Back in the Middle Ages, there was this mass madness that would descend on portions of the population every so often, causing men, women and children to writhe and flip in the air, foam at the mouth, laugh maniacally and scream hallucinatory blather until finally collapsing from exhaustion or death.
Read More
When my father died three years ago, I tried to explain to those assembled at his funeral how it was that a man so physically strong for more than 85 years could wither away so rapidly.
The car industry — in which my father worked for more than 40 years selling Oldsmobiles — provided the answer. General Motors had recently announced that they would no longer manufacture that car division.
Read More
The Pranksters seemed a lot merrier in the Day-Glo hues of the ’60s, but even 40 years after it was published, “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” remains arguably the best book about the drug-drenched period and the clearest snapshot of San Francisco’s emergence as the cradle of hippiedom.
Read More
It wasn’t exactly the Summer of Love remix, but San Francisco got a taste of its past recently and it shouldn’t be a hard act to follow.That is, if The City can cope with its cranky, grumbling ways.
Read More
It’s easy to see why critics of San Francisco’s mayor tend to be so vociferously over-the-top — even when he loses, he wins.
Read More
The very same people who pushed ranked-choice voting on San Francisco residents are doing their best to make sure it doesn’t apply to themselves. The so-called “progressives,’’ who recently took control of the local Democratic Party, took the unusual step of endorsing only one candidate in upcoming supervisor’s races — with one exception, adding North Beach activist Denise McCarthy as a second seed to their list.
Read More
If Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval somehow makes it onto the superior court bench in November, he may want to install a weather vane in his chambers so he can note the direction of the wind before he has to make a decision. Right now his index finger must be getting tired.
Read More
If Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval somehow makes it onto the superior court bench in November, he may want to install a weather vane in his chambers so he can note the direction of the wind before he has to make a decision. Right now his index finger must be getting tired.
Read More
A lot of people were never the same after they faced Pat Valentino, and the same was true for me, except for a different reason.
The others were punished in a boxing ring. The things I learned from him happened mostly across a dining table.
And valuable lessons they were. I found out in one day that the only thing worth fighting Valentino over was a lunch check. And that the only place more dangerous to be with him outside of a boxing arena was to be a passenger in his car.
Read More
Maybe you were one of the lucky ones that didn’t get an automated phone message recently from Ohio Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich asking for support to impeach President Bush. In San Francisco, that idea is just so yesterday — people here wanted to impeach Bush almost as soon as he “won" the presidency.
Read More
URL: http://www.sfexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds?page=238&%3B=&quicktabs_6=1
