That's What I Love About Frisco

The many complaints about San Francisco's declining quality of life notwithstanding, city officials have been taking bold measures to ensure that you'll never have a problem finding a conveniently located crack dealer when you're jonesing for a hit.

Despite the city's best efforts to protect its large population of undocumented street entrepreneurs (in non-SF-speak, illegal immigrant drug dealers), from time to time a few of these enterprising individuals do get caught up in a police sweep (most likely one conducted by the Parking Division, which seems to be the only arm of law enforcement actively seeking out criminal conduct) and are subsequently convicted of selling drugs.

Which in turn not only makes them liable for substantial prison sentences, but also requires that they be deported to their home countries and permanently banned from returning to the USA. Worried that San Francisco's homegrown criminal culture might be unable to generate sufficient numbers of crack dealers to meet demand, the city has spent a small fortune and broken a few laws of its own (hey, it's only money, and everyone knows that normal laws don't apply in SF) to hide its convicted crack dealers from the federal officials who handle deportations.

It's "not fair to bar them from ever becoming citizens," said one San Francisco official, who rather judiciously preferred to remain unnamed. The sheriff of San Bernardino County, where San Francisco had been hiding its fugitive felons in a taxpayer-financed ($7,000 a month per perp) safehouse, was not so sanguine, especially in light of the fact that SF's city-sponsored crims usually end up taking a hike and slanging rocks on his patch.

Frisco Bloody Frisco

I'm in receipt of an email from the legendary Dallas Denery of the even more legendary band Sweet Baby, in which he admonishes me, "Please stop bashing the Bay Area in your blog. I love it and would live there in a heart beat. THE WEST IS THE BEST BABY!"

Well, I don't know if I can completely go along with that sentiment, though it was one I wholeheartedly shared for many years, say from 1968 until at least the early 90s. But since Dallas puts it that way, I do have to acknowledge that perhaps I've been a bit hard on the Bay Area, especially Berkeley and San Francisco. I've often explained that my feelings are not ones of actual loathing or even dislike, but rather more of disappointment that what I once unhesitatingly thought of as the best place on earth to live had become, well, not so much the kind of place I'd want to live at all.

But still, like Dallas, I would live there "in a heartbeat," the only difference being that in my case certain conditions would have to be met, most of them having to do with Baghdad By The Bay becoming a little less like, well, Baghdad. For instance, getting its crime rate down to at least something like New York levels (not too much to ask from what is essentially a small town, is it?) and putting an end to the practice of allowing its main streets to be used as an open-air asylum (and toilet, and shooting gallery) for the desperate and deranged.

Perhaps I gave up on Frisco just a minute too soon, for it seems as though the worm is finally turning and local residents reaching the end of their tethers with regard to the loony fetishization of feral behavior that has gradually transformed the City of Saint Francis from a welcoming bohemian haven to North America's most overpriced (albeit beautiful) slum.

The Chronicle has been running a series of articles on the problem of the "homeless" (the real problem of course being dysfunctional and antisocial people who in many cases do have homes, or could if they chose to). Nothing new there, but what has changed is the volume and vitriol of reader comments, such as these and these. It kind of reminds me of the way New Yorkers were feeling when, after 20 years of spiraling crime rates and a collapsing quality of life, they finally laid aside their traditional ultra-liberalism and tolerance and turned to Rudy Giuliani to sort out the disaster their city had become.

San Francisco's Gavin Newsom is as far from being a Giuliani as Frisco is from Manhattan, though you wouldn't know it from the squawks of the city's dwindling band of far leftists who see every attempt to maintain even the most minimal standards of civil behavior as jackbooted assaults against "the poor" and/or "people of color."

Never mind that it is only in their ideologically skewed world that a shortage of cash or a surfeit of melanin are inextricably linked with criminal and antisocial behavior, and that most poor people don't find it necessary to crap in doorways or roll around in their own drug or alcohol-induced vomit. The far left needs victims to act as poster children for its indictment of capitalism, and if that requires keeping thousands of damaged individuals on the streets and in turn destroying the social fabric that makes community possible, so be it.

My guess, though, is that the nihilists and Guardianistas (I refer, of course, to the SF Bay Guardian, whose scabrous rabble rousers make those of London's traditional left-wing paper look like pillars of the establishment) have finally had their day. Unable even to mount an opposition candidate to Gavin Newsom's re-election bid (whereas four years ago their boy Matt Gonzalez very nearly became mayor), they're swimming against the tide of prevailing political currents and now, it seems, popular opinion as well. I see big changes in store for Frisco in the next couple years, most but not all for the better.

On the downside, I might never be able to afford to live there again, though that might be an upside for certain San Franciscans who were glad to see the back of me. More importantly, I'm cautiously optimistic that sanity is finally returning to the city I once loved so much and - yes, I'll admit it - in my heart of hearts, still do.

Goodbye, California

I haven't really lived here in ten years, but I've always kept this small room, more of a storeroom than a living space, really, but it's still provided me with a base in Berkeley, something I'm now on the verge of finally giving up.

Considering all the awful things I've said about Berkeley in recent years, people could hardly be blamed for wondering why I'd want to maintain any ties to the place, but my reasons were twofold: most of my family is located nearby, and I had way too many things - the accumulated possessions of a California existence that dates back to 1968 - to consider shipping them over to England during the years I was living there. Most of the stuff has mainly sentimental value, but it's value nonetheless, even if it wasn't quite enough to convince me to lay out the thousands it would have cost to bring everything to London.

But now that I've got a new home base in Brooklyn, the time has come to pack up all these memories and move them out to the Right Coast. I flew out here on Monday night, not expecting any great drama to arise around this; if anything, I was annoyed at having to leave New York for a couple weeks at one of my favorite times of year. But as the plane crossed into California airspace, I was seized with sudden spasms of regret and fear: was I doing the right thing after all? Was California really as bad as I'd made it out to be? It certainly didn't look that way from 30,000 feet, with the lights of the cities splayed across the darkened land like so many jewels on velvet (sorry, I know it's a cliché, but it really does look like that).

It became painfully apparent that I couldn't casually cut my ties to the place where I'd had some kind of home or connection for nearly 40 years and not expect to deal with some rather intense feelings. I remembered how I first came here, young, scared, dead broke and wanted by the law, and immediately felt safe and at home. I recognized that despite my best efforts to screw things up, California had been very good to me, providing me with the opportunity to make my fortune and pursue my dreams. Basically, my life had been pretty crap before I got to California, and while there were plenty of crap intervals afterward as well, most of them were of my own making.

For the first day I even toyed with the idea of abandoning this whole Brooklyn thing, settling back into my little room in downtown Berkeley, and living here in quiet obscurity for the rest of my life. I could certainly afford it; the rent here is ridiculously low, with all utilities, even high-speed internet, thrown in. It might not be much of a life, granted; we're talking about a 9'x12' room that's so cramped I have to sleep in a loft up near the ceiling and can reach almost everything without getting out of my single chair. And not much light gets in through the windows, the stairways and common areas haven't been decorated (or, it sometimes seems, cleaned) since the 1970s, and the house in general is a classic example of Berkeley's rent control turning what might be a perfectly normal house into a time capsule hippie hovel.

Still, it's been a comfortable place to hang out, or perhaps more accurately, hide out from the world. I first took this room when my original Berkeley room, a bit larger and in the house next door, was devoured by the monster that became Lookout Records. I and two employees/partners ran the label out of that slightly larger room until the Green Day explosion of 1994-95, when the number of employees expanded to the point where there was no longer room for me to sleep there. When I got this new room in January of 1994, I grabbed a handful of blankets, took them next door and threw them on the floor, followed by myself, and slept for something like 29 hours.

Now, in two or three days if everything goes to plan, I'll be loading the last of this room's contents into a truck and setting off across the country. Normally I'd be looking forward to a transcontinental drive, but I'm kind of already dreading what it will feel like to wave goodbye to California for the last time.

Well, not necessarily the last time; I can always come back, I keep telling myself, if things don't work out in New York. And of course I'll still visit family and friends here as often as possible. But not having a specific place to come back to is going to make that a very different experience. Once upon a time, I would have thought nothing about moving thousands of miles away - in 1970 alone I did it three or four times - but perhaps I'm finally getting too old for this sort of shenanigans.

I try reminding myself that even if I were to stay in California, I wouldn't want to keep living in this room or this neighborhood. Downtown Berkeley was no prize when I first moved here (next door, into what would become the Lookout office) in 1990, and it's been going downhill ever since. Even if there were anywhere to go at night, I no longer feel all that safe on the streets, and the crime stats - almost double the rate of street crime compared with New York City - would seem to indicate I'm not just being paranoid. Today's Berkeley Daily Planet had a story about how a gunman strolled into a cafe directly across the street from the UC campus and robbed six students of their laptops; in New York I've grown used to seeing people sitting out on the sidewalks at two in the morning typing away on their computers without a care in the world.

So I guess I'm going to go, and if my recent experience in leaving other places - specifically Laytonville and London - is any indication, it'll be fine, and you won't catch me looking back or turning into a pillar of salt. But right at this moment, surrounded by the wreckage and detritus of my past waiting to be put into boxes and be carted off to a new home, I'm feeling just a teensy bit anxious. Give me a couple days, though, and I should be cruising up over the Sierra Nevada singing, in the words of Joe King, goodbye, California, it's really been nice, and getting ready for the rest of my life to begin.

Frisco Potheads Hate The Disabled

San Francisco marijuana dealers look to be hoist on their own petard: having, in the wake of Proposition 215, set up numerous quasi-legal dope houses masquerading as "medical dispensaries," they're now facing a city requirement to make those facilities accessible to the disabled.

It's nothing that wouldn't be required of any other new business, and seems particularly appropriate considering that Frisco's potheads have been peddling the line that they are engaged in a humanitarian - albeit highly profitable - mission to provide "medicine" to the sick and suffering, many of whom we'd have to assume would have limited mobility. In reality, of course, most patrons of the "marijuana clubs" are afflicted with no ailment more serious than terminal hippie-itis, and you can't expect them to sit there smoking their "medicine" while surrounded by a bunch of cripples in wheelchairs. I mean, that would be such a bringdown, maan!

Biking To Gilman

So there I was in Berkeley for the first time in a few years without access to a car. True, I never drove all that much when I did have a car, but there were certain destinations - and especially certain times of night - when using public transportation was a miserable and/or impossible prospect.

Remind me, while I'm on the subject, never ever to complain about the New York City subway again. After a couple days of depending on the Bay Area Toonerville Trolley, misleadingly known as Bay Area "Rapid Transit," it was easy to see why the streets of Berkeley and Frisco are largely deserted at night. It's just not worth the hassle of going out.

It used to be that while you had to wait a long time between trains (but hey, what's your hurry, there's nowhere to go anyway, so you might as well just kick back, smoke another joint and munch on some sautéed bean sprouts), but at least BART kept to a schedule, which, if you weren't too stoned to figure it out, meant you could generally show up at the station just in time for a train. No longer, though; in its ongoing crusade to punish the people of the Bay Area for being such gullible dupes, BART has now taken to canceling trains without notice and leaving people hanging out on the station platform for up to half an hour, by which time many of them could have walked where they were going. Except of course that they've already paid to get in the station and there are no refunds.

It used to be that you could take a train straight to San Francisco Airport, just like many real cities, but that made too much sense and was too easy. Now you've got to take three trains, including an 11 minute wait on the platform while other trains that are going almost but not quite to SFO pass you by. Brilliant transit planning, BART guys. Let me guess: you never actually ride the thing, do you?

At least I could get to my mom's and brother's houses in El Cerrito pretty easily. Six minutes on the train and a 10 minute walk at either end made it almost as quick as driving. But even that got a little tedious, so I decided to follow my other brother's example and ride a bike there. The last time - years ago, I must admit - I tried riding to El Cerrito I followed the same route I'd normally use if driving a car, and it was harsh: up and down some very stroppy hills. I was completely exhausted by the time I got there and ended up bringing my bike back on the BART.

But this time I thought things out a little more carefully and on doing so realized that the bicycle freeway - aka the bike path or the Ohlone Greenway - that passed near my mom's house was the same one that passed very near my Berkeley HQ, and that it was pretty much a level run all the way there.

I'd ridden the path many times before, but only as far as Gilman Street, which is what, for old times' sake, I'd done on Friday night. I was hoping to run into Jesse Luscious there, being that he'd posted on the PPMB that he might be stopping in to see Social Unrest. He didn't show up, as it turned out, but quite a few other old-timers did, including, of course, SU guitarist James Brogan, who I also knew from his days with Samiam.

Then there was Gary Gutfeld, formerly of the Hi-Fives, who seemed a semi-unlikely candidate to be playing drums for such a proto/über-punk outfit like Social Unrest, but who acquitted himself masterfully (I shouldn't be surprised, really; Luis Illades, best known for his efforts on behalf of the poppier Pansy Division and Plus ones, turned out to be a totally solid punk rock drummer when he linked up with SF's re-united Avengers).

I was thinking it must have been nearly 20 years since I'd last seen Social Unrest, and if it wasn't quite that long, it's got to have been at least 15 or 18. And while I was remarking to someone on how remarkable it was that a band could still have so much youthful punk rock energy after 25 years, it suddenly occurred to me that they've been around even longer than that, more like 27-28 years. Wow.

I was especially impressed by singer Creetin K-os, who looked and carried himself like the kind of half-glam/half-gritty rock stars who used to front punk bands back in the glory days, and of whom Operation Ivy singer Jesse Michaels once said, "Basically, I ripped off his vocal style to a major degree. If people hear Creetin K-os sing, they'll be like, 'Oh, I see where he got all his shit.'" The guy's obviously a few years older than he was when he first fronted SU, but without getting right up front and examining him closely, you'd be hard pressed to tell.

It being "punk" night at Gilman, the troglodyte element was a little more evident among the audience. Actually, there was no more than a handful of serious old-fashioned moshers trying their best to make a circle pit while simultaneously trying to slam into and knock down as many innocent bystanders as possible. One particular goombah, who couldn't have been more than 5'4" but was built like the proverbial brick shithouse, especially delighted in blindsiding and sending sprawling anyone unwise enough to let his or her eyes stray toward the stage instead of the pit.

Forgetting momentarily how old and comparatively scrawny I am, I briefly mulled over stepping into the pit and sorting him out, but fortunately sanity returned before I took any such action. Back in 1987 or 88, when I was skinnier and crazier, but also 20 years younger, I single-handedly muscled a large obstreperous skinhead out of the pit and out the front door before he or anyone else realized what was happening. I've never understood how I got away with that, unless it was simply a matter of the guy simply being in shock that he was being manhandled by a guy half his size.

Gilman being Gilman, nobody did anything about the homicidal slam dancers except grumble to themselves or surreptitiously shove back when no one was looking. It kind of reminded me of the club's attitude toward smoking: it's one of the last public places in California where people are allowed to smoke indoors, even though smokers are now a tiny minority.

It wasn't always that way: a few years back, the joint reeked with great clouds of cigarette smoke as mobs of teenagers declared their freedom from mom and dad by puffing up a storm. But for some reason, that's no longer the case, which makes it all the more obvious how one single smoker can stink up the air for a couple dozen other people nearby.

But no one would dream of telling Mr. Smoker to take it outdoors, because that wouldn't be "punk." Ah well. I had to move a few times because some clueless dink parked himself right next to me with a slow-burning and especially stinky cigarette which he then used to strike elaborate poses meant apparently to illustrate just how cool he was but, um, failed miserably. Hey, that's Gilman. You take the tacky with the ultra-cool.

Anyway, the bike ride there and back was so pleasant and easy that the next day I high-tailed it over to El Cerrito over an as yet unexplored (except on foot) stretch of the Greenway. I thought it was especially cute how at Eureka Street in EC they even had an on ramp just like car freeways, complete with a mini-sized Yield sign. Again, the ride took me about the same amount of time it would have taken if I'd traveled by BART or automobile.

Had a nice time walking around EC with my mom, but when it came time to zip back to Berkeley and then on to BART for the trip to the airport, a great foul and chilly wind had sprung up, one of those winds Frisco and the near East Bay often get this time of year that makes it feel almost worse than midwinter. It was also blowing straight in my face all the way to Berkeley, and tearing right through my flimsy little jacket that by all normal logic should have been more than adequate for the last days of May. It didn't help, either, that I'd just checked the weather back home in New York and learned that it was a sunny 88 degrees there.

I wish I could have figured out a way to pack my bike up and ship it out to NYC for something less than the $75 it originally cost me back in 1993. An amazing bike it is, too: I've done virtually nothing to maintain it, it's sat outside through over a dozen Bay Area winters, and yet with little more than some air in the tires and a smattering of oil for the gears, it ran like a charm. I can't imagine what sort of additional comfort people who spend a couple grand on a bike are getting for their money.

Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to figure out any economical way of getting the bike here to NY short of hiring a big truck to drive it and all my remaining California possessions across the country, so in the interim I guess I'll have to look for its $75 equivalent on this side of the country, because after braving the wintry gales of a Frisco "spring," the idea of cruising the hot summer streets of Brooklyn and Manhattan suddenly seems a lot more appealing.

Oh yeah, while I've always enjoyed arriving in New York after a lengthy airplane ride, it's about a hundred times better when you know you're coming home and not just for a visit. It being sunny, warm and the start of what looks to be a long and lovely summer is that much more icing on the cake.

Back Of The Plane

About 15 years ago, I started doing a lot of flying. Well, let's be precise: I started riding in a lot of airplanes. I never actually flew one myself. At first it was largely business related, with my having to jet around the country to meet up with bands and/or scout out bands or just see bands that I liked to see because it was all a tax write-off anyway. And then when I became exhausted from meeting, seeing and hobnobbing with all those bands, I'd have to fly off somewhere else for a vacation. Where I'd usually end up seeing more bands and/or they would see me and chase me around trying to give me demo tapes. Eventually the mound of demo tapes in the corner of my room reached Himalayan proportions (it just seemed wrong to throw them out, even though I could barely bring myself to listen to them, either), one of several reasons why I hailed and continue to hail the advent of the mp3.

But I digress more radically than usual: I'm actually here today to talk about air travel, and how my decade and a half of profligate travel led to the accumulation of hundreds of thousands of frequent flyer miles (yes, I know I am a villainous scoundrel for contributing to global warming, but a) most places I have lived could do with a little warming; b) I at least partially made up for my excess flying by doing little or no driving; and c) on the day that my energy consumption and greenhouse gas output reaches 10% - hell, even 5% - of what gasbag Al Gore is pumping out, I'll take your criticisms under serious consideration).

And nearly all of those miles were on United Airlines, partly because it flew to all the places I most often visited, and partly because once you start accumulating miles on one carrier, you tend to stick with it whenever possible because of the perks that start to come your way. Not just the free flights, but the upgrades to a better class of service, and the special treatment you get even when you're flying on a bargain basement fare.

For example, it's been years since I've had to stand in line with the normal folks to check in or board the plane. At many airports, they even have a separate security gate for "elite" flyers, meaning you can stroll right past the hoi polloi who might have already been standing there for hours waiting their turn.

Yes, those were the days, but no more, I'm afraid. For one thing, now that I'm finally settled in New York, I feel much less inclined to travel, and secondly, United Airlines, once my favorite airline, have steadily made themselves less pleasant and less affordable, to the point where I've finally had to give up on them altogether.

It's bad enough that their fares have steadily gone up, and that they're now usually among the most expensive rather than the most affordable, or that anytime you try to book a flight with with them, they try to send you on some route that takes you from New York to Chicago by way of Phoenix, Arizona and only leaves at 6'oclock in the morning. You want a normal flight that goes directly there at a normal time of the day? Fine, you can do that, but the fare just quadrupled.

But the last straw was when, possibly in an attempt to claw its way out of bankruptcy, United sold its landing rights for the lucrative New York to London route to another airline. You want to fly United between Kennedy and Heathrow now, you'll have to go by way of Washington or Chicago (hint: it's in the opposite direction), adding 3-5 hours to your travel time and taking nothing off your fare. In fact, other airlines like American or Virgin will usually take you directly to London for a few hundred bucks less than United is charging for its round-the-houses route.

So after several years of trying, United has finally destroyed my hard-won customer loyalty, and on my most recent trip to San Francisco, I had the unnerving experience of flying a different airline, leaving from a different terminal that I had never seen before, and if that weren't unsettling enough (it almost felt as though I were cheating on my wife, or that the president of United Airlines would suddenly pop up on the Airtrain and give me a pained look and a "How could you" as we rolled past his terminal).

And, of course, I had to wait until the last group to be boarded, and be squished into the cheap seats at the back of the plane where they don't even give you a full can of soda and a packet of M&Ms or some appalling-looking trail mix (the woman two seats over vomited repeatedly all the way across country after consuming some) retails for $3.

Yes, I suppose I could have paid more to ride up front, but if you think I would, you'd be forgetting that I'm the kind of guy who'd wait hours for a bus or a train - or walk 10 miles - rather than plunk down a few extra dollars for a taxi. At least my many years of flying experience have given me a little insight in how to obtain the best (of a bad lot) seats available, and to slither on board ahead of the people hoping to stash their goats and chickens in the overhead bins. And possibly if I stick with my new carrier (all right, it's American Airlines, but it hurts to say it, almost as though by pronouncing the name of the third party, I'm compounding my unfaithfulness) long enough, I'll eventually accumulate enough miles that they'll move me back up to whatever passes for "elite" status in their program.

But in a way, I kind of hope not, because in order for that to happen, I'd have to spend a lot more time on airplanes and in cities other than New York, and right now, I'm none too enthusiastic about being anyplace but here. That being said, I'm off to London tomorrow for 12 days, and yes, I'll be riding at the back of the plane. So this is how the other half, erm, I mean, the other 90% lives. Shocking, I tell you, simply shocking.

So I Wasn't Just Imagining There Were More Dumbasses Around These Days

But really, it's no joking matter: the Chronicle reports that California's high school graduation rate has dropped to a ten year low, and that only two thirds of the state's students manage to muddle through the minimal requirements for a diploma. The picture looks much worse in major urban areas: in Los Angeles and Oakland not even half the students manage to graduate (41% and 46%, respectively). San Francisco surprisingly manages to beat the odds, with a 73% pass rate, and I say surprisingly because over the years I've come to expect any and all public institutions run by The City That Used To Know How to be corrupt and incompetent.

Frankly, I'm still inclined to suspect chicanery on the part of SFUSD: could it be that they're using dubious means to help students to beat the new state exit exam? Considering that the city routinely declares itself exempt from federal immigration laws and state laws barring racial quotas, it would hardly be shocking.

The usual suspects can be found proclaiming from their ivory towers in Backwards Land that the problem lies not in poor teachers, lousy administration, screwy curricula or sloppy/nonexistent discipline, but in the exit exam itself. Attorney John Affeldt, who's spent nearly a decade lobbying if favor of high school diplomas for illiterates, argues, "The state has not yet earned the right to impose this exit exam penalty on [students]."

Having to take a test to prove you've acquired the (very) basic skills conferred by a modern high school education is a "penalty?" The state has to "earn" the right to impose standards for a diploma? By that logic how has the state "earned" the right to require people to know how to drive (well, in theory, anyway) before they're awarded a driver's license? Isn't it horribly oppressive to expect idealistic young people to jump through years of hoops and state-mandated exams before being allowed to practice as brain surgeons?

The "all must have prizes" school of educational theory maintains that students are more or less entitled to a high school diploma if they hang around long enough on the grounds that it might damage their self-esteem if they don't receive the same recognition as students who've actually done some work. Never mind that as a result a high school diploma becomes about as significant as the gold stars awarded to kindergarteners for being quiet during nap time, and that students now have to spend four more years and tens of thousands of dollars for a college degree proving essentially what a high school diploma used to, i.e., literacy and numeracy.

New York City doesn't do any better, by the way, with a graduation rate similar to that of Oakland or LA. Considering the steadily dwindling demand for unskilled labor in this country, investors looking for growth opportunities might be well advised to consider the prison sector. California, always a national trendsetter, has already announced its own $7.4 billion expansion.

"Skateboard Is Gone! I Ain't Never Forget This Day!"

What do you say about a (literally) legless drunk who lived on the street, begged for a living, spent nearly all his panhandled earnings on booze, and was crushed to death beneath the wheels of a mail truck when he rolled himself out into traffic one too many times without looking?

"How tragic," perhaps? "What a waste of a life"? "Why didn't someone do something to help him"?

In a normal world, perhaps, but in San Francisco's Bizarro-land, you romanticize him as a "character" and give him a largely values-free send-off in the local newspaper, replete with testimonials from his fellow denizens of the Tenderloin. Valedictions ranged from "he was mellow" to "the biggest heart in the street" to "part of the furniture." But the ultimate - and saddest - epitaph came from the owner of his local liquor store: "Skateboard was drunk all the time."