Photo From SOMA

Clementine Street between 5th and 6th Sts.

Bikes Without Brakes, Brains

San Francisco - I recently caught wind of an incident through the SF Examiner.

Apparently, riding a bicycle in San Francisco with no brakes doesn't kill people, bicyclists with no brains do.  The inherently dangerous act is only magnified by the fact that this city is one of the most topologically diverse urban areas on the planet. 

A little forethought goes a long way in turning a bicycle-bearing hipster into a respectable citizen.  A desire for constant style sense and nostalgic conveyances don't justify blatant law breaking and pedestrian smashing.

Why do we have it so good, yet feel it's so bad?

San Francisco - Modern news outlets often corporatist way of delivering the news sounds eerily like Henny Penny when she claimed the sky was falling. Many have perpetuated the fear among the already scared baby-boomer generation that socialist ideas will inevitably destroy America. If it's getting so socialist around here, then where are all the socialists?

     We have it pretty good compared to the rest of the world, then why do some of us feel it's so bad? Where did we get the notion that America is going to hell in a hand basket? Some would say that the media has perpetuated these fears, and however true that may be in the instance of network and cable news outlets, many respectable independent news agencies source their material soundly and report on stories with little embellishment or speculation. These respected outlets, however, aren't where the majority of voting Americans choose to get their news.

      Perhaps Jim Lehrer of the PBS Newshour is a little too old fashioned

California Tuition Increase Seeks Balance, Perspective

San Francisco – Two years ago I moved to California to continue my education as an adult because it was the most affordable place in the country to get a degree.

      City College students currently pay $26/credit hour. One of Governor Jerry Browns' ideas to help solve the California budget dilemma is a proposed $10/credit hour increase to the current rate.  This would be an almost 45 percent increase in cost, but when you compare that rate to ANY other school in the entire country the cost is between 50 to 75 percent less.

      Although California's budget problems are decades old, partly due to a voter-approved freeze in property tax rates, solidified and entrenched (and mostly white) interests in commerce and industry still rule the day.  Many of these voters, some of whom are parents of current City College students, were short-sighted in their desire for what they saw as fair taxation. 

      Californians’ complacence to what in other states is considered fiscally illogical, has sealed their budgetary coffins. The reason California is in such a dire economic mess is because large numbers of loyal, aging, white voters deemed it unfair to pay for property taxes, public services, and higher education at rates comparable to other states (we're not talking about primary or secondary schools – that’s a separate topic), while at the same time demanding the same level of governance.

      For instance, in suburban New York during the 1980’s a 3-bedroom ranch home sitting on 1/2 acre 20 minutes outside the city, could carry assessed property/school taxes totaling around $3,000 to $5,000 annually. Last week, I overheard a female colleague in San Francisco complaining about the fact that the single-family home she owns in gorgeous Lower Nob Hill, costs her about $3,900 a year in property/school taxes.

     What is all the whining about? How is this so-called unfair increase actually unfair?  The opponents of this increase merely note that it's a 30% increase, not the fact that it's still the least expensive, and highest quality education available today.

      A socially vibrant city like San Francisco, with its temperate weather, gentle folk, and world-class transit system is the envy of many municipalities, yet there are those who seem intent on having their water turned to wine without having to pay any extra.

     Let's all pay the fair share that we should. City College students should wake up and smell the stench of an entrenched, aging voter pool who decades ago set California on an unsustainable path of fiscal unbalance and unaccountability.

$36/credit hour is a clearance priced education if you ask this student.

Benefit Bends Bounds of Benevolence

San Francisco - Attending a beer bust to benefit a good cause is generally an easy, quick, and fun way of donating to charitable causes of all kinds, but after attending one of these fund-raising events at Truck, at 15th and Folsom on Friday night, I now have a different view as to the legitimacy of some of these events.
     As a journalist, sometimes i seek out stories of interest, and other times they fall into my lap, as with this story.  My best friend, told me about Al Claxton, 35, who had severely injured his face in a tragic accident, and that the fundraiser was to help him defer the cost of his surgical bills related to the reconstruction of part of his face.
     I later found out that his "tragic accident" involved being utterly intoxicated and face-planting on the sidewalk outside Truck only a few weeks earlier.  I was dismayed to learn during the course of the beer bust, that this type of "accident" isn't new for Mr. Claxton, and that he has a history of drunken calamities.
     When, in the name of charity, does benevolence turn to enabling the behavior of the drunk?  When the repeated behavior of someone who is unable to be responsible for their own safety as a pedestrian, is compensated with accolades, laughter, and "Oh, that's so Al!", we've compromised the meaning of benevolence toward others truly in need.  Those with life-threatening diseases, who would truly benefit from any dollar amount raised by a group of kind-hearted people who enjoy having a couple beers for charity, in this case, have been overlooked in favor of an adult with no concept of his own alcoholism, who stumbled down the street to his own demise.
     True benevolence, in this instance, has been replaced by a shoddy, enabling facsimile of love.  Encouraging someone who repeatedly exhibits this type of irrational and self-mutilating behavior by raising money for them, only tells that person their behavior is okay.  Is this the message we have for someone that many people at this event considered a friend?  These are no friends, these are people who enjoy the tragedy in anothers' hopelessness, so as to not magnify their own shortcomings.     The emcee, a tall, husky Latino gentleman, upon beginning his announcement for the selling of raffle tickets cackled, "Why is no one listening to me?"...grow up and remember why you're there.
     At first this reporter laughed at the concept of this beer bust, but upon meeting Mr. Claxton's friends, i was saddened by their repeated attempts at sick comedy as they poked fun at him for being such a "dumbass."
     I can't wait until the next beer bust, maybe the next "victim" will have gotten his penis caught in the delivery tube at the bank drive-thru, and they'll have a 5K where everyone stumbles across the finish line.  Go to an Al-Anon meeting, and let's stop enabling each other to live our tragedy, and not our beauty.