Mendocino County Today: Friday, Oct. 12, 2018

• FB Extortion
• Bridge Tension
• Costco Numbers
• KZYX Audit
• Rail Grow
• Mushroom Class
• Siren Warning
• Eighties Day
• Yokayo Bust
• Little Dog
• Ed Notes
• Oktoberfest
• Yesterday's Catch
• Activist Prosecuted
• Distant Snow
• Compensating Labor
• Cat Logic
• Moved On
• Dirty Cello
• Scaring Him
• Pacific Cleanup
• Resistance Huddle
• Half-wits
• Government
• Survival Handbook
• Civic Hysteria
• Interior Tales
• Giant Peach
• Watercolor Demonstration
• Ruling Class

FORT BRAGG EXTORTED FOR $22k

(Ukiah, Willits, Point Arena, next?)

City Of Fort Bragg Settles CVRA Claim

The City, the Coast Committee for Responsive Representation (Committee) and Jacob Patterson executed a Settlement Agreement late on October 10, 2018. The Committee rescinded its May 24th letter alleging a violation of the California Voting Rights Act of 2001 (CVRA); agreed to not file, assert or bring any further action under the CVRA, effective until after the November 2020 election; and issued a letter in support of the City Council’s decision to rescind the resolution of intent to transition to district-based elections. Mr. Patterson, individually, agreed to not bring any action under the CVRA or assist any other person in preparing or bringing such a claim, indefinitely, and agreed to destroy all work product and documents associated with the CVRA claim against Fort Bragg. The Committee received $22,000 for attorney’s fees and costs incurred in the Dispute.

As a part of the Agreement, the City will establish a committee, comprised of two (2) City Councilmembers and at least three (3) appointed members of the public, to research and evaluate electoral systems, including those available to a charter city. Conversion from a general city to a charter city would require voter approval, if recommended. The City also agreed to provide public hearing notices and City Council and Planning Commission agendas in both English and Spanish, eliminate fees and deposits associated with running for City Council, add Spanish language versions of identified signs at City Hall, and to promote language parity and encourage outreach to the community.

For more information on the CVRA and District-based elections please visit the City’s website: city.fortbragg.com/634/District-Elections

Questions regarding this information should be directed to Tabatha Miller, City Manager, at (707) 961- 2829.

(Fort Bragg Press Release)

TREE REMOVAL AT ALBION RIVER BRIDGE SPARKS NEW OPPOSITION

by Mary Callahan

Work crews have descended on the Mendocino coast to fell eucalyptus trees and prepare for contested drilling and geotechnical studies that will help determine the fate of the Albion River Bridge, inciting renewed outrage among locals.

Opponents have tried to block Caltrans’ project — so far, unsuccessfully — by every means possible, including a failed legal bid to stop the project and a still-pending request for the California Coastal Commission to rescind the work permit it approved last month.

But the critics battle onward, their zeal intensified by the arrival of heavy equipment in their quiet town and the removal this week of more than a dozen eucalyptus trees from a Caltrans right-of-way at the edge of Highway 1, on the north end of the bridge.

“It’s radicalized lots of folks to actually see the trees come down and the bulldozers,” 29-year Albion resident Jim Heid, a leading opponent, said this week. “It’s brought it home. It’s made it real to a whole lot of people. If Caltrans thinks that they’ve won the war by winning this battle, they are sorely mistaken.”

The drilling itself is expected to start around the second week of November and last six to eight weeks, project manager Frank Demling said.

In the meantime, Caltrans and its contractors have continued to refine the project, principally by reducing the number of trees that will be removed to accommodate staging and movement of large equipment.

With permits to remove 55 trees from the state right-of-way, 14 trees greater than 4 inches in diameter have come out, along with 15 saplings, he said.

And though still surprised by the locals’ attachment to invasive, nonnative plants, “we recognize that the community wants Caltrans to keep as many of those trees as possible,” Demling said.

At issue is the future of a historic landmark that spans the bluffs above the Albion River where it runs out to Albion Cove and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Built during World War II austerity, when concrete and steel were largely diverted to the war effort, the 74-year-old structure is the only timber trestle bridge on the California Coast.

Caltrans says it is safe to use.

But its components are rotting and corroding in the salt air, requiring increasingly costly maintenance and repair on a bridge with a remaining service life of only 10 or 20 years, Demling said. The ongoing decline necessitates about $500,000 a year in maintenance, he said.

Caltrans next year plans a large rehabilitation job that includes repairing cracked timbers and replacing 1,100 bolts in the bridge. The project also will allow for a close look at internal steel connector rings engineers feel may be vulnerable.

The geotechnical investigation involves drilling nine bore holes 70 to 125 deep at six sites — two on the south end of the bridge and four on the north.

The totality of what Caltrans and its contractors find during underground drilling this fall, what continued inspections reveal and what is eventually spelled out during a full life-cycle cost analysis will dictate whether the agency chooses to replace the structure or rehabilitate it in some manner, as locals want, Demling said.

(courtesy of The Press Democrat)

UKIAH SHOPPERS are not the only ones who have noticed that the anticipated traffic jams and backups which were expected with the opening of the big new Costco in Airport Park have not materialized. Traffic never seems to be a problem on the newly resurfaced and streamlined Big Box Drive and the Costco parking lot has not been seen to be overflowing. Ukiah Costco watchers are telling us that the rush of shoppers that Costco expected, including shoppers from Willits, Fort Bragg and points north and east, have not materialized; that sales at the Rohnert Park park store have declined somewhat in partial proportion to the Ukiah store’s sales; that Costco has laid off a significant number of the initially hired staff, and the City of Ukiah’s and/or County’s sales tax bump is not likely to materialize to any noticeable degree. Other than that, reports of the actual store and staff are positive — the lack of crowds especially — and the place has received good reviews by the people who paid their $60 bucks to sign up.

AS PREDICTED

Final Audit Report of KZYX

Excerpt:

My office has issued our final report.  You can access it at https://www.cpb.org/files/oig/reports/KZYX_Report.pdf.

Sincerely, Helen Mollick, Counsel to the Inspector General, Assistant Inspector General for Investigations, Office of Inspector General, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, hmollick@cpb.org

Summary:

Based on our audit we found that KZYX:

overstated NFFS of $23,311 for FY 2016 resulting in excess CSG payments of $1,234 in FY 2018; and was not in full compliance with Act requirements for open Board and committee meetings, as well as discrete accounting requirements for CPB expenditures (restricted and unrestricted).

In response to our draft report, station officials agreed with our findings and initiated corrective actions to comply with grant requirement. In September the station submitted a revised FY 2017 AFR correcting overstated NFFS for FY 2017, which CPB approved. Further, station officials indicated they will be developing a corrective action plan for CPB to ensure complete and full compliance with all grant requirements. CPB management will make the final determination on our findings and recommendations.

* * *

What We Recommend

That CPB take the following actions to:

• recover CSG overpayments of $1,234;
• require KZYX to identify the corrective actions and controls it will implement to ensure future compliance with NFFS reporting, open meeting, and discrete accounting requirements; and
• properly classify CSG expenditures by expense categories on the AFR, Schedule E.

In response to the draft report, KZYX agreed with our findings. The station said it also has begun implementing corrective actions to ensure full compliance with CPB grant requirements. Further, it has submitted and CPB has accepted a revised fiscal year (FY) 2017 AFR. It is also prepared to repay its CSG overpayment. The station also committed to providing CPB with a full corrective action plan within 30 days of the issuance of this report. KZYX’s written response to the draft report is attached in Exhibit E.

* * *

MARCO'S PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF THE KZYX AUDIT

Thanks, I'll read it tonight when I'm where there's fast web access. I'm on dialup at home, and that's worse that even usual because of funky phone service lately.

From what I've seen it looks like, in short: Mendocino County Public Broadcasting Corporation used bureaucratic chicanery to lie and keep secrets in order to steal public money, then they stole the money, and when an extremely limited investigation pointed this out, they offered to give the price of a single shitty used car back in order to keep like $150,000 dollars of public money coming every year, not to mention the priceless grant of control of three broadcast frequencies, and this sort of thing has happened before, I hope you remember, and they got away with it then, and they're getting away with it again, because they present themselves as the sweet New Age Good Guys, so only the rules they like apply to them, and thanks so much for the tens of millions of dollars over the years, a pleasure doing business with you, ciao. Something like that.

Marco McClean

BIG POT GRO & JUNK YARD RIGHT ON THE TRACKS, RIGHT ABOVE THE EEL

On Oct. 10, 2018, at about 9 a.m., Humboldt County Sheriff’s deputies conducted an investigation following reports of trespassing and illegal activities on North Coast Railroad Authority property, located on Alder Ave. in Alderpoint.

While on scene, deputies located and removed two trespassers, and found several junk cars, biohazardous materials, and trash discarded on the property.

Deputies also located and eradicated approximately 241 growing cannabis plants. Additionally, during the course of their investigation, deputies discovered that trespassers had manipulated a Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) power source to steal electricity. PG&E responded to the scene to investigate and disconnect the power source.

The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office is working with the North Coast Railroad Authority to address the junk cars and hazardous materials found on the property, in addition to the ongoing trespassing issues. Citizens are encouraged to report trespassers on this property to the Sheriff’s Office at (707) 445-7251.

(Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office — “The information has not been proven in a court of law and any individuals described should be presumed innocent until proven guilty.”)

FUNGUS WONDERLAND TOUR

Ever wondered what that mushroom was you just stepped over? We live in the middle of a fungal wonderland. Come and learn a bit about what grows beneath your feet (and over your head).

Join us for a 6 week class, the final session of which will be the annual Myco-Blitz at the Galbreath Preserve in Yorkville.

We will study macro-characteristics of some of the most common families of mushrooms found locally; Boletes, Agaricus, Amanitas, Chanterelles, Russulas and other shelf and simple fungi. Opportunities to bring in mushrooms you have found will be at first part of class. You should expect to finish class with a good beginning knowledge of mushrooms and how to identify what you find.

No experience needed, just curiosity and a willingness to learn. Classes meet at Yorkville Community Center (next to post office) Saturday early afternoons, starting October 20 (except Thanksgiving weekend). Class cost for 6 sessions is $75. Cash or check only. All proceeds go to the Yorkville Fire Station to help purchase vitally needed fire fighting equipment. Class size limited so sign up soon.

Go to  https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg…
to register.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Editor:

Sirens are the simplest and most reliable way to notify a population that a critical emergency exists that demands their immediate attention. You can hear San Francisco test its system every Tuesday at noon and realize that such a system, had it been available, could have saved lives in Sonoma County {and Mendocino} last year.

Having subscribed to the U.S. Geological Service earthquake text service ever since the Napa quake, I appreciate the value of text message notifications but also see that they shouldn’t ever be used as the primary alarm for life-threatening emergencies.

Aside from the fact that not everyone has a cellphone, text messages simply aren’t designed to reliably get people’s attention or wake people up.

In many areas of the county cell service is spotty and unreliable, and many cell towers are located in areas where they are most prone to wildfire destruction. Text messaging alone simply isn’t an adequate or appropriate primary alarm.

Installing an outdoor siren at each of the county’s existing fire stations, and placing it under the control of the local fire chief responsible for implementing that area’s emergency response, would be inexpensive, effective and can be done before the next major wildfire.

Kenneth Geiger

Sonoma

Eighties Day

REZ GRO, MEX LABOR, NO ARRESTS — YET

In recent weeks, both the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office and the Mendocino County Code Enforcement Office, who handles complaints about cannabis cultivation, have received multiple complaints from community members and tribal members about a marijuana cultivation site on the Yokayo Rancheria.  The Yokayo Tribe owns the land, however it is not federally recognized land, therefore it is still subject to county and state regulations related to marijuana cultivation and county municipal codes.  In late September 2018, members of the County of Mendocino Marijuana Enforcement Team conducted an overflight of the location and observed two plastic greenhouses and over 50 outdoor marijuana plants being grown in the ground.  While conducting background information on the location, Carmen Christy 74, of Talmage, was identified as living at the location and investigators learned that whomever was responsible for the marijuana cultivation might be using water diverted from the Tribe's general well which is designated as household water and not for commercial agriculture.  On 10-04-2018 at about 8:30 AM, Deputies from the Mendocino County Sheriff's Office, Mendocino County Code Enforcement Officers and an Environmental Scientist from the State of California Department of Fish and Wildlife served a search warrant at the location.  At the location, Carmen Christy and a relative were found to be living in the residence and the rear of the residence was completely fenced off containing a commercial marijuana cultivation operation.  Rudolfo Prudente, 63, of Santa Rosa, and Jorge Luis Arredondo Navarro, 32, of Fresno, were found to be living inside the fenced grow area in tents.  While investigating on scene, 233 growing marijuana plants were eradicated and approximately 100 pounds of dried marijuana was located.  Additionally, the Environmental Scientist from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife determined that trash and debris from past marijuana grows, to include soil and other garbage were discarded near an active streambed, which could cause runoff to go into the Russian River watershed, causing great environmental damage.  No persons were arrested. The case will be followed up on and submitted to the Mendocino County District Attorney's Office to review for criminal charges.

(Sheriff’s Press Release)

LITTLE DOG SAYS, “Hah! Came up with a great idea, and even these guys like it. Since the neighbor's chickens spend their days scratching up our place, why don't we lay out a little corn leading to some sheltered nests and presto! we'll have fresh eggs! Huh? Huh? Is that a winner or what?”

ED NOTES

AN ARMY GENERAL said recently that too many of his troops are out of shape, not mentioning that the actual combat in the Middle East is performed by elite soldiers who are definitely in shape, especially the boys and girls puffing up and down mountains in Afghanistan. The General laid out the basic conditioning standard he wants his Army to meet. He calls it "the 50-minute test" and includes: a strength dead lift, throwing a medicine ball overhead, a set of push ups that require hands to come off the ground, a 250-meter “spring, drag, carry,” and a two-mile run. Easy peasy. The General said soldiers in Korea had a hard time pulling the hills, leaving out that a lot of them were peace time troops shoved into an emergency combat breech. I don't remember physical fitness as an issue with Vietnam-era soldiers and Marines.

CONSIDERING that lots of modern warfare consists of nothing more strenuous than pushing a button, or sitting in an Iowa bunker knocking off distant Arab wedding parties via drones, other than proportionate people look better in uniforms than the disproportionate, why does the average soldier need to be able to heave medicine balls and do a few push-ups? Still and all, the young 'uns ought to be able to pass this test, no problemo.

* * *

MORE SIGNS the End Time approaches: A series of minor earthquakes in Healdsburg; hurricane devastation in the South; stock market's huge declines; Trump.

* * *

A NEW STUDY in The American Journal of Psychiatry finds that teens who use marijuana cause more damage to their brains than those who drink alcohol, the latest in invidious comparisons of the two intoxicants because young people ought to be heavily propagandized against premature consumption of both. According to the study, marijuana use showed signs of short and long-term effects on the teens’ cognitive brain functions, including problem solving, long-term memory, short-term memory and manipulation. Keen teens are hardly going to confide in a geezer like me, but my impression from the bits and pieces I pick up is that Mendo stoners, youth division, in pure numbers, are considerable.

* * *

SAN FRANCISCO, always on the cutting edge of the absurd, is in the news because the president of the San Francisco School Board has substituted multi-cult pieties for the Pledge of Allegiance. Why not eliminate the Pledge, period? Political democracies, even the theoretical ones like ours, shouldn't require loyalty oaths, especially one with "under God" inserted back in '54 at the insistence of rightwing demagogues. Early in my deformative years, all us little kids not only had to repeat the Pledge but also sing America the Beautiful. I remember the morning patriotic ritual as a daily opportunity to revise the lyrics to amuse classmates.

MARK SCARAMELLA ADDS: For a long time in my youth I thought the last line of God Bless America was, “…stand beside her and guide her in the night with a light from a bulb.” I’m pretty sure I heard that version in church once and it stuck for a long time until somebody laughed at my singing. Later in life when I was asked to fill in for a friend who was a very good singer and pianist at a Biloxi, Mississippi piano bar (even though I never sang) the bar owner asked me to sing something and let him be the judge. I sang a pop song popular at the time, clearly not very well, and he walked up to the piano after the performance, laughed and said, “You’re right. You sound like asthma set to music. Stick to the keyboard.”

CATCH OF THE DAY, October 11, 2018

BERRY BRADFORD, Garberville/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

RUSTY EASTER, Fort Bragg. Failure to appear, probation revocation.

RANDALL GENSAW, Ukiah. Arson, probation revocation.

JAMES MORAIS, Potter Valley. Community Supervision violation.

MARLIN PETERSEN, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

DANNY SAJE, Fort Bragg. Disorderly conduct-alcohol.

AUSTIN SHEALOR, Ukiah. Probation revocation.

LARRY WOLFE JR., Ukiah. Protective order violation, probation revocation.

STANDING ROCK ACTIVIST FACES PRISON AFTER OFFICER SHOT HIM IN THE FACE

theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/04/standing-rock-marcus-mitchell-shooting-charges

WIND RIVER MOUNTAINS

Humans Screw Up the View

(Photo by Harvey Reading)

WHAT ABOUT…?

Editor:

Corporations, businesses and hotels/motels need custodians, maintenance workers and maids to keep the buildings clean and functioning. These workers clean the floors, sanitize the bathrooms and kitchens, refill the toilet and paper towel rolls, empty the garbage, fix the leaky faucets, dust the counters, replace the burned-out lights, free jammed automatic doors, and more and more. Without these people, the buildings would be uninhabitable, but they are often overlooked and forgotten. Surely they deserve a salary like that of other employees so they can purchase a home or rent an apartment close to their work.

Steven Gray

Mendocino

THE CAT, having sat upon a hot stove lid, will not sit upon a hot stove lid again. But he won’t sit upon a cold stove lid, either.
— Mark Twain

ON LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

If Christine Ford really was traumatized that night, that’s unfortunate. But she lives in the United States of the Privileged in 2018, and women like her aren’t oppressed. Some people suck, sometimes bad things happen, but grow a backbone, Blasey, and get over it. If this precious wuss is what the mighty feminist movement has produced, then clearly feminism has set women back centuries.

These radical feminists still have a cause at all only because they’ve moved the goalposts. It’s not about liberation and equality; it’s not fair treatment and just wages and strong, independent women. No, it’s just a full-fledged assault on masculinity where women can compete only by eliminating the competition, which means expanding their own rights beyond all reasonable proportions and terminating men’s completely. Now we’re equal!

And of course, safeguarding the “right” to have sex however they want it and then murder the consequences — this is the essence of feminism in 2018.

Yeah, don’t forget — this is all about abortion.

My father wanted me aborted because I was an unplanned pregnancy. My parents were young and unwed and not Catholic, so my mom could have easily been persuaded, but she didn’t go through with it. I don’t think I need to mention how grateful I am.

I’m here today because of a strong woman — my mother, a single mom, a survivor. As a victim of abuse, it’d be a cold day in hell before I’d side with Dr. Ford. In fact, between the two of them, Kavanaugh and Ford, I’ll stick with the pro-life judge. I think he’s got my back a little more than the volatile and unhinged feminists do, or than their willing accomplices in the media which would use my story and that of so many victims to promote their own agendas, without asking any of us what’s actually best for us or what we really want. Because it’s not about us, not really. It’s about them.

If #MeToo gives me a voice, then here’s what I’d like to say: I don’t hate men. I hate BS. I hate manipulation and exploitation. I don’t need to get even with anybody. The man who hurt me is a pathetic loser. But I’ve moved on with my life, grateful for the good men who stood by me when my own father wasn’t there. I don’t want to be angry, I don’t want to stay broken. I want to live in a country where moral standards are respected — standards which exist in the first place to protect innocence and decency and where the victims of the worst abuse of all — abortion — are given a chance to live, even as I was.

I want to live in the security and freedom which come with a God-centered society, and one which regards life as the greatest prize, and every soul as equal. This would be justice for victims. Vindictiveness, polarization, rage, protests — that’s for manipulative men…and women oppressed by their own propped-up victimhood.

No thank you! Time to move on, ladies. As a woman and an actual victim of sex abuse, I stand with Judge Kavanaugh, and I refuse to be represented by Dr. Blasey Ford or any of the other angry activists our pro-abort politicians might trot out to make fools of us all.

DIRTY CELLO AT WILLITS COMMUNITY THEATRE

37 W. Van Lane, Willits, CA 95490

http://willitstheatre.org/

707-459-0895

http://willitstheatre.org/2018-guest-artists-series/

https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3658538

Nov 11, 2 p.m., $20

From China to Italy, and all over the U.S., Dirty Cello brings the world a high energy and unique spin on blues and bluegrass. Led by vivacious cross-over cellist, Rebecca Roudman, Dirty Cello is cello like you’ve never heard before. From down home blues with a wailing cello to virtuosic stompin’ bluegrass, Dirty Cello is a band that gets your heart thumping and your toes tapping! "Dirty Cellos music is all over the map: funky, carnival, romantic, sexy, tangled, electric, fiercely rhythmic, and textured, and only occasionally classical." Lou Fancher, Oakland Magazine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K16hf1yWO7U

(Devil Went Down To Georgia)

CLEANING UP THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH

Boyan Slat invented the plastic cleaning device below:

It's finally in the water

RESISTANCE HAPPY HOUR & HUDDLE NEXT THURSDAY IN MENDOCINO

Resistance Happy Hour & Huddle Thursday October 18, 5:30 to 7:30 pm.  Location to be confirmed: either the Mendocino Hotel Garden Room or Gallery Bookshop.  Social time at 5:30, with open announcements at 5:45 and the official start of the meeting at 6:00.  Come prepared to work! We have plenty of Get Out the Vote postcards to write.  We work on local issues, influence our elected officials, create ways to connect with other fed-up citizens, and help turn other districts blue around the state and the country.  This is a work group. Anyone who would like to participate in actively supporting the group's purpose is welcome. For more information, email Christie Olson Day: mendohuddle@gmail.com

DON PORFIRIO had himself re-elected every four years when his time as president was up. The gang who waxed fatter and fatter under his regency did the electing. Whoever did not wax fat under his government had no vote. What he had needed was a brazier under his backside the first time he was elected to remind him that there is more than one man on earth who is capable of ruling a people’s destiny; that, in fact, every tenth man in every nation is capable of governing. There is nothing mysterious about it. It is much more difficult to construct a machine which will work than to rule a people where the machinery is already there and in going order. The art of governing is only made out to be mysterious in order to frighten revolutionaries and to prevent the simple subject from knowing how little capacity and knowledge is needed for government. How many half-wits and idiots have governed their peoples for a century in peace and glory!

Don Porfirio considered himself the best and greatest and most intelligent statesman on earth. Hence he considered that it went without saying that he should be elected again and again. And everyone below him followed his example. Governors, mayors, police chiefs, secretaries, and engineers remained in office until death relieved the people of them. If they felling into dotage or idiocy, that was no proper reason why they should be retired. They would have demanded pensions. It was better for the finances of the country to leave them in office until they could be buried than to pay salaries twice over, once to the pensioned and again to those in office.

B. Traven, “Government’

BEHIND HOUSING ROAD RAGE IN SF

by the late Warren Hinckle (1999)

Most of the time we think we’re sick, it’s all in the mind.
— Thomas Wolfe, “Look Homeward Angel”

It was muggy, with the threat of rain on the Polk Street steps of City Hall last Monday, before the mini-riot began inside on the polished marble floors over loft conversion, the San Francisco issue du jour.

There were hundreds of builders there, burly true to form, but they were not the ones inciting to riot. The entreaties to confrontation and invitations to violence came, surprisingly, from the ranks of the self-styled defenders of artists’ housing, who claim the builders are removing art havens in favor of yuppie lofts in the South of Market area. The zoning of South of Market in the late 1980s encouraged artists to live communally in warehouses and relaxed some of the planning codes to allow this. It also allowed new “live-work” units on vacant commercial land that could be built cheaper and faster to help alleviate the tight housing market. Not the same as artists’ housing.

Nothing could be further from the reality of what is happening in San Francisco. The reality is that as the city’s “transit-first” policy has led to one of the world’s largest traffic jams in the South of Market neighborhood, the city’s “no-growth” policy since the down-zoning of 1978 has created the highest rents and home prices in the nation because no new housing is being built.

This has engendered a sort of civic hysteria — a housing road rage — that is shooting at any target available. The most visible target is the new lofts in the South of Market area. There are angry artists’ protests against these lofts — which are mostly built on vacant lots and by Planning Department records have evicted no one — but no rage against the largest source of evictions in San Francisco, the tenant-in-common conversion, which is widely displacing long-term rental tenants without providing new housing or even construction jobs.

What is happening is liberal San Francisco looking its own housing policies in the mirror, and looking the other way in horror for someone to blame. Left and right are converging in their distortions of reality. In this incredibly tight, fabulously expensive housing market — the end game of almost 30 years of no-growth politics — you have old-fashioned right-wing landlords and conservative yuppies trying to evict long-term tenants, and you have left-wing landlords and liberal yuppies also trying to evict long term tenants, all the while protesting loudly evictions in general.

Underneath the tumult of self-styled artists’ advocates trying to pick fights with builders at City Hall last week, there is a politically fascinating turf battle going on in the South of Market area between “nonprofit” entrepreneurs who have designs on the remaining space to use millions — Calvin Welch, the nonprofit Lenin, was on TV the other day saying the taxpayers should put up “billions” for “affordable housing,” a synonym for taxpayer-subsidized housing — and the for-profit builders who are building lofts on industrial sites, the only type of new housing San Francisco’s no-growth zoning laws allow in the South of Market neighborhood, which is the only section of the town under current zoning laws designed to protect neighborhoods where new housing can be built.

All this in the middle of a housing crisis.

* * *

For all the laundry-stain proof Hearstians filing the columns last week of the soon-to-be-swallowed Chronicle by the Hearst Examiner, there was little of the grand old man written. That was a shame, as the newspaper titan was such a mass of contradictions from the sublime to the perverse that readers were cheated out of a glimpse of the real man.

As a former editor of the Examiner and the editor of the paper’s centennial edition, which of necessity dug deep into the old boy’s past, I can recommend as ancillary reading the Exonicle’s biographical offerings Ferdinand Lundberg’s Imperial Hearts, A Social Biography, available at your local lending library. Lundberg portrayed Hearst as every bit the Nero-type press monster but neglected to appreciate Hearst’s contributions to the modern newspaper format, which included group journalism, sensationalism, and comics, none of which have gone away. He also, it is conveniently forgotten, was the first publisher to promote and make stars of woman journalists.

The best appraisal of Hearst’s form of muckraking popular at the time of his rise was Lincoln Steffens, who wrote memorably that Hearst “had discovered that there was room at the bottom.”

Hearst promoted imperial wars but also attacked the ruling trusts on behalf of the workingman, although Lundberg, his critic, insisted that Hearst had hefted the flag of revolt from sincere reformers and used it to circulation advantage without a bottom line of lasting reform. Hearst exposed the meatpacking plants but at the same time ran advertisements for poisonous patent medicines.

Readers of the respectable version of Hearst’s career appearing in the local house organs were deprived of such good stuff as Theodore Roosevelt’s attack on Hearst — Roosevelt was mad because Hearst had gone after some of his safari-hunting millionaire friends, who frequently recited this gem of a passage on Hearst from the reformist Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” depicting the sensationalist publisher as:

“The man with the muckrake, the man who could look no way but downward with the muckrake in his hand, who was offered a celestial crown for his muckrake, but would neither look up nor regard the crown he was offered, but continued to rake to himself the filth of the floor.”

* * *

Modesto Lanzone, RIP.

I remember a December night not long past in Vanessi’s, then the premier nightlife restaurants of North Beach. There was a dog and a girl standing on the table. The dog standing on the table was eating a steak, and the girl, a guest from a neighborly Broadway strip joint, was doing what comes naturally.

The table seated several illuminati, including Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, who was visiting from Colorado; a prominent conservative local politician; Jeanette Etheridge, the owner of the nearby Tosca; an arms dealer from Montana; Margo St. James, the founder of the prostitutes union; and perhaps others.

There was a noise, and in an effort to maintain order at his table  Dr. Thompson discharged a pistol into the restaurant floor. The then-co-owner and archangel of Vanessi’s, Modesto Lanzone, walked with a smile as big as the Panana Canal over to Thompson and gave him a hug and congratulated him on his attempt to preserve the peace, and said the deserts and another round of drinks were on him.

This was around midnight, and Vanessi’s tables were packed with diners and the magnificent counter in front of the kitchen was filled with patrons studying the racing form. Nobody paid notice to the gun going off. This was how San Francisco nightlife used to be, in a kinder, gentler time.

The spirit that made Vanessi’s was Modesto Lanzone. His humor and calm and loving deportment — he was so calm, a friend said, because he was so full of art and food at the same time — transfixed his late restaurants at Ghirardelli Square and Opera Plaza.

Modesto was waked Monday at SS Peter and Paul in North Beach and at his beloved Dolphin Club, where he behaved like a fish. Al Baccarri of Fisherman’s Wharf, Lorenzo Petroni of the North Beach Restaurant, and the powerhouses of the beach were there to light a candle. Modesto was both a food maven and a smart and generous art collector — he collected the work of the late North Beach artist Gordon Cook and gave the reception at his restaurant when Gordon married Liadian O’Donovan, the daughter of the Irish writer Frank O’Conner — and as a friend said Monday, was “the most positive person you ever met.” He will be greatly missed.

JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH CONTINUES THIS WEEKEND!

Gloriana Musical Theatre presents James and the Giant Peach, Directed by Nicole Atkinson and Carla Leach. Running October 5 - 21 at Eagles Hall in Fort Bragg  Featuring music and lyrics by the Tony-nominated songwriters Justin Paul and Benj Pasek and book by Timothy Allen McDonald, James and the Giant Peach is based on the beloved book by Roald Dahl and tells the story of a young orphaned child who finds a loving family in a most peculiar way. Sent by his mean, conniving aunts to chop down their old fruit tree, James discovers a magic potion which results in a tremendous peach occupied by some not-so-normal characters. From the center of the gigantic fruit, James and the unlikely crew launch a journey of enormous proportions. Together they discover that while we are all born into a family, we then go on to create a family of our own.  Running at Eagles Hall from October 5 through 21 with performances at 7:30 p.m on Fridays and Saturdays and Sunday matinees beginning at 3 p.m.  Admission is $22 for the general public, $20 for Seniors and $12 for youth (17 and under).

Tickets available now at Gloriana.org and Harvest Market.

For more information, visit Gloriana.org.

PATI GLORIA BREED FIRST FRIDAY ARTIST AT EDGEWATER GALLERY

First Friday, November 2, at Edgewater Gallery from 5-8 pm, 356 N. Main St., Fort Bragg

Pati will do a demonstration of watercolor techniques at 6 pm on First Friday.  Light refreshments served.  Admission is free.  Her paintings are vibrant and mystical.  The philosophy that inspires her work is the belief that we are Spiritual Beings having a physical experience.  Her paintings are visual poems of the beauty of the spirit.

WHETHER IT’S THE BOORISH, amoral mediocrity of a Brett Kavanaugh, the rank hypocrisy of a Lindsey Graham or a Susan Collins, the naked cupidity of a Jeff Bezos, the proud Israel-fascism of a Chuck Schumer, the unfettered evil of a Mitch McConnell, or the undisguised corporatism of a Nancy Pelosi, a Barack Obama, and virtually every other politician on the national stage, the ruling class despises morality and law as an insolent threat to its unchecked power. Almost as offensive as these people’s lack of all principles besides unwavering loyalty to the rich is their aggressive mediocrity, their transparent conformism and cowardice.

— Chris Wright