Ken Garcia

Ain't no time to wait - if you love the Dead

If only I had time for another life I could be wading, in and out of the garden on a drop of dew – on the taxpayer’s dime. But such apparently is not my fate because I don’t have time to go back and get a master’s degree in Library Science, the one thing keeping me from joining my namesake Jerry Garcia in recorded history. That’s what is stopping me from a potential dream job at the University of California Santa Cruz, which, in the best academic tie-dyed tradition, is searching for someone to be the official archivist for the Grateful Dead. And if you think I’m making it up, all I can say is I don’t write fiction. According to the online...

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S.F. sanctuary policy leaves age-old questions unturned

Lost in all the deep-heated debate of the city’s new sanctuary city policy is a fundamental question about the merits of selecting a protected class of non-documented immigrants by age. As in, why differentiate a 17-year-old from an 18-year-old? Could it be because 18-year-olds are supposed to be more mature and could somehow withstand being deported and separated from their families? If the whole idea is to protect school-age children and teens, apparently someone failed to take into consideration that a lot of high-school seniors are adults as far as the criminal justice system is concerned. (Under the new law, juveniles in San Francisco accused of felonies wouldn’t be...

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City attorney goes snap, crackle, pop

The reason it's generally better when candidates have opponents in elections is it requires them to deal with the pertinent issues at hand in a campaign rather than spend their free time deciding whether a cereal maker is overstating the number of raisins in its Raisin Bran boxes. And that will help explain how San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera has been pushing the legal limits recently by challenging Kellogg Co., demanding that its executives stop advertising which suggests people who eat Cocoa Krispies will have their immunity boosted against illness. That's it - I'm swearing off Fruit Loops. Herrera won a moral victory when Kellogg's announced that it would remove the claim...

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Water bond creates a fluid situation in Sacramento

If state legislative leaders can put their partisan bickering aside for about 24 more hours, it’s just possible that California could call a truce in its water wars for a few years. A big if, I know, and it will cost us millions in debt payments each year, but then again, consider the Bay Bridge rebuild project, 20 years and counting. It doesn’t get cheaper to wait. Early this morning the Senate narrowly approved a $10-billion bond measure that would pay for new dams, repair levees and include new infrastructure and restoration in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. The projects have been needed for years, but our bickering lawmakers have never been able to come to agreement...

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Yet another San Francisco turf war

In my published column today I opined on the value of getting new synthetic turf playing fields throughout San Francisco, a move that San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi has attempted to slow, if not outright halt, through a series of legislative actions. I called Mirkarimi last week to get his thoughts on why he was trying to wrest some budgetary control over the City Fields Foundation’s gifts to the Recreation and Parks Department. I didn’t hear back from him until after my deadline passed yesterday, but out of courtesy for the supervisor, I will post some of his comments on the issue. For starters, Mirkarimi insists that he’s not trying to stop more synthetic...

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St. Louis feels a mighty wind coming

If more pre-game talking would help the hapless St. Louis Rams, then perhaps this is considered good news: Bombastic conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh is apparently trying to buy the team. What next, George Bush as general manager? The Rams are coming off a 35-0 drubbing by the San Francisco 49ers and have lost 14 straight games. The only controversy has been over how bad the team is -- at least until now. In a statement released today, Limbaugh announced that he's partnering with Dave Checketts, owner of the St. Louis Blues, in a bid to buy the Rams. No other details were included, so it's unclear if their deal involves an attempt to buy a minority or majority percentage of...

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San Quentin plan gets locked down

It's official - San Quentin State Prison will not be held prisoner to speculative development. This week the Senate Committee on Public Safety put on hold any plans to sell the 157-year-old prison in Marin, a proposal forwarded by Sen. Jeff Denham, a Republican from Merced. Denham has pitched the idea on the premise that the cash-strapped state could gain up to $2 billion by selling the waterfront property - and besides, he argues, why should convicted inmates get such wonderful views? The only problem is that the state has already committed more than $400 million to rebuild the facility's notorious Death Row, which currently houses 619 men. And moving thousands of prisoners to...

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Congress debates a not-so-special delivery

Tell me if you've heard this story before - the U.S. Postal Service says it's running out of money. There has to be a reason the price of stamps has jumped about 500 percent in the last decade. Postmaster General John Potter has been trying to convince Congress that the agency needs to cut back mail delivery from six days a week to five, but even if that happens, the USPS could be in the red as much as $6 billion by next year. What, no bailout package? It turns out the recession has lightened the load of mail carriers everywhere. In the first quarter of this year, the volume of mail has dropped by more than 5 billion pieces, a figure that could rise up to 15 billion by the end of the...

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No roadblock for the patron saint of travelers

On this very special day of national pub crawling, it's good to know that you have someone looking over your shoulder. And that would be the industry trade backers at the American Beverage Institue, who have issued a plea to the country's law enforcement agencies not to put up a bunch of sobriety checkpoints to nab St. Patrick's Day revelers. According to the ABI, roadblocks have proven ineffective and "fail to target'' the real problem, which is chronic alcohol abusers. I believe a few of them might be among the celebrants today, but why quibble? Beverage industry officials say that sobriety checkpoints more often than not target moderate, responsible drinkers and that roving...

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West Coast top cops makes their moves

Industries throughout the country are being severly impacted by the current economic crisis. So why is it that law enforcement on the West Coast seems to be having an (open) field day? The announcement this week that Seattle's Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske has been chosen to be the nation's new drug czar, means that three big cities in the West are in search of new department leaders and rumors that a fourth will soon join the fray have made it a resume-rich environment. San Francisco's Police Chief Heather Fong is expected to step down at the end of next month, Oakland is searching for a new top cop and word making the rounds is that William Bratton, Los Angeles' much-ballyhooed chief...

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A lot of questions, but little relief, in Levy case

Whatever the outcome is in the Chandra Levy murder case, I'm not sure anyone will be able to call it justice. Eight years after Levy disappeared after leaving her apartment in Washington D.C., an arrest warrant was issued Tuesday for an imprisoned Salvadoran immigrant for her killing. The body of Levy, a congressional intern, wasn't found for a year, and yet the sensational case seemed to focus more on her relationship with former U.S. Rep. Gary Condit of Modesto, whose career ultimately went down in flames. Although Condit was never a suspect in the case, he reportedly was having an affair with the 24-year-old intern, and his taciturn evasion with the press and authorities grabbed more...

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A benefit that reveals SF's extended family

When it comes to a need for compassion, it seems San Francisco residents always come to the rescue. That will go a long way toward explaining how a group of unconnected people came together to throw a fundraiser tomorrow night for city firefighter Christopher Posey, who was critically injured fighting what officials are now calling an arson ignited fire in San Francisco's Portola district three weeks ago. "I woke up two Saturdays ago and something told me I should do something,'' said Darlene Dumpit, who does marketing and events for a host of local non-profit organizations. "I just felt a need to show some community support during a crisis.'' Dumpit contacted a local club...

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Parking court case shifts to overdrive

We could probably all argue that taxes are unfair, but that doesn't mean we don't have to pay them. And if you were on the hook for about $6.8 million, you definitely would go to great lengths to avoid them. But alas, for one San Francisco parking garage operator, Tuesday was judgment day, and to the surprise of no one following the case, Superior Court Judge Charlotte Woodard denied an attempt by U.S. Parking Inc. and its president, Cihat Esrefoglu to stop the city from collecting assessment dues the treasurer says it owes for underreporting parking taxes its is owed from 2004 to 2007. As reported in my column today, attorneys for the garage outfit filed a lawsuit claiming that U.S....

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Bay Area version of jail time for Bonzo

A peninsula judge proved this week that just because you purport to love animals doesn't give you the right to act like one. Justin Bhagat Thind was sentenced to six months in jail by a San Mateo County judge for making threatening phone calls to two UCSF scientists involved in animal research - reportedly telling them that they would die the same way the animals suffer. Thind, 33, of Capitola, made the calls on his cell phone. I think it would be fair to say he didn't quite think it through. It's somewhat reminiscent of the case in Southern California a few years back when some alleged eco-warrior set a bunch of Hummer dealerships on fire in the name of environmentalism. That one didn't...

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Holding an election that's no so special

Now that people are losing their jobs in droves, home foreclosures are at a record high and the predictions of economic decline will continue through the rest of the year, don't you think this is a great time to ask people to raise their own taxes? That seems to be the logic of several members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors who are scheduled today to vote on a plan to throw out all their rules regarding elections so they can possibly hold a special one in June to ask citizens to consider a host of new taxes to help them with their spending problem. And that's exactly what it is - a spending problem - created by a board that believes no social or health program can be undone....

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Hardly a flaw of biblical proportions

As if the talking heads didn't have enough to chew on during the inauguration, Chief Justice John Roberts' flub of the Constitution gave them their biggest chunk. Some have openly wondered now whether President Barack Obama should have a "re-do'' and take the oath again. Hey, why not do the whole inauguration over? Who doesn't like to party? Sorry, but this is one fearless prognostication that deserves to be feared. Besides, every presidency is flawed - why not toss a mistake off right off the bat. For starters, while some "experts'' have said that the formality of the swearing-in is historic - it's really more of a formality. Obama officially became president at noon under the...

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A rich rivalry that really shouts San Francisco

A lot of San Francisco traditions have died out or vastly withered over the years, but one can still be found each October and January, jam-packed, color-coded and usually screaming from the rafters. That would be the annual Bruce Mahoney games involving high schools St. Ignatius and Sacred Heart Cathedral, which have been battling each other since before the Spanish American War, reportedly the longest-running rivalry of its kind in the West. There was barely space to grab air at the University of San Francisco Tuesday night, with approximately 6,000 people slammed together to watch (and shout) for their teams - a ritual that has been going on since the annual award was put together to...

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Stacey's: Another tale with an unhappy ending

The announcement this week that Stacey's Bookstore was closing in March has to rank among the saddest chapters in the stories of San Francisco's vanishing cultural landmarks. Stacey's has been an icon on Market Street almost as long as the streetcars and to read of its demise is almost like watching the wrecking ball take down the illuminous Fox Theater way back when. That another independent bookstore is going out of business is not news. The fact that this one happened to be Stacey's is. The store opened in the majestic Flood Building in 1923 as a specialty publications retailer offering medical books. Its array of technical books made it rare in the industry, and even today, long...

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Whitman appears set to finally make her bid

If former eBay chief Meg Whitman's rumored run for governor turns out to be true, it would seem she would be the person most able to sell her candidacy online. That, and her relative infancy in big-time politics, may be her only edge. Sources are telling newspapers throughout the state that the wealthy former CEO of the Internet giant is resigning from a number of corporate boards in order to make a run for the job currently held by Arnold Schwarzenegger, with a formal announcement coming in four to six weeks. And while her money and her absence from the usual suspects list of ambitious pols may seem to give her a boost, history suggests that being a billionaire able to finance your own...

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Bullet-train advocates push for federal dollars

Think a weakened economy, credit crisis and volatile stock market could derail the state’s plan for high-speed trains? Backers of the big wheel project don’t, which is why they’re pushing ahead with plans for the 800-mile network of bullet trains that would link Northern and Southern California. After all, what’s $45 billion in this hell-freezing climate? Buoyed by voter approval of a $10 billion bond last month to get the trains moving, high-speed rail advocates are hoping to be recipients of some of the funds for big public works projects being considered by Congress to help rescue the economy. A bill recently introduced in the U.S. Senate would authorize more...

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Hunters Point artists bring their wares to Hayes Valley

For the second year in a row, a group of San Franciso artists are turning a shuttered grocery market on Hayes Street into a festival gallery — part of a street fair providing a bright light in what has been a fairly gloomy holiday season. Hunters Point Shipyard artists are having their second annual holiday show at the Hayes Valley Market, with an opening reception tonight that coincides with the long-running Hayes Street block party. The works of more than 40 artists will be displayed, including featured artists such as master printmaker Jenny Robinson, photographer Monica Denevan and sculptor Paula Clark. Proving that bad times can still bring good fortune, the gallery site was...

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GavinTV airing on a computer near you

Now that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has decided to unveil his latest State of the City address on YouTube, perhaps it is time to suggest the next natural progression: his own reality show. Based on the premise that anyone might spend nearly eight hours watching the mayor pontificate about his views on The City, it might be the only reality check we get in the next few months. I realize that Newsom wants to put new controls on media access, given the little “speech that got away’’ that was used to promote the ads for the state proposition banning same-sex marriage, but this latest high-tech turn may be a tad over-the-top. Tina Fey on YouTube makes sense. Newsom on...

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Let reason survive, for art's sake

The debate of the proposed Contemporary Art Museum in the Presidio rages on, but one question will linger like a permanent sculpture. Is San Francisco really ready to slap down a $1 billion gift? As stated in this space on several occasions, the proposed location smack dab on the military parade ground may not be the perfect fit for such a modern building, but certainly there's got to be a place for it in the 1,491 acre park. The Presidio Trust is apparently looking at compromise plans for the museum that would be donated by Gap founder Don Fisher, but it would be a crime against logic just to dismiss the building because of the historic nature of the former army base. You can still...

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Heralding a system that really is rank

San Francisco's newest agency, the Department of Idle Musings has a question that has been stewing for far too long now. It's two weeks since the election. Do you know who your supervisor is? For those in the affirmative, we applaud you. For those who lost interest, we understand. Ranked choice voting, as approved by our local citizens some years back, was supposed to eliminate the desire of costly runoffs and provide quick results in city campaigns. Can we now all at least agree that neither goal was accomplished? Nearly one-third of all the votes cast in the recent election were mail-in votes, yet several days after the Nov. 4 polling, they were still not counted. Instead, elections...

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Newsom's China trip is a real retreat

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom is traveling in China this week, not that his presence is largely missed, because a lot of people think he was on hiatus during long periods of the election. Newsom was hardly a major presence during the recent campaign — one reason cited by observers for why it appears the most left-leaning candidates for supervisor carried the day against more moderate hopefuls in key districts. If Newsom thought the current board was difficult to deal with, the next one offers the promise of some real indoor fireworks. And even some of the mayor's supporters believe he brought it on himself. Newsom was slow to respond to the planned takeover of the local...

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S.F.'s waterfront plans get lost at sea

San Francisco long ago ceased being a major port town, but that does not explain one of its waterfront's lingering mysteries. According to the Examiner, The City's cruise ship business has been booming in recent years, with the number of passengers rising by more than 300 percent between 2002 and 2006. Yet the cruise ships continue to arrive without any real port to call home, because longtime plans for a cruise ship terminal have remained, uh, terminal. The latest to sail away is our very own Shorenstein Properties, the third company to secure exclusive development rights, only to see them depart in the dead of night. The company planned to construct offices at Pier 27 to pay for the...

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Sting operation provides S.F. with a sanity check

When San Francisco tries to go it alone, that's usually not a good thing. And rarely has that been more evident than this week when it was reported that the FBI, in conjunction with local police departments, made more than 600 arrests recently in a nationwide prostitution sting focusing on teenage prostitutes. More than 100 people were arrested in the Bay Area cities, including San Jose, San Mateo, Milpitas, San Rafael and San Francisco, according to an FBI spokesman. And the reason why residents of San Francisco should take note is that voters there go to the polls next week to determine the fate of a measure that would decriminalize prostitution and stop The City from getting funds...

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The 'worst' kind of political pratfalls

Esquire Magazine has long been obsessed with lists — think of it as the Bible of the Top 10. But as this month's issue proves, there are just some lists you don't want to get on. Just ask two California Democratic congressional representatives, Pete Stark and Joe Baca, who made it onto the list of the "10 worst" members of Congress. That's really saying something, according to the magazine, because "the competition was staggering. For every one on this list, there are five who could just as easily stood in." So how is it that Stark and Baca got selected as the "very worst of the worst"? They apparently tried very hard. Baca, who chairs the...

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The 49ers throw themselves for a loss

If fixing the San Francisco 49ers woes were as easy as firing head coach Mike Nolan this week, it could have been done two years ago. But sadly, sacking the beleaguered, not-ready-for-prime-time coach will make little or no difference for the franchise that was once the envy of all professional sports organizations, because it was just one of a series of bad decisions that have insured its place as an annual cellar dweller. Remember Steve Marinucci? The 49ers actually had a winning record when he got dumped by owner John York because the coach actually had the temerity of considering other offers after he didn't get the support of the front office. The Dennis Erickson era will go down...

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Liberal right-wingers spotted on The City's streets

Anyone who pays attention to San Francisco politics must be wondering why the general rhetorical tone this year seems to be more shrill than most — which in this town is really saying something. The labeling game for which San Francisco is infamous — where liberal Democrats are targeted as moderates because they're just not liberal enough — has taken on a life of its own. Witness a recent rant posted on YouTube in which Supervisor Aaron Peskin tells members of the Harvey Milk Democratic Club that candidates he does not back are part of a "conservative takeover'' of the Board of Supervisors. He specifically goes after Joe Alioto, one of nine candidates trying to...

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Monumental effort saves history on Angel Island

The firefighters that attacked the wind-fueled fire on Angel Island that began Sunday may have been trying to save the largest island in San Francisco Bay, but they ended up preserving a vast amount of local history. Angel Island has long been known as the Ellis Island of the West since it served as the processing station for more than a million immigrants to the United States starting in 1910. However, most of the immigrants came from Asia and they were forbidden to enter the country under the Chines Exclusion Act. As a result, the immigrants ended up being held in barracks, sometimes for months, at the station on the north side of the island. That immigration outpost, which closed in...

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University asks to be divorced from gay marriage ads

Finding truth in campaign advertising is getting harder than looking at the balance sheet of your 401(k) these days — but there's little doubt that a message filled with misinformation is still a time-honored election tool. And nowhere is that proving to be true more than in the Proposition 8 campaign to ban same-sex marriage in California. Proponents of the ban rolled out their first ad a few weeks ago, which featured San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's smug admonishment that "it's [gay marriage] gonna happen, whether you like it or not.'' And that in-your-face remark apparently has had an impact on viewers, because the polls have swung 10 points since the campaign began,...

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Economy's free fall has voters seeing red

The $700 billion bailout Congress approved last week was supposed to give lawmakers and politicians a significant boost as they struggle to cope with the country's economic slide. But it turns out that it has only emboldened a lot more people to vote for their pocketbooks this November. No one knows that better than Republican presidential nominee John McCain, who has seen his ratings plummet in the past two weeks and been forced to make the stunning decision to suspend his campaign in the key battleground state of Michigan largely due to the ongoing economic woes there. Not only does that hurt McCain's electoral strategy, it allows Democratic Party officials to steer resources to other...

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Giants fans bid kid adieu

He may have lost a little off his fastball during the past few years of his stewardship, but Peter Magowan, the longtime managing general partner of the San Francisco Giants, certainly never lost his love of the game. Magowan, who stepped down this week after 16 years at the helm of the club, departed with an upbeat note about the Giants future to season ticket holders, of which I am one. And how that came about will tell you a lot about Magowan's charm and his desire to do whatever it took to build a stadium and a winning formula. Back in 1998, when the Giants' investors were doing all they could to take in millions from private sources to fund the new ballpark, I was swinging for the...

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Everyone is dirty in this mess

People want to know who's really to blame for the ongoing economic crisis and Congress' inability to respond to it. It's the wrong question. After all, who's not to blame? The collapse of the $700 billion bailout package this week is stunning on so many levels — the primary one being that it was trashed without any meaningful backup plan. Republicans and Democrats denounced the use of taxpayer money to help the greedy fat-cats on Wall Street — but did they think during their rhetorical parade of the effect their votes might have on average Americans whose 401(k) accounts dropped up to 40 percent in the biggest one-day decline in key stock indexes since the 1987 market...

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Corkery connected the dots

When the editors of the Chronicle asked me to write a San Francisco column way back when, I had one firm demand: no three-dot columns. Ever. After all, who would dare try that at the paper Herb Caen made famous? So that is why it's easy to agree with the sentiment expressed by numerous people — including the publisher of The Examiner — that our paper's former columnist P.J. Corkery was indeed a very courageous man. Corkery followed Caen's lead and wrote his own version of a free-flowing, three-dot column, and did it with wit, style and grace. I was deeply saddened to hear that Corkery died over the weekend after battling non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He had been troubled with...

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Only one guessing game at Academy of Sciences

Nature will certainly be on parade Saturday when the new California Academy of Sciences officially opens to the public. The only question museum officials are grappling with is not whether the event will be a big hit, but just how big. "We know there will be many thousands, we just don't know how many thousands,'' said Christopher Andrews, the director of the academy's public programs. Andrews has been in charge of getting the exhibits ready for public views, which involved transferring thousands of fish, birds, reptiles and amphibians to the stunning new facility on the Music Concourse in Golden Gate Park. Despite the daunting task, he says scientists have had nearly nine months...

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Fong's backers fire back

Quite a number of readers weighed in on my column this week about the inexplicable reign of San Francisco Police Chief Heather Fong and how she has managed to keep her job despite a torrent of criticism over the years. Their arguments are legitimate — Fong brought some integrity to the department in the wake of the Fajita-gate scandal in which the entire police command staff was indicted by our zany former District Attorney Terence Hallinan. "She put a department that was broken back together,'' said one person, who asked to remain anonymous. And it's true that the police department is arresting more people than it has in years. Unfortunately, a lot of the those charged are...

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Unlikely casualty in Metrolink train crash

So much for honesty in government. One of the most compelling stories this week involves the tale of Metrolink spokeswoman Denise Tyrrell, who asked the agency's chief executive if she could be "upfront about what happened'' in the wake of a Los Angeles commuter train crash that killed 26 people. The day after the crash, she was in a conference call with agency officials and advised them "to get in front'' of the situation. She told the Los Angeles Times that "when you have loss of life, spinning is unacceptable.'' And at a press conference she was even more forthright, saying that it appeared the crash was the result of an engineer's error. "When two trains are in...

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Clock ticking, lawmakers still bickering

California's state lawmakers aren't proving to be very effective these days, but they are remarkably consistent. Lawmakers turned down (yet) another budget plan this week and then added an exclamation point to the exercise by rejecting stopgap measures to fund a host of critical programs while the impasse grows deeper. For those keeping score at home, it will be day 73 without a budget, shattering all records of fiscal irresponsibility before it. And now that the state prison guards' union has decided to engage in a needless sideshow by using the budget stalemate as a reason to recall Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, things are starting to look really colorful. A real kaleidoscope of...

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California politics held prisoner

Sacramento has never been a prime location for sequels of any kind, which is why the recall effort against Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger by the state prison guards union seems like one of those ideas that should never have been greenlighted. Except for the historic wave of anger among voters that swept Schwarzenegger into office during the recall of former Gov. Gray Davis, such movements have a higher failure rate than most Hollywood movies. And this latest effort has a fatal flaw — has anyone ever believed that people would fall in behind the lobbying arm of state prison guards? There is one other problem with the latest recall weapon to be lobbed at the governor's office:...

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