Off the Record 5/12/2025

MIKE GENIELLA: A Clarification Is Needed. Some believe the City of Ukiah intends to demolish Alex R. Thomas Plaza. A fledgling petition drive has been launched to block such a move. It is based, apparently, on comments I included in a recent article on the construction of a new $144 million Mendocino County Courthouse, and how a completed project will bring significant changes to downtown Ukiah. In a lengthy interview, Deputy City Manager Shannon Riley mentioned the possibility of the city acquiring the current courthouse site — the historic heart of downtown since 1860 — and recreating the Thomas Plaza there. That move would open up the historic center of town to the public, instead of being developed commercially, or worse yet, allowing the squat, 1950s current courthouse, owned by the County of Mendocino, to become another white elephant downtown. To date, county representatives have not publicly discussed future uses of the current building. The existing Thomas Plaza is located on downtown’s southern edge, not in Ukiah’s historic center. Relocating Thomas Plaza is not a new idea. Two years ago, a group promoted demolishing the current courthouse and turning the site into a new Thomas Plaza. It included the notion that the Mendocino County Museum would take over the limestone-clad courthouse addition fronting School Street for use. It is time for responsible county officials to begin public discussions about the fate of the current courthouse and site, and not leave it up to speculation.

BERNIE MEYERS, former North Coast Railroad Authority Board member, nicely deconstructed the ongoing (but now renamed and shifted as The Great Redwood Trail) railroad scam a quarter century ago: “There is good news regarding the North Coast Railroad Authority (NCRA). Its freight hauler, NWP, has been providing rail service to customers between Lombard (near Napa) and Windsor, since July 2011. Major shipments include loads of concrete ties and rail cars holding 1600 feet of continuous rail for SMART. But there is ample bad news. First, NCRA has awarded a ‘No Bid’ contract to NWP that ballooned in cost and came in a year beyond the supposedly strict four-month deadline: In March 2010 NCRA was told that the 62-mile Lombard to Windsor repair project was substantially complete. All that was needed to pass inspection by the feds was a four-item ‘punch list’ of repairs. It would cost less that $1 million and be completed quickly. Ordinarily this would require bidding, but in April NWP was awarded a contract to complete the work ‘at cost’ by September 1, 2010. The award was ‘capped at $1.1 million.’ By August the contract ‘cap’ was increased to $1.9 million and the completion date became October 1, 2010. The feds inspected the line in January 2011 and allowed operations. Yet hundreds of thousands of dollars were supposedly spent on the ‘punch list’ work for seven months after the inspection was completed. In October 2011 there had been no change to the August 2010 contract. Yet NCRA was presented with a summary of NWP’s expenses: $2.5 million. Then there is the Lease between NCRA and NWP: The initial Lease of September 2006 had the potential of handing the line to NWP for a century after NCRA spent over $60 million taxpayer dollars to repair the first 62 miles (out of about 310) and yet under the Lease NWP could conceivably not pay a dime to NCRA once trains were running. Some of the egregious provisions were deleted by a June 20, 2011 Amendment. But in October 2011 NWP demanded a reversal of those June 20 changes, plus new onerous provisions. For example, NWP had paid $20,000 monthly advance lease payments to NCRA. They were explicitly without interest and were to be credited to NWP once operations started. Suddenly, in October 2011, NWP demanded prompt repayment of all the funds and retroactive interest! NWP demanded that NCRA sell its Ukiah Depot property [the site for the proposed new Ukiah courthouse — Ed] and that NWP have first rights to the proceeds to cover all of what NWP perceived as its due. NWP would loan NCRA operating funds until the Ukiah Depot sold, or July 1, 2012, whichever came first. The NCRA Executive Director stated, ‘A new track rental fee will be renegotiated prior to the disbursement of funds from the sale of the Ukiah Depot Property.’ (The Ex. Dir. has refused to place the October 2011 Lease amendment on NCRA’s website.) July 1, 2012 came and went. However, no Depot sale had occurred and no new fee had been negotiated. NWP now refuses to pay NCRA for NWP’s use of the right-of-way. Meanwhile, NWP is seeking new funds to extend the line northward. Before proceeding further, NCRA should embrace both transparency and fiscal prudence. It should not expend additional millions of taxpayer dollars until it knows how, if at all, the public will benefit. [Bernie Meyers is a Novato attorney who represents Marin County on the board of directors of the North Coast Railroad Authority.]

A NOTICEABLE 3.6 MAGNITUDE EARTHQUAKE hit just outside of Willits Thursday a little before 2:30pm 3PM. Epicenter was reported to be only about.a mile from the surface. The 3.6 was followed by a 2.9 at the surface. Minor damage was reported. The quake was felt on the Coast as well, but less so. Willits AVA Reader “Lazarus” reported “The biggest in a while here. Got my attention, it was like an explosion, then shaking for a few seconds. A few minutes later, we had a smaller aftershock.”

ON THURSDAY, Sonoma Media Investments, parent company of the Santa Rosa Press Democrat, announced that they had sold the PD to MediaNews Group, the vulture capital outfit that owns the majority of newspapers left in California. Previously, there had been rumors that the Hearst Corporation/Chronicle were interested in buying the PD. The news of the PD sale came as a surprise to most independent media observers.

Bruce Anderson: Doug Bosco and Friends made a big show of keeping the PD local, but I'm sure the vultures at MediaNewsGroup made them a lush offer of the cash type that co-owner Doug Bosco has never refused.

Mike Geniella: Surprised. Newspaper Guild members in mid-April waived contract in anticipation of Hearst. Personally, I find it disappointing. MediaNews squeezes local reporting staffs, and has a reputation for selling off assets. The PD has a long, solid history on the North Coast. Evert Person, the last owner/philanthropist in the Finley family dynasty (married then to heiress Ruth Finley) remains the single largest donor to the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah, for example. More than $1 million. Person sold the PD to the New York Times in 1985. It viewed the PD as a California newspaper jewel. It was a grand ride for reporters like myself for 20 plus years, with all the news perks the Times provided. When news media began to be hurt hard by a shift to online, The Times sold the PD to local investors (including Norma Person, widow of Evert Person) and former Congressman Doug Bosco, and lobbyist Darius Anderson.) They kept it going, although the circulation has plunged to 20,000 compared to 100,000 daily under the NYT. The number of employees plummeted from around 450 to less than 100. The downtown Santa Rosa news building has been sold, and the NYT’s state of the art printing plant is shut down. In all, the current state of the PD reflects the collapse of solid local journalism. It matters for journalists, union workers, and our communities. Today’s news saddens me.

Mark Scaramella: It will be interesting to watch the further shrinkage of the PD, and what happens to the current editorship as the MediaNewsGroup vultures sell off what they can, put a lid on hiring, and squeeze pay and benefits.

SCAMARAMA

Are these spam calls? I've been getting calls on my phone every few days "This is your utility company." You've been paying more than you should on your electricity bill, please press one for your compensation of $50. My utility company is PGE, but they never say that. Is anyone else getting these calls? They come from a Ft. Bragg number. Are they spam?

Ronnie James ronnie@mcn.org

A READER WRITES:

I frequent a grocery store in town, you may remember from your Eugene days, called Fred Meyer. There is a particular location that I hate. On one occasion, I was returning to my car and a homeless man (or houseless person, as they like to say here) stood about 10 yards away and locked eyes with me. He shouted, “You fuggin’ faggot!” To which I mouthed, “Me?” while pointing to myself. Not half a second later he shouted, “Yeah you, you fuggin’ faggot!” He then proceeded to charge in my direction. I leapt in my car as fast as humanly possible before he could make contact and locked the door. Today, I reluctantly went to this same location as it is the closest to my work, and my friend Mr. Jones needed something so I went during lunch. Anyway, I thought I had been very lucky not to have had any strange encounter and smugly walked back to my car. I saw another houseless gent make eye contact with me but he was oddly partially obscured by a wall. I quickly registered that he was midst-urination and then he shouted to me, “Uh, sorry ma’am, I just couldn’t hold it.” This time I didn’t impulsively respond to the gentleman but rather saved the 5 seconds to get to my car and head back to work, hoping to forget what I had seen before I had to teach Spanish.”

THE FBI was not only founded by a lunatic, it was, and still is, staffed by people who, shall we say, lack sophistication. Of course if you think Arthur Miller was a communist and Marilyn Monroe a pinko, you probably think of the contemporary FBI as super sleuths. Maybe they are, but in my direct experience, I’d characterize the G-Men (and one very young Asian G-Woman) that I’ve met in circumstances ranging from unpleasant to guarded they are as limited-to-crippled in their understanding of great swathes of American experience, and completely at sea when it comes to even the most basic distinctions among left wingers. And here comes Patel!

EVERYONE to the left of Chuck Schumer is viewed as a socialist, and a socialist is the same as a communist, and a small ‘c’ communist is the same as a member of the Communist Party (which no longer exists) and an anarchist is an obnoxious street grunge towed by a team of pitbulls, and they’re all liberals, and liberals are communists and socialists and we’re back to where we began.

I BRING YOU these profound observations because I read a story last week about how Hoover’s FBI kept Marilyn Monroe under surveillance. Of course the Kennedy Brothers and mafia figures enjoyed her company so I suppose in a peripheral sense Marilyn would have been “a person of interest” to J. Edgar Closet Case.

BUT THAT’S not why the old voyeur had Marilyn in his highly selective sights while he maintained that there was no such thing as organized crime, an insistence some writers think arose out of the mafia being in possession of blackmail photos of Hoover prancing around in a cocktail dress. (Even mentioning this stuff you start to sound like a paranoid.) But Hoover, who hated the Kennedys and shared audiotapes of Martin Luther King’s after-hours life with other Klan-minded government officials, was mostly interested in Marilyn because he really thought she was a red.

WHY? Well, she believed in civil rights for black people, a stance Hoover and the political right generally assumed was inspired by communists. Marilyn also publicly denounced McCarthyism; and she often expressed contempt for Hoover himself. In other words, Marilyn Monroe was an intelligent person and a good American.

THERE’S an essay by George Orwell on his experience picking Brit hops in the 1930’s. The work was the same wherever hops were grown, and the people doing the picking were drawn from the bottom of the class barrel. A reader reminds us that “hops were at their peak in Anderson Valley prior to the enactment of Prohibition, i.e., pre-1920. The crop was dried at the source and shipped in a dried state, important to a region like Anderson Valley, far from urban centers and isolated by poor roads. Some beer may have been made locally (most likely in Ukiah — where a book I found on the internet mentions Gibson’s Hop House burned in 1905, with the building loss estimated at $5,000), but most of the hops probably went to Santa Rosa, where Enterprise Brewing and Grace Brothers Brewing were big businesses. Hops may have resumed in the valley in the 1930s and 1940s, as Grace Brothers remained in business, but I have no memory of seeing hops when we first arrived in 1957. It is certainly an interesting — and largely unrecorded — aspect of valley history.”

LEW CHICHESTER (Covelo)

The two articles Friday, one, the letter from John Haschak and Matt Kendall to the supervisors about un-permitted cannabis cultivation, and two, the press release from the plaintiffs in the lawsuit in federal court against the Sheriffs of both Mendocino and Humboldt counties for “unconstitutional searches and seizures…” are so closely related as to be almost the same story, and may become so as the information unfolds.

My perspective, from living on a piece of private property in the middle of the Round Valley Indian Reservation for more than fifty years: The development of cannabis grows on the Round Valley Reservation, which is exempt from state and county civil laws, has been using the tribal ordinance allowing personal use cultivation as a screen for obvious commercial grows, leased to non-tribal members, and these grows can include criminal activities.

I commend the Sheriff for his actions attempting to set some kind of limit on what will be tolerated, as the tribal government seemingly does nothing to enforce internally its own marijuana laws. Some tribal members, including those on the council, are personally benefitting from blatantly illegal behavior in contradiction to the “compassionate use” ordinance of the Round Valley Reservation, contributing to a general degradation of the land, encouraging criminal behavior, and apparently this is OK under some fiction of sovereignty. It’s a mess, and maybe this lawsuit will get this straightened out. I doubt it, it’s just a mess.

SHERIFF KENDALL:

Well Lew, we will see where this goes. The question posed is a question of tribal sovereignty. I fear when it comes to policies which create dangerous environments and lawlessness for everyone living in the area we have to take a close look at the factors causing the issues. We need to know where that sovereignty begins and where it ends.

I received a lot of calls from Round Valley residents, both tribal members as well as non tribal members voicing their concerns and raising questions over this. These folks advised their concerns were that tribal policies are beginning to look like a protection racket, that has become a real issue. These questions need to be answered and I am hopeful they will be.

THE SUPERVISORS’ HAVE SCHEDULED AN ALL-DAY CLOSED SESSION AGENDA for next Wednesday which includes performance evaluations for the County Librarian and CEO Darcie Antle. It also includes a discussion of the status of the wrongful suspension civil case filed by Auditor-Controller-Treasurer-Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison. Plus a case filed by the Vichy Springs Resort against the City of Ukiah (not the County, although one assumes the County is involved somehow), and the lawsuit filed by the Willits Environmental Center about the County’s pot permit program described by Jim Shields elsewhere in today’s postings. It’s probably too optimistic to hope that the Supervisors will attempt to settle the Cubbison case by offering a fair settlement with back pay and court/attorney costs plus a damages payment to put the disgraceful case behind them. So far we have seen nothing to indicate that the County has any such plans, even though the County is running up large outside attorney costs and the case will be heard by the same judge who declared County officials to be “willfully ignorant” and without credibility (among other things) when she tossed the criminal case against Cubbison at the preliminary hearing stage.

CELEBRATING A MAJOR EYESORE AND AN UTTER LACK OF PLANNING

Mendocino Community Celebrates Groundbreaking For New Courthouse

On April 30, more than 125 community members celebrated the Mendocino County Superior Court groundbreaking event to officially begin construction of a new three-story, seven-courtroom, 82,000 square foot courthouse in Ukiah next to the Train Depot. The audience included members of the public, representatives from the City of Ukiah and County of Mendocino, current and retired judges and court staff. More than twenty members of the design-build team, consisting of Hensel Phelps, Fentress Architects and Kitchell were on site to mark this occasion. The Judicial Council of California was also well represented and is providing approximately $120 million in state funding to build the new courthouse. Judicial Council staff will be on-site throughout the construction phase to provide oversight and support. Finally, Angela James from the Pinoleville Pomo Nation performed a blessing at the end of the ceremony and described the history of the tribal community’s involvement with the land on which the courthouse will be built.

Presiding Judge Keith Faulder began the ceremony with remarks about the history of the courthouses in Mendocino County, from the mid-1800s to the present, and the twenty-year journey to realize this important groundbreaking milestone. He recognized the funding challenges that have made achieving this goal often seem out of reach. He acknowledged the detailed and creative design work, already completed, by the design-build team, Judicial Council, City of Ukiah and the court.

Chief Operating Officer Salena Chow from the Judicial Council highlighted the importance of this new courthouse. Ms. Chow said, “This project represents many years of partnership between the court and council, working alongside our state, city, and county partners. Breaking ground on this new courthouse marks a major step toward providing a modern, efficient, and secure facility that will better meet the needs of the public and expand access to justice for the residents of Mendocino County.”

Juan Orozco, Ukiah City Councilmember, affirmed the City’s commitment to the new courthouse, highlighting its importance to the downtown area. City Manager Sage Sangiacomo added, “The courthouse has been an important fixture in Ukiah’s downtown for more than a century and a half. While our community has outgrown the current building in many ways, its critical role as an anchor remains. This investment by the State in a new facility, and their commitment to keeping it downtown, will benefit Ukiah tremendously—for another 150 years or more, we hope.”

Curtis Fentress, Principal in charge of Design at Fentress Architects and John Petty, Operations Manager at Hensel Phelps highlighted their design and construction partnership and noteworthy features in the new courthouse in their remarks. Mr. Petty stated, “The Hensel Phelps/Fentress Design-Build Team is honored to team up with the Judicial Council of California, The Superior Court of Mendocino County and the City of Ukiah to deliver this state-of-the-art facility for the people of Ukiah and Mendocino County. This courthouse is designed to be highly efficient, durable and resilient while targeting LEED Silver certification. All parking stalls will be covered with PV panels providing a substantial amount of the energy required for the new facility. Additionally, the landscaping will be drought tolerant and native.” Mr. Fentress added, “The Ukiah Courthouse was designed to serve a judicial system that has evolved over the past few decades. Throughout the design process we were committed to justice, accessibility, security, and public service. We’re proud to have created a landmark that will serve Ukiah and Mendocino County for generations to come.”

Following the event, Court Executive Officer Kim Turner recognized the extensive collaboration among the design-build team members and the synergy that is created by developing a project that honors all perspectives. “The design-build team, the council and the court have been meeting weekly for nearly two years to work through every aspect of the design. The process has been energizing and has allowed us to ‘problem-solve’ design features, honoring the ultimate needs of the court for a functional, efficient and visually stunning new facility.” Ms. Turner added, “The court is also committed to honoring the legacy of our current Ukiah courthouse and the Mendocino community by reproducing in our new facility the current courthouse’s murals painted in the 1970s, depicting many aspects of life in Mendocino and our commitment to justice.”

The courthouse is slated to be completed in 27 months, meaning judges and staff will be able to move into the new facility before the end of 2027. Early discussions are underway between the County and the City to determine what will be done with the current courthouse once the court vacates the building.

For more information contact:

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THE ABOVE PRESSER from the County Courthouse reminded us of the time back in March of 2016 (described in the item below) when we tried to discuss the wastefulness of the new Courthouse with then judge-candidate Keith Faulder. Faulder was running for his current (open at the time) seat against Patrick Pekin back in 2016. (Faulder won by the slimmest of margins, only 154 votes countywide; Pekin was subsequently appointed to a different judgeship.)

(March 2016) — YOU’RE NOW BEING TRANSFERRED TO LISTEN ONLY MODE: Last Wednesday night judge candidate Keith Faulder held a phone-in town hall meeting. After answering several lob ball questions which sounded like they came from Faulder’s grandparents, it was my turn. (Me, Major Mark Scaramella, USAF ret.) I quoted some excerpts from the Deputy Sheriff’s Association statement in 2014 in which they explained why they unanimously opposed the construction of a new County Courthouse.

I THEN ASKED THE CANDIDATE if he really thought a new courthouse was necessary.

I HAD HOPED that candidate Judge Faulder would at least take a neutral stance on the indefensible project, maybe a little judicial lib-labbery of on-the-one-hand/on-the other hand variety… Maybe even a little give and take on the subject.

BUT I WAS WRONG. Faulder immediately launched into a canned near-verbatim recitation of [the late] Judge Dave Nelson’s unconvincing party-line talking points about “safety and security during prisoner shuttling,” disability access and “the privacy of juvenile defendants.” (Huh? This one’s a brand new non-reason. Nelson must be putting in some serious OT dreaming this stuff up.) Faulder had even memorized the exact budgeted cost of the new courthouse — $98 million [in 2016] — which he insisted was all state funds, not county funds, completely missing the point about the fiscal and disruptive impact on other County departments. And deliberately missing the point on the origins of this money — the extortionate fines and fees the judge factories impose on all citizens, including those residing in Mendocino County. Even “state money” has real origins. (And as if the Deputy Sheriffs hadn’t taken the shuttle-security issue into account in their opposition.)

HAVING HEARD previous callers get a chance to follow up, I was just about to say, “If I’d wanted Judge Nelson’s opinion I would have asked him. But you missed the point that the County will have to pick up the tab for all the disruptions in the other departments… And that the Deputy Sheriffs were certainly aware of the safety issue…” But instead, I was quickly hung up on and told by a disembodied recorded female voice: “You are now being transferred to listen-only mode.”

WELL. We now know judge Faulder will be quick with the gavel at the first hint of insouciant courtroom comment.

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[Back to 2025…] “LISTEN ONLY MODE” is a good summary of this entire project. Mendo hasn’t had any say in the project whatsoever. And the public? We get to listen to/read the self-congratulatory press releases and announcements from people like Faulder and Supervisor Maureen Mulheren who might as well be AI-bots on the subject.

The Court Presser’s final sentence — “Early discussions are underway between the County and the City to determine what will be done with the current courthouse once the court vacates the building” — made us laugh out loud. This project has been underway for more than ten years and they’re only now in “early discussions to determine what will be done with the current courthouse once the court vacates the building”? Typical.

(Mark Scaramella)

INVESTMENT FIRM BUYS PRESS DEMOCRAT AND FOUR OTHER NORTH BAY PUBLICATIONS

by Roland Li

Investment firm Alden Global Capital’s MediaNews Group is acquiring the Press Democrat newspaper and five other North Bay publications.

The purchase agreement, confirmed by the companies Thursday, would add the Santa Rosa-based publication to Alden’s dozens of newspaper holdings, which include the Mercury News, East Bay Times and San Diego Union-Tribune.

“We always believed that a viable, independent local press was vital to our North Bay community. We believe that the newspaper, its staff and most importantly the public will be best served under the stewardship of MediaNews Group, with the newspaper expertise and financial resources necessary to carry on our mission of delivering the highest-caliber local journalism for future North Bay generations,” Darius Anderson, managing member of Sonoma Media Investments, said in a statement.

The sale would honor the existing contract between the newspaper and the Pacific Media Workers Guild, the newsroom’s union.

“We are honored to bring a newspaper of this quality into MediaNews Group,” Frank Pine, executive editor of MediaNews Group, said in a statement. “We appreciate the importance of local news and information to the communities where we publish and are proud to expand our commitment to Northern California in the North Bay.”

The Press Democrat won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for its coverage of the Tubbs Fire.

The sale also includes the Sonoma Index-Tribune, Petaluma Argus-Courier, North Bay Business Journal, Sonoma magazine, Sonoma County Gazette and La Prensa Sonoma.

Hearst, owner of the Chronicle, was also reportedly a bidder for the newspapers.

(SF Chronicle)

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MIKE GENIELLA:

Well, mixed feelings for sure. I spent 28 years with The Press Democrat, a rock-solid regional newspaper known for being one of California’s best. I worked for the ownership of Ruth Finley and Evert Person, and for the next 20-plus years under New York Times management after the Old Gray Lady of Journalism purchased the PD in 1985. It was a great run, propelled by the benefits of the Times’ ownership. I applauded when local investors later stepped up, including the late Evert Person’s widow, Norma, to bring ownership back home. I am troubled by the purchase of the PD by MediaNews Group, its ties to Alden Global Capital, and a history of gutting local news operations and selling off assets. Responsible, fact-based journalism is critical to any community. The PD may be on a serious slide to nowhere.

SAN FRANCISCO is undergoing its annual coyote scare. About a year ago, a woman’s illegally off-leash dogs encountered a coyote near the buffalo pens in Golden Gate Park, and the coyotes ever since have gotten the blame for missing pets. The Grunge People’s pitbulls are the biggest hazard to Frisco park life, including two-footed life, but that’s another story.

IN LIVING COYOTE FACT, the crafty little critters have multiplied in the city; I’ve seen many myself on early morning walks through the very west end of the Presidio. The Presidio coyotes aren’t about to jog up to you for a biscuit, but they don’t take off at the approach of a human either. They fully co-exist.

ONE MORNING a sleek 70 pounder (I estimated) trotted across a street right in front of me, then sat on a dune staring at me staring at him, the second time a coyote stare down has happened to me, the first time being in Boonville when I got into a lengthy stare down with a coyote sitting nonchalantly at the other end of a big drain pipe.

I LOVE the humor in these animals. They will definitely mess with you in that uncanny way of theirs. You hear coyotes night-yowling in Mendocino County more than you see them, and when you do see them in their rural habitat, it’s clear from their scraggy appearances they’re working for a living.

CITY COYOTES are fed by animal lovers, and they are also assumed to help themselves to unattended cats and dogs, although I’d need some proof of that before I’d blame the coyotes for the disappearance of Muffin and FiFi.

STOP ME if you’ve heard this old coyote joke: Conservationists committed to humane management of coyotes got together with sheep ranchers to discuss the problem sheep ranchers had with coyotes preying on sheep. A conservationist asked, “Can’t you catch the coyotes, neuter them and let them go?” A rancher stood up and replied, “Lady, the coyotes are eating the sheep, they ain’t screwin’ them!”

IT WAS MUNI’S 100TH anniversary the morning I set out for the Ho Chi Minh Trail where I was meeting a guy for lunch at the Bodega Bistro, 607 Larkin. (Bo is beef; de is lamb; ga is chicken. Bo de ga. Nothing to do with burritos.) The food is wonderful and wonderfully cheap, but I never could detect anything bistro-like in the place.) Lower Larkin is home to a string of Vietnamese restaurants, hence the reference to Uncle Ho, a reference unlikely to be viewed as friendly by Bay Area Vietnamese, most of whom fought on the other side in the Vietnam war. San Francisco markets itself as cutely diverse, but it’s a city grown so rich that what diversity remains is pretty much confined to a few blocks downtown where there’s enough diversity in the Tenderloin to short out even the purplest multi-culturist, a neighborhood of free range grotesques whose jarring visuals are interwoven with the Asian and Hispanic families who live there. San Francisco’s crime and homeless politics seem simple enough: restrict capitalism’s most deformed victims to these few blocks where they can do whatever they want short of assaulting tourists, the city’s paying customers. If the damned and the doomed stray north of Geary, west of Kearny or east of VanNess, book ‘em Dano, but they can roam south all the way to Candlestick — except on game days. (You won’t see a homeless person even shuffling through Pacific Heights. Ever. And the Park Police pounce immediately if they catch one lingering anywhere in the Presidio. Ditto for all the city’s upscale neighborhoods.) Waiting for my friend to show up at Larkin and Eddy, I watched a half-dozen drug deals, the usual platoon of shambling wrecks talking to themselves as they pushed their worldly goods along in shopping carts, and there were plenty of freshly paroled tough guys, and prostitutes, and botched gender re-assignments, and innumerable drunks. Against this multi-hued canvas of equal parts menace and despair, children ran in and out as if they were playing in a redwood grove while their wholly focused parents labored in the Asian restaurants reclaiming the area. Considering it was 11:30am, the full American monte was on display. No different at 11:30pm, but wear your running shoes and carry a heavy walking stick after nightfall. The Bodega Cafe, San Francisco, Eddy and Larkin, an AVA-recommended place to eat.

THE FIRST TIME I paid close attention to Dave Brubeck’s music was in 1964, after a musician friend gave me a copy of vibraphonist Emil Richards’ album, “A New Time Element” on which Richards played well known pop standards to non-standard beats. ‘Georgy Girl’ was set to 5/4 time. ‘Havah Nagilah’ was played in 9/8 time. Etc. One of Richards’ best re-arrangements was his reverse version of Dave Brubeck’s famous “Take Five” — which Richards did in 4/4 time! Amazingly, Richards’ version sounded weird even though it was in standard time. I had worked for weeks to come up with an abbreviated 5/4 version of Take 5 myself and I knew its basic non-standard 5/4 time signature (1-2-3 [jazz waltz], 1-2). So hearing it in 4/4 time was downright fascinating. And even harder to play, although it should have been easier. That was just a small example of how effective Brubeck had been in establishing unusual time signatures in the minds of jazz listeners — and much of the listening public — of the late 50s and early 60s. It was genuinely ground-breaking. I was reminded of this odd memory upon hearing of Dave Brubeck’s death Wednesday at the age of 92. Looking back now on Brubeck’s prodigious output, one is struck by how he — almost single-handedly — was able to popularize tunes with offbeat rhythms and odd time signatures in a music world that had been stuck in 4/4 and 3/4 since before J.S. Bach. Right off, I can recall such fascinating tunes as ‘Blue Rondo A La Turk,’ ‘It’s a Raggy Waltz,’ ‘Three To Get Ready,’ ‘Unsquare Dance,’ etc. Brubeck didn’t overplay either. He didn’t show off, didn’t jive off into rarefied unlistenable musical territory that only other jazz players could understand. Instead he relied on clever tempos, surprising short riffs, cuts, layoffs, and understated harmonies and melodies which appealed to a broader audience, while at the same time demanding that they pay attention to the music via the near-eastern-ish timings that require you to think and listen carefully before just tapping your toe. Another impressive aspect of Brubeck’s compositions and performances was the way he incorporated classical elements. (If you don’t hear a touch of Mozart in ‘Blue Rondo,’ you need to listen more carefully.) In a way he was also out of sync with the times when he assembled one of the first highly popular mixed race jazz groups in the late 50s and early 60s with ultra-cool (when “cool” actually meant cool, calm, collected, confident, easy-if-you-know-what-you’re-doing cool) jazz bassist Eugene Wright — who was more important to establishing the foundations of those off-beat tempos than most listeners realize. There will be plenty of conventional obituaries and remembrances of Dave Brubeck, his life and his impressive jazz legacy. But personally, I’ll always appreciate the way Dave Brubeck demonstrated how rewarding it is to take a serious but unconventional approach to music — and life. (Mark Scaramella, 2013, on the occasion of Brubeck’s death)

SOMEBODY HAS ATTEMPTED to rob the safe in the office of City and County of San Francisco’s Treasurer. This is rushing matters; the impatient scoundrel ought to try his hand at being a Supervisor first. From Supervisor to Thief the transition is natural and easy. The opportunities are many.

— Ambrose Bierce, reporting in SF’s 19th century weekly, “The Newsletter”

AS A READER reminds us, in any round-up of unsolved Mendocino County murders, those of Charles ‘Buzzy’ Mitchell, 66, and his son Nolan Mitchell, 34, must be included. Mitchell Sr. was bludgeoned to death outside his home on Orr Springs Road (Ukiah). He had been a candidate for a seat on the Coyote Valley Tribal Council. There was talk at the time that his 2004 murder was related to the intense tribal political infighting prevalent at the time. Nolan Mitchel was apparently unaware that his father was being beaten to death only a few yards from where Nolan was subsequently shot to death as he slept inside the home he shared with his father.

ALSO UNSOLVED is the case of Jergun Knemeyer, 57, of Willits. Knemeyer was found beaten to death in his home on Aug. 8, 1999. Miller said police believe Knemeyer, whose remains were not found until several days after he was killed, had been growing marijuana. The Sheriff’s Department has assumed his death was related to his enterprise, as the following from the Sheriff’s website makes clear:

”ON AUGUST 14, 1999 at 12:30pm a deputy from the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office was dispatched to Jergun Knemeyer’s Willits home on Hill Top Road on a welfare check. A neighbor had reported seeing the back door to Jergun Knemeyer’s home open with the interior lights being on since 3am. Upon entering the residence, the Deputy located Jergun Knemeyer deceased from injuries obviously associated with a homicide. During investigations detectives learned a family member had last spoken with Jergun Knemeyer on August 12, 1999 at 9:30pm. At this time it is unclear the motive for the homicide but growing marijuana was located at Jergun Knemeyer’s home during the processing of the crime scene. “

IF YOU HAPPEN to go for a dip on the Lost Coast, Surfer Mike cautions, “Black sands beach is no normal beach, it is all massive shore break because it drops off very deep 10 feet out. ALL lagoons have this same feature, it can happen anywhere but those beaches are the worst. Places like camel, state beach can all rush in as well but usually its not quite as bad. go to this site and check the surf size before you go to the beach. I would say surf under 5 feet has the least danger of sweep in while 6 to 10 feet their is a moderate danger and over 10 feet, esp. over 15 feet it is very dangerous to be closer than 50-100 yards from the water line. longer interval swells also tend to increase the tide surge chances ( its the part that says seconds, as in 10 feet @17 sec.).Tides are a factor to , try to go on a low tide , still going lower. Incoming tides can create surges. IF you happen to get swept in, the first rule is to relax, and if you can , remove shoes and jackets. Let it take you out past the break and then try to body surf in on a wave when the tide surges in . It may take several tries .You have to try to relax even though you are freezing and scared. IF help is near by and you cant make it in , try to swim out just past the break and float on your back, conserving energy till they can pluck u out w a copter. Be careful fam. 1 love.”

REEL SHORT MOVIE REVIEW from a while back. ‘Zero Dark Thirty.’ The Chron’s former movie reviewer, Mick LaSalle, said it’s “one of the best films of 2012.” I’d say it’s one of the worst but, in its way, revelatory, in its unintentional depiction of our government as depraved and stupid, a fact of American life many of us adjusted to years ago. Zero supposedly tells the story of the CIA agent who locates Osama Bin Laden so the militarized version of the Stanford football team can finish him off. The CIA agent is a beautiful woman, natch, because this is a movie, and the movie’s sub-theme is contempo-feminist, i.e., women can be as cruelly brutal as men, another fact of life unlikely to surprise anyone over the age of 12. Bin Laden and lots of other fanatics have been “neutralized” because the beautiful redhead and the Ivy League grad students who comprise the CIA have tortured their whereabouts out of their gofers at secret torture centers in places like Poland and Egypt, not to mention Afghanistan. The movie’s torture scenes are advertised as depictions of the real deal and, as some reviewers have described them, “excruciating.” The real deal, we can be sure, does not resemble the Frisco sex dungeons we get here. The Ivy League CIA man doing the torturing throws out a lot of “dudes” and “bros” as he hoists his captive with ropes and pulleys while the beautiful redhead looks on and occasionally winces. (She’s a girl, you see, and it takes girls a little longer to adjust to psychos torturing other psychos to win the jive War On Terror. There are lots of explosions and Bruce Willis-type special effects — in fact that moron’s latest movie was prominent among the talent-free previews before ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ began. Of course this fascist epic got a lot of Academy Awards, and looked at objectively, it really is terrifying.

IS ‘ARGO’ A GOOD MOVIE? No. Is it watchable? Kind of, but that’s setting the bar pretty low. Mick LaSalle at the Chron loved it, and he was always a reliable guide to bad movies. If LaSalle likes it it’s probably bad but it’s also probably watchable, entertaining enough without you storming out of the theater to demand your money back. Which is still a low standard. All these movies come with an imperial assumption, which is that our imperialism, unlike British, French, Chinese, and other imperialisms, is somehow good imperialism, benign imperialism, so benign it isn’t even imperialism, it’s helping others. If you think taking the natural resources of other countries by force has been good for America you probably are predisposed to enjoy movies like ‘Argo’ and ‘Zero Dark Thirty.’ You would have believed that we weren’t in Iran and the Middle East for their oil, we’re there to liberate the poor bastards from the burkah-brains.

I KNOW AN IRANIAN car mechanic in San Francisco, an older man, who I asked once where he was from. I suspected he was from either Iran or Iraq from his accent. “Persia,” he said. I asked him if he’d been a Mossedegh man. He wouldn’t say, so I assumed he’d left Iran with the fall of the Shah. He did say, “The problem with Iran is too many stupid people.” I said his adopted country had the same problem, and we laughed and left it there. Mossedegh, some of you will know, was a democratically elected secular nationalist who nationalized Iran’s oil and was duly overthrown by the CIA (with a keystone kops team lead by FDR’s nephew) acting in concert with the British who replaced him with the representative of the ancient Kingdom of the True Aryans or some bullshit like that who set up a murderous police state which was eventually overthrown by the ayatollahs. The forces of the Anti-Modern took American hostages in the 1979 — the Carter interim — when a mob successfully stormed our embassy. This all happened in the Carter years. ‘Argo’ is the story of a successful joint CIA-Canadian operation to smuggle six embassy people out of Iran. I haven’t spoiled the movie for you because most people know the story. Check that: Most people used to know the story. You really can’t assume what people know anymore, and there are no honest move critics writing in the English language any more. If Iran’s Mossaddegh government hadn’t been subverted in 1953, the history of the Middle East might not have become as murderous as it has.

FBI: Khadijah Rose Britton was last seen being forced into a car at gunpoint by her ex-boyfriend in February 2018. The FBI is offering a reward of up to $10,000 for tips that lead to the arrest and conviction of subject(s) related to her disappearance.

MMIP #FBISanFrancisco https://go.usa.gov/xudum

MIKE GENIELLA:

President Chaos orders Alcatraz to be reopened. Perhaps the moron should read the government's own background on a prison that hasn't been stacked with prisoners since 1963.

Trump and the crowd (including DOGE) might learn that Alcatraz was nearly three times more expensive to operate than any other federal prison. The significant expense was caused by the island's physical isolation, meaning food, supplies, water, and fuel had to be brought to Alcatraz by boat. For example, prison records show the island had no source of fresh water, so nearly one million gallons of water had to be barged to the island each week. The federal government closed Alcatraz because building a new institution was more cost-effective than keeping it open.

Musk, the whiz-bang spending guru, should look into the Trump pronouncement, given the tens of millions of dollars it would take to turn Alcatraz back into a prison facility.

More lunacy.

ON-LINE COMMENTS OF THE WEEK

[1] Why do you think everyone who sat back, fat and lazy allowed the last four years of incompetence of a leader you all said was just fine, when he couldn’t find his way off the stage, only took questions from pre-scripted/written reporters with his cheat sheet, think one man could turn it all around in less than a hundred days. You complain daily, yet had no real chance at the Presidency and still have nothing to show for it now or the near future. Yes, we will be hit hard, and I except that because we have a ton of undoing to do. If you could answer just one question, I’d ask why your old President allowed the Nation to be flooded with illegals. I know you have no answer for that simple question, so the rest does Not matter.

[2] I laughed out loud when I read about the policy proposals being considered by the Trump administration to induce women to have more children. A “baby bonus” of $5,000 when the cost of raising a child is estimated to be at least $200,000 to $400,000? The proposal is insulting to prospective parents’ intelligence.

[3] “Children will be taught to love America. Children will be taught to be patriots. Children will be taught civic values for schools that want federal taxpayer funding. So as we close the Department of Education and provide funding to states, we’re going to make sure these funds are not being used to promote communist ideology.”

— Stephen Miller

[4] Deep down in our guts, we know that this way of living isn’t going to end well. Unfortunately, we have all been born into this way of living, it is all we know, we know nothing else. Might explain why everyone is on anti-anxiety meds these days. We are helpless slaves to a system we had no say in creating. We all know it. Sense it. Feel it. We all know there is not a damned thing we can do about it. So we wait for the inevitable.

[5] A journalist is someone who has been hired to collect information and to write it for public consumption, by a company that will profit financially from this.

Apart from the state media, this is a business. And even then, the employees of state media are employees like everyone else.

There are no formal credentials to become a journalist. Nor is there any professional body overseeing this. Many Journalists in earlier eras had grade 12 educations. If even that. And in the last generation, the ante may have been upped to an undergrad degree in some cases. Or a Community College diploma in newsroom procedures. In other words, most journalists cannot possibly be omniscient gods. They simply pull material off the wire or the internet.

Those few MSM journalists like like Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn, thinking for themselves, are in the minority.

[6] The wine industry is losing. Younger folks just don’t drink wine so much. It’s going down and people are pulling up vines and selling off interests in their wineries. Could some of this be related to weed sales? I say yes: there is only so much discretionary money and what the kids spend on weed they then can’t spend on wine. So if we keep harvesting their money in black market sales we can not only destroy the corporate pansy BigWeed but also help destroy the Wine Cartels of Napa and Sonoma. YeeHaw!

[7] The joke is that a lot of drug dealing goes on at our local casinos. They know, and turn a blind eye to the small time deals. What to do? It’s a giant hassle to confront the deals. Besides, a lot of the deals go down in the wee hours of the night. When hardly anybody gambling is there. This is a fact. Sometimes I wish the Indian Casinos had not taken root here in our community. Gambling is a potential addiction to lots of people for many reasons. And it is designed to be that way. There is no “Gamblers Anonymous” program here. And with three casinos in an impoverished area. The casinos would despise that because for every person that quits, is significant bucks to them. Back to drug dealing in the casinos and the wretched people are there to score.

[8] On Jan. 20, 2025, Donald Trump swore an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.”

On May 2, 2025, when asked whether he needed to “uphold the Constitution of the United States,” the president answered, “I don’t know,” and referred to his “brilliant lawyers.”

If the president needs a lawyer to know that the oath he took requires him to uphold the Constitution, God help us all.

[9] COMMENT from Norman Finkelstein: “A good political activist — yes, he or she has to be well read. I don’t think there’s any getting around it. You have to have some sense of history. The world isn’t an easy place; it’s not a transparent place. Trying to make sense of the economics is not an easy task. So you have to be well read. But no matter how well read you are, you are never going to be successful in politics unless two things are obtained. Number one, you have to have deep roots in people. You have to be among the people. Politics is about moving people to act. That’s our politics. When you’re in positions of power or you’re at the levers of power — and there are many levers you have that don’t involve people — you have repressive forces, you have economic forces, you have lots of levers. When you are a people’s movement you have one thing. Your only asset is people. And you have to deal with real people. Not the people of your imagination. Not the people you wish people would be. But people as they exist actually out there in the real world. So you have to be among the people. Hear what they’re saying, know what they’re thinking, and then you’ll be able to figure out what is a realistic demand and what is not. Having said that I also think politics is a knack. It’s not something you learn in books and not necessarily something you are going to acquire by being among people. There is something to be said for this completely impalpable thing called good political instincts, good political judgment. I think Gandhi had very good political judgment. He knew the people, which he had to. But he also had good judgment. I think professor Chomsky has very good political judgment.”