood, to see
Fools Copy Shop; the Cadillac Grocery;
the pride they had in their businesses,
and the Cafe Mong Thu.
and to walk into the Bel Aire Hotel on Jones Traffic. They discussed creating signs in
Of these, the small Cafe Hurghada at 457
Chinatown to direct people to public parking Hyde is the baby. With new paint, gleaming
Street and feel comfortable right away.
“But people are concerned about the lots, a plan that is in the works.
fixtures and inviting pastries, its indoor and
maintenance of the park (Boeddeker),” she
outdoor plants, and sidewalk tables and teaksays. “People don’t want to send their children PARKING ALWAYS A PAIN
wood bench beckon passers-by as a trendy
“But parking is the No. 1 concern for all Hyde Street anomaly.
into it. There are needles in the sand. The trees
need attention. We have to do something businesses,” Steward says.
Owner Ahmed Moniem, a former insur“I pay twice as much for a meter here in ance adjuster who did catering on the side,
about it. It’s attracting the wrong people.”
Shawn Collins, executive director of the the Tenderloin as I do on Polk,” Cornell says, took the plunge a year and a half ago. He
Tenderloin Sidewalk Improvement Program, as he began his Tenderloin walk west on named the sandwich and coffee shop after his
Turk toward Hyde where there seemed to be favorite resort town on the Red Sea, in Egypt.
went on the tour led by Supervisor Daly.
“He (Daly) has widespread recognition ample street parking. He paused at a 25“Two coffee shops had failed here before
and my sidewalk program doesn’t,” Collins cents-for-15-minutes meter to peer up at the me,” Moniem said later in an interview. “And
says. “I’m saddened. And we’re there five architecture. Cornell said he loved the ornate, nobody wanted this place. But I saw it as a
old buildings and he dissed the cold, flat look nice backyard with no flowers and somedays a week!”
On Collins’ tour, the nagging specter of of the new ones to his group consisting of thing I could cultivate. And it worked.”
the neighborhood as unsafe came up in con- Martha Yanez, the SBC staffer who created
Moniem hired interior decorating and
versations, despite cleaner streets and side- the Guide, and Lucia Hughes of the Work menu consultants. He added personal touchForce Investment Board.
walks and the glow of small businesses.
es like a rug for a wall decoration and vases
“The Tenderloin has changed,” Cornell of cut flowers. No doubt his affability and
“Two people mentioned that the police
were slow to respond,” he said. “One was a doc- says. “It used to be rooming houses and apart- manners won customers from the first day.
tor’s administrative assistant, the other a grocery ment buildings with small businesses on the
“Business is good,” he says. “You should
store owner on Leavenworth. Supervisor Daly ground floor like cleaners, beauty shops, gro- see the crowd at lunch-time. And people said
gave them his card and said to call him if it hap- ceries and liquor stores. The businesses kept in the beginning I was stupid. But this is a real
the sidewalk clean and made things attractive. coffee shop.”
pens again and he would follow it up.”
For low-income workers here, it was cheaper
Now he gets daily referrals from the youth
rents and a good place to walk to work from.
WALKS BEGAN ON OCEAN AVE.
hostel around the corner. They are people in“After the 1989
The Merchant Walks began last
September on Ocean Avenue when mer- earthquake, the city
chants called the mayor’s office to complain said the brick buildings
about their businesses being crippled first by had to be upgraded—
9/11, then by the onslaught of Muni construc- brick just falls apart in
earthquakes.
Many
tion. The street was a mess.
“The city should pay us back was their at- owners couldn’t afford
titude,” said Seth Steward, director of the it. So the buildings were
Small Business Commission. “We couldn’t do bought by nonprofits
that. But what could we do? We could gather that could get the federa list of services for small businesses that al government to help
pay for the building
could help them.”
The SBC was started in 1999 to develop a changes. Now there are
supportive relationship between San a lot more offices. They
Francisco’s 60,000 small businesses and City aren’t trying to attract
Hall. Its purpose is to identify problems and people. It’s not the
find ways to solve them while maintaining a same incentive. And it
healthy climate for small businesses. The SBC was part of the demise
office is in City Hall, and the commission of the neighborhood.”
Turning right onto
meets there the second Monday of each
Hyde, the group starts
month at 5:30 p.m.
On Ocean, owners couldn’t get away from hitting just about every
work to research solutions, so SBC reps coming small business. All apto them was a welcome sight. The SBC formed pear clean and wella relationship with the Muni project manager. kept. To clerks, waitSubsequently, signs were posted, apologizing resses and managers,
to the public for the inconvenience and stress- Cornell and Yanez take
turns explaining they represent the SBC and timidated by the neighborhood who want to
ing that businesses remained open.
Third Street was next, then Fillmore, then are delivering this free, resourceful guide. relax in a safe, tasteful harbor and read the
Chinatown where the SBC formed a partner- Several recipients are first wary, then manage paper. He even gets customers waiting for
ship with the Asian Pacific Islander Business a smile when they decide it isn’t a scam.
their cars at a nearby auto repair shop. “The
Information Services, as it had with the
owner said he sends them here because he
Southeast Asian Community Center. The re- ‘WE’RE SURVIVING’
knows it’s a nice place,” Moniem said. “And
Cornell usually asked how long they tourists are always taking pictures here.”
sponses from Chinatown were much greater
have been in business, then, “Business
after the walk.
What disturbs him is the Hyde Street drug
“The week after the walk, our office got down?” The reply is a nod, a shrug or “slow.” trade and its shady characters, plus a “cold
On Hyde, the street businesses alternate feeling” the street has. “I’d like to see trees
10 to 15 calls about parking,” Steward says.
“People complained that there were too between Mexican and Vietnamese. In a few planted,” Moniem says. “And I’d like to see
many yellow zones and that businesses were places, no one speaks English but SBC’s ma- other businesses come here, too.”
parking there and not using the yellow zones terial is accepted for the boss anyway.
Back at the Up and Away Cafe, the merThe group visits the corner donut shop at chants’ Tenderloin walk dissolved just before
for business purposes. If there’s no parking,
Golden Gate, which used to be a Greek fami- noon without a concluding meeting. The face
people will leave the neighborhood.”
Steward arranged for a meeting with Fred ly’s coffee shop; then Mex Express check-cash- of small business had been impressive. But
Hamdon of the Department of Parking and ing, where Cornell is delighted to see Monica the Tenderloin’s acne persisted. ■
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C E N T R A L
PHOTOS BY TOM CARTER
A three-panel
mural on Jones
Street just north of
Boeddeker Park
urges tolerance.
C I T Y
E X T R A
7
Curtain ready to go up on city’s
new Entertainment Commission
➤ CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3
Asked if he had any reservations about
sound monitoring leaving the police
purview, Anzore demurred. “Well — no, if
they can do it well. Our only concern is public safety,” he said.
The Entertainment Commission will accept permit applications, check them out and
conduct hearings. The mayor-appointed executive director and his staff of permit administrators will do the leg work. At the hearings,
the commissioners will “rule upon and issue,
deny, condition, suspend, revoke or transfer”
permits.
The commission also is charged with coordinating inspections and investigations with
other city departments; recommending “good
neighbor policies” to the supes and the mayor;
mediating disputes between residents and
venues or event operators; and arranging for
city services for major entertainment events
that have no organized sponsors, such as
Halloween and New Year’s Eve. Finally, the
commission has to get out there and promote
entertainment events that generate revenue.
OUT IN THE OPEN
Alan believes that it will be easier for legitimate concerns to get the permits they
must have to operate, and that the givin’, gettin’ and keepin’ will done more fairly. The
police, he said, shouldn’t be making public
policy, especially out of the public’s view.
The state’s 1967 Ralph M. Brown Act and the
city’s 1999 Sunshine Ordinance will apply to
the new commission’s meetings.
Supe Daly, who said he was an early supporter of the commission, expects “good things”
from the new department: “There’ll be more opportunities for the public to be heard, and the
commissioners will be able to concentrate on
the issues before them — the police, by contrast, have to focus on so many other things.”
Will the commission be all its creators
hoped for? There are only a few precedents:
Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles County
have combined Sports and Entertainment
Commissions — mostly responsible for promoting large city-owned arenas — and
Orlando, Fla., has a Film and Entertainment
Commission. D.C.’s commission has been operating since the late 1990s, L.A.’s since 1995.
WAKE-UP CALLS
When Leno introduced his Entertainment
Commission legislation in May 2002, he
noted that some city permit requirements
date from the 1930s and don’t necessarily reflect modern concerns. But he felt that altering the permit code “could raise concerns”
that his legislation relaxes the restrictions.
So he recommended no changes to restrictions except one, a v. 21st century accommodation. Managers of large dance venues
[occupancy permits of 150 or more] will have
to post cell phone numbers so that people
who want to complain about noise during
open hours can rail at the managers directly.
The measure, Leno said, “will create an
alternative for problem solving so the Police
Department will not be the only resource
available to neighbors who have a problem.”
The Extra asked Peskin if the new commission plans to change any of the antiquated, entertainment-related rules and regs.
Some things were changed last year, he
said, at the same time the supes were approving the legislation to create the commission. Section 1024 of Police Code stated that
a permit applicant might be required to show
evidence of “good moral character.” That
was amended to evidence of “criminal history and permit history.”
“As the commission matures, it may try to
make other accommodations to make the
law less unwieldy,” he said, but that’s not a
priority now. Get it up and running — that’s
the goal. Peskin said his office will oversee
the commission for at least another year. ■
SERVICES
CALIF. HISTORICAL SOCIETY
OASIS Community Center 1095
Market St., Suite. 201, Open 7 days a
week 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Structured and unstructured activities daily for the mental
health community: groups, education training, computer lab, one-on-one peer training, drop-in center, holistic health care,
acupuncture, information,referrals. 5751400.
Now featuring work of 85-year-old photographer Rondal Partridge, son of
S.F.’s legendary Imogen Cunningham.
Admis-sion for seniors $1. Store has
great collection of S.F. and Calif. history books. Hard-to-get back issues of society quarterly journal. Library archives
also available. 678 Mission. 3571860.
S.F. MENTAL HEALTH
CLIENTS’ RIGHTS
To Place a Classified Ad
San Francisco Mental Health Clients’
Rights Advocates, 1095 Market Street,
Rm. 618, the city’s mandated program for
safeguarding the rights of people receiving
mental health services. MHCRA investigates and resolves client complaints; provides legal rights information; educates
providers and family members about patients’ rights; refers clients to other resources; and monitors mental health facilities to ensure that they’re complying with
patients’ rights requirements. For appointments, call 415-552-8100 or toll-free 1800-729-7727 Monday-Friday 9 a.m. to
5 p.m. Walk-ins welcome.
Classified ads cost $2.50 per line with
a 2-line minimum. There are approximately 40 characters per line, much
more than in other newspapers. The
Extra uses a condensed typeface so
you can say more for less.
Color –– Classified advertisers can
utilize our second editorial color for
an additional charge. The color can
be used to emphasize certain words
or as background, as a tint or 100%
color. To use a second color in a classified ad, add 20% to the black-only
rate.
H E L P WA N T E D
Community newspaper needs advertisers.
Readers need to know about jobs, services, bargains, restaurant
specials, products, political points and goodwill messages. And more.
Advertisers reach estimated 16,000 readers. Half or more on fixed
incomes, such as seniors and disabled. Thousands of others are people
who serve them: Nonprofit providers, public servants, City Hall insiders,
neighborhood merchants and business people. And the media.
The Extra has a committed readership and better demographics
than you might think.
Call 626-1650 for an ad rate sheet and answers to¡ questions.
8
C E N T R A L
C I T Y
GOOD READS
E X T R A
/
A P R I L
A
n anthology of 66 stories and poems
by a prolific new generation of writers
of color who describe their love (and
hatred) of family, the pains of growing up,
self-consciousness of body, what it means to
be a young Asian woman in America. Just
published by Asian Women United. 208
pages, $18 plus tax. Order from Study
Center Press 1-800-281-3757.
The Art of Recreational Therapy,
by Ann Argé Nathan. A practical handbook
for recreation therapists who want to be
inclusive in their practice: the neediest
clients, the shy, the disabled, the withdrawn, the young, the aged. Useful as a
brushup for professionals, a
primer for beginners, and an introduction to all students of therapy.
Published and distributed by Study
Center Press. 96
pages, $22 plus
tax. To order: 1800-281-3757
2 0 0 3
COMMUNITY CALENDAR
SPECIAL EVENT
Thursday, April 24, Supportive
Housing Employment
Collaborative’s annual exhibition
of photography and essays from
formerly homeless San Francisco
artists. Reception, 201 Turk, 4:306:30 p.m., 749-2790. Exhibit April 25May 1, Hospitality House Art Studio,
146 Leavenworth, (415) 749-2132.
COMMUNITY
MEETINGS
Consumer Housing Group, 1st
Thursday of the month, 6-7:30 p.m.,
Mental Health Association, 1095
Market St., Suite 408, 241-2926.
Tenant Associations Coalition of
San Francisco, 1st Wednesday of
the month, noon, 201 Turk
Community Room. Contact Michael
Nulty, 339-8327. Resident unity,
leadership training.
Supportive Housing Network, 3rd
Thursday of the month, 3-5 p.m.,
111 Jones. Contact: Belinda Lyons,
241-2929.
Code Enforcement Workgroup, 2nd
and 4th Thursday of the month, 2
p.m., 449 Turk. Sponsored by
Central City SRO Collaborative.
Information: 775-7110.
Mental Health Board, 2nd
Wednesday of the month, 6:30-8:30
p.m., CMHS, 1380 Howard, Rm. 537.
CMHS advisory committee, open to
the public. Contact: 255-3474.
Hoarders and Clutterers Support
Group, 2nd Monday and 4th
Wednesday of each month, 6-7 p.m.
Canon Kip Community House, Pool
Room, 705 Natoma St. at 8th.
Contact: 241-2926.
CMHS Consumer Council, 3rd
Monday of the month, 5:30-7:30,
CMHS, 1380 Howard, Rm. 537, 2553428. Advisory group of consumers
from self-help organizations, other
mental health consumer advocates.
Open to the public.
National Alliance for the Mentally
Ill-S.F., 3rd Wednesday of the
month, 6:30-8:30 p.m., Family Service
Agency, 1010 Gough, 5th Fl. Contact
905-6264. Family member group,
open to consumers and the public.
Traffic Safety Advisory Council,
3rd Tuesday of every month, 3 p.m., 30
Van Ness #2300. Sponsored by DPH
Community Health Education Section,
open to the public. Goal to reduce
traffic-related deaths and injuries.
Contact Ana Validzic, 581-2478.
Violence Prevention Network, last
Tuesday of the month, 10 a.m., 220
Golden Gate, Rm. 4D. Contact
Christina Goette, 554-2741.
Tenderloin Police Station
Community Meeting, last
Wednesday of the month, 6 p.m.,
police station Community Room,
301 Eddy. Contact Susan Black,
345-7300. Neighborhood safety.
North of Market NERT, bimonthly
meeting. Contact Tim Agar, 6746142, or Lt. Juanita Hodge, S.F. Fire
Department, 558-3456. Disaster
preparedness training by the Fire
Department.
Alliance for a Better District 6,
2nd Tuesday of the month, 6 p.m.,
301 Eddy. Contact Michael Nulty,
820-1560 or sf_district6@yahoo
.com. Districtwide association, civic
education.
Mid-Market Project Area
Committee, 2nd Wednesday of the
month, 5:30 p.m., Ramada Hotel,
1231 Market. Contact Carolyn
Diamond, 362-2500.
Tenderloin Futures Collaborative,
2nd Wednesday of the month, 10
a.m., 121 Golden Gate. Contact
Roscoe Hawkins, 592-2704, or
Katie Mullin, 776-2151.
North of Market Planning
Coalition, 2nd Wednesday of the
month, 6 p.m., 301 Eddy. Contact
474-2164.
Tenderloin Police Station Seniors
and Disabled Meeting last
Thursday of the month, 10 a.m.,
police station Community Room,
301 Eddy. Contact Susan Black,
345-7300.