ccx.layout 06/02.hh - San Francisco Study Center

with Mal Karman
WAITAMINUTE DEPT.: This year the 5th of July comes six days
late. If you don’t believe me, hustle over to Koret Auditorium
at the Main Libe and you’ll see on screen Lanford Wilson’s play
about a disabled gay Vietnam vet (“The Fifth of July”) on the 11th
of July. The film, originally for public television, features
Richard Thomas, Jeff Daniels and Swoosie Kurtz, who won a Tony
for her performance on Broadway. More ‘n likely, I’ll be
there on the 5th looking for a film called “The Eleventh of August,”
but I trust you to get it right. A freebie. Noon. 100 Larkin St.
at Grove. 557-4277.
BETTER THAN BORDERS: At the aforementioned mother of
all book stacks, hundreds — make that thousands — of volumes
will be sold to the first dude or damsel to plunk down a George
Washington from wallet or purse. It’s the Friends & Foundation
of the San Francisco Public Library’s $1 or Less Book Sale. These
aren’t dog-eared, torn up, coffee-stained, tattered library discards.
They’re dog-eared, torn up, coffee-stained, tattered donations.
No, no — just kiddin’ folks. Most are in great shape and in need
of a new home. That’s right, they’re homeless. So take at least
one of ‘em home and feed it a good meal. July 12th. 11 a.m.2 p.m. 100 Larkin St. at Grove. 437-4857.
Baldwin House Hotel survivors
get vouchers for 4 more weeks
Tom Carter
ome 200 low-income resiS
dents of the Baldwin House
Hotel on Sixth Street who were
accommodated in 32 other residence hotels after fleeing the
Baldwin’s June 2 fire received
additional vouchers in July for
up to 28 more days after dozens
of survivors at a press conference
pleaded with the city for the
extension.
The Department of Human
Services said the vouchers issued
after the fire, due to expire
during the first few days of July,
would be extended 14 days,
and 14 additional days, if necessary. Meanwhile, contractors
rent. The 188 rooms were full.
There were no fatalities, but
three people were treated for
smoke inhalation.
The Fire Department
fought the blaze with water for
two hours. Luckily there was
no structural damage and the
fire missed support beams.
Ironically, the hotel residents had attended a fire prevention and survival workshop
in the lobby the month before.
The workshop was arranged
by the year-old Central City
SRO Collaborative, an advocacy group to improve living
conditions and code enforcement
of Tenderloin and South of
Market residential hotels. The
PHOTOS: CARL ANGEL
NO CHOCOLATE BARS ON CELL WINDOWS HERE:
The San Francisco Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center (even the acronym is a mouthful) hosts an
evening rap on prison conditions, prison abuses and prison activism
with lesbian political prisoner Linda Evans, transgender rights
activist Veronika Cauley, prisoner advocate Judy Greenspan and
HIV-positive activist and former prisoner Antoine Mayhan.
It’s called, appropriately enough, “Locked Out.” So untie
your mate and get there by 7 p.m. Donations suggested. July
17th, 7-9 p.m. 1800 Market St. at Octavia. (510) 665-1935.
Ocken, a three-time survivor
of SRO fires, said at the press conference that the fire might not
have been so bad if every room
had sprinklers. The new law
requiring that, passed after a
three-year fight, only became
effective July 1.
“I see that (change) as a
paradigm shift by the city in
dealing with these fires,” Sam
Dodge of the SRO Collaborative
said in an interview. “Fires are
a major cause of homelessness.
It is our No. 1 issue. With huge
fires, it’s mass homelessness.
And every fire is different.”
One cause of fires is hot
plates. It is okay to own them but
illegal to cook on them in hotel
rooms. Economics nonetheless precludes low-income residents from eating out all the
time.
After the Baldwin fire, the
survivors were soon located in
32 hotels with the Red Cross and
the city splitting the cost of
housing. Tenants praised the
response.
SRO vacancy rates are
extremely low and rents are
PHOTO: SRO COLLABORATIVE
DON’T BUG ME: Oh what a tangled web we weave with Spider-Man
and it costs a hefty nine bucks to hang
there, dangling from the theater
ceiling in the dark, just to watch
him. But at the Cartoon Art Museum, my fellow arachnid, you can
scuttle across 40 years of SpiderMan art with all eight of your legs.
Catch out the animated TV shows,
the commercial merchandising, the
comic strips, the comic books. Think
of the reaction you’ll get when you
reveal you’re a tarantula. $5; $3
students and seniors; $2 children 612; free children 5 and under. Through July 21st. 11 a.m.-5 p.m.
Closed Monday. 655 Mission St. 227-8666.
IT’S A FAR CRY FROM RAP: It’s even a far cry from rock.
But some of the shmaltzy love songs that Richard Rodgers
wrote in the 20th century (in what century???) may bring
lumps to the throat and cinders to the eye. The dude wrote the
sharps and flats for Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and
I and The Sound of
Music. His tunes will
take you back a whole
lotta years, maybe even
stir some kindergarten
memories (Oh gawd,
bring me a handkerchief!) and if you check
out the three-night program offered by the
San Francisco Performing Arts Library
and Museum, you’ll see a 1957 version of Julie Andrews in
Cinderella, a 1963 broadcast of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson interviewing Rodgers, and a 1954 broadcast of a salute
to Rodgers and Hammerstein with Mary Martin, Ezio Pinza and
John Raitt. How about forcing Mike Tyson to dance to some
of this? $8 individual shows, children under 12 $4; $20 for threenight program, children under 12 $10. July 8, 15, 22. 8 p.m. 401
Van Ness Ave. 255-4800.
WILL FILL OUT FORMS FOR FOOD: You too can stick your
hand in the till of corporate America — maybe even into the velcro wallet of Uncle Sam. How dat? Smile nicely, fill out a bunch
of forms, rent a truck to carry home the megabucks. OK,
maybe not that easy, but the Foundation Center of San Francisco
will teach you how to get slick with a grant application. Wanna
make a movie? Wanna go to grad school? Wanna trek to
Tibet and tell the People’s Republic to take a chopstick up the
CENTRAL CITY
extra
Renovation of the Baldwin
House is under way. Tenants
need work to be finished by the
end of July.
worked to make the Baldwin habitable, a job estimated to take just one month.
The Baldwin at 74 Sixth
became the third Sixth Street
hotel to be taken out of commission by fire in 18 months.
The Minna Lee, at 149 Sixth,
went out in January 2001,
and the Raymond, at Sixth and
Howard, went out on tax day
2001. Those hotels, with a
combined 108 units, remain
closed.
The Baldwin fire broke out
on the fourth and fifth floors in
early morning, just after most of
the 206 residents had paid their
Sam Dodge speaks to the tenants of the Baldwin on June 27.
group also conducted the press
conference at the Seneca Hotel
calling for the voucher extension.
Baldwin resident Mark
not cheap. Now, the survivors pay
what they normally would at
the Baldwin, with the city making up any difference. ■
or the trees and
F
for the ease. To
avoid waits and
Street
was
restriped
to
allow
more
space for bicyclists on this key
north/south bike
route — including partial bike
lanes — as well as
safer conditions
for pedestrians.
The Polk Street
bike lanes increased bike ridership
by more than 40%. That means
less traffic congestion and more
available parking in the area.
As for riding in the Tenderloin, in particular, Zebker
agrees that the area has advantages and drawbacks for commuters on two wheels. “One
of the things I like best about the
Tenderloin is that it’s pretty
flat,” says Zebker, who walks
most places now. “The speed of
the traffic is the problem. The
people who drive in the Tenderloin don’t think of it as a residential neighborhood, and
they tend to drive too fast and
with not enough awareness of
pedestrians and bicycles.”
The area’s common one-way
streets that are daunting to
Zebker as a bicyclist, are actually
advantageous to Bill Grgurich.
“The one-way streets help,”
Grgurich says. “They help in
terms of flow of traffic. You’ve
got two or three lanes of traffic
and enough separation that
you can usually ride.”
For Grgurich, bicycling is one
way to give back to the neighborhood. “The trees in the
Tenderloin get busted and torn
apart,” says Grgurich, who volunteers with the Friends of the
Urban Forest in the neighborhood. “There’s this whole pollution thing. It’s a serious problem. We really need trees in
the neighborhood. It [biking
rather than driving] would help
cool things down in this neighborhood.” ■
TW
TW WHEELING
WHEELING
take off some
weight. These are
some of the reasons people choose
a bicycle for transportation in the
Tenderloin.
Leah Shahum
Getting around
the city seems to
Supervisor Chris Daly, who
be getting more difficult and frustrating. But more people are trad- represents the Tenderloin as part
ing in four wheels for two, and of Supervisorial District 6, is
Fast Passes for U-locks, and one of the growing number of
in
in the
the
TENDERL
TENDERL
PHOTO: SF BICYCLE COALITION
On a bike, life’s good, riding down McAllister Street.
increasingly enjoying their commutes.
“It’s cheaper and faster,”
says Dave Chelsea-Seifert, 30, who
rides daily from his Sunset
home to his job as a tenant
organizer in the Tenderloin.
“It gives me exercise, so I don’t
have to work exercise into my
schedule.”
“The congestion can make
it so hard to get around S.F.,” says
Bill Grgurich, a 56-year-old
house painter who has lived
in the Tenderloin for five years.
“But I can get around anytime
by bicycle. It also gives me a
sense of control of my own destiny, in a way.”
It was that sense of control that spurred David Zebker
to bike from his Tenderloin
home to classes at City College
regularly 20 years ago. “I don’t
like waiting for the bus,” the 46year-old CPA says. Even with
a one-speed bike, Zebker could
ride across town in less than
an hour.
bike commuters in the area.
He rides an average of four
days a week to his City Hall
office and to meetings all over
the city.
“I think the bicycle is the
most convenient way to get
around the central city for
someone like me who is relatively
able-bodied,” Daly explains.
“And biking has all those perks
of helping to keep me in shape,
and the advantages of being
ecological and better for pedestrian safety than driving a car and
better for the environment,
and biking helps to keep the congestion on the streets down.
“You can get around really
quickly in the Tenderloin
because it’s not too far up the
hill,” Daly says. “But the streets
are intense.” Especially the fast
one-way streets that can feel
more like freeways than neighborhood streets.
The number of good bike
streets in the city is on the
increase. Two years ago Polk
IN
IN
Leah Shahum is program
director of the San Francisco
Bicycle Coalition, a 3,300member nonprofit working to
promote bicycling for everyday transportation. Check out
www.sfbike. org or call 431-BIKE
for more info.
We’ve seen this played over and over at City Hall — Mayor
Willie and a crowd with placards. This is Central City Extra’s
first cartoon contest. Artist Carl Angel has supplied the drawing; you write the caption. We’ll pick the best caption and
print it in the September issue. The winner gets a meal
for two at Café do Brasil plus a framed reproduction of
the cartoon and caption. Send in your caption, along with
your name and how to contact you. Mail or bring to
Central City Extra Cartoon Contest, 1095 Market St.
Suite 602, S.F. 94103, e-mail ([email protected]) or fax (626-7276). Contest ends August 16.
Your caption:
JULY 2002
BRINGING THE WAR TOO CLOSE TO HOME: On the untested theory that things can’t possibly get any worse in Kashmir,
The Commonwealth Club has invited India’s Kayatyani Shankar
Bajpai, a former ambassador to the U.S., and
Pakistan’s Ahmad
Faruqui, a Lahore Daily
Times columnist, to
slug it out (verbally, we
hope) as they try to
respond to our verbalized nightmares about
the risk of nuclear conflict
and what the future holds for these perennial saber rattlers. Free.
July 22nd. 11:45 a.m. 595 Market St. 597-6706.
BASS TEAL & VIVE LA FRANCE: Alors mes amis — you know
zat zee 14th of July, eet eez Bastille Day, n’est-ce pas?? You
know vat zis means, of course. Vee go into zee streets and vee
dance off our asses like crazee chats unteel zee early dawn
(yawn). You can sleep some uh-zhere time, you know? You cannot mees thees, you would nevair leev it down! Ah, zhere eez
zo much to choose fram. Sacre bleu! On July 12th, Left Bank Restaurants and the French-American Chamber of Commerce set
up a French country pique-nique at the pier and, while French
tunes warble in the air, you can pig out with roasted chicken or
chicken out with roasted pig or stuff pan bagnat sandwiches into
your coat lining or gobble
down all the mussels,
cheeses and French
desserts that your stomach lining will permit.
Pouring French and
American beers, aperitifs
and 20 varieties of French
wine and, wow, mon ami,
are you go-eeng to be a
mess, especially after sneaking in to avoid ze outragous (mon Dieu!)
seexty-dollar ducat. Bon courage – you can do it without an inner
tube. If that’s not enough to finish you off, on July 13th vous marchez
to Alliance Francaise for more cuisine, drinks, musique and footshaking. $10. 7 p.m. 1345 Bush St. (408) 655-6050. Bring your
tricolor! On July 14th, the vraiment Bastille Day, just off
Bush Street in downtown city, Café Bastille on Beldon Place and
Café Claude on Claude Lane throw annual block parties with
wine, music and food. Because Bastille is a Sunday this year, there
was talk at press time of moving the celebration to the afternoon.
Check with the cafes. And zank you zo much!!
THE RUDE AWAKENING: Crawling out of bed after all that
partying can be the hardest part of partying. If you never
felt more like singing the blues — and, oh, that head hurts —
30 years of memorabilia
from the San Francisco
Blues Festival might turn
your indigo to a whiter
shade of pale . This
SoMarts Gallery exhibit
features a collection of
rare posters, photographs,
publications, recordings,
handbills and related
blues ephemera. Check
out photos and posters
from the 1973 show and,
man, please don’t say
“It seems like only yesterday.”
We know. Free. July 927. Noon-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 934 Brannan St. 863-1414.
NAME THAT ’TOON
4
giggy? Hey, somebody up there will give you the money — they
need the damn tax writeoff — if you learn to play the game and
say what they want to hear. Classes all through July will tutor how
to tickle the throat of the sleeping lion. What’s more, it’s
free. That’s right — they’re gonna teach you how to lift
money — for free. Can you believe it?? Believe it! Call them!!
312 Sutter St., Suite 606. 397-0902.
JUNE 2002
5
CENTRAL CITY
extra