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Posts published by “Fred Gardner”

Parking Problems

The Beatles serenaded Lovely Rita in 1960s Liverpool, but Y2K San Francisco was choking with cars, tickets were costly, and outbursts of rage against Parking Control Officers were increasingly frequent. When a spate of attacks…

The Jailing of Father O’Shea

Defrocked Monsignor Patrick O’Shea had been the pastor for many years at the Holy Name of Jesus Church in the Sunset and St. Cecelia’s in the Parkside District. The scourge of the altar boys, he…

Ferris Fain Comes Up Again

Hardly any subject is more than two degrees of separation removed from marijuana. This week Bruce Jenkins of the Chronicle picked an all-star team of baseball players from Oakland and proposed a toast to his…

Supreme Hypocrisy

Ruth Bader Ginsburg's connection to the Hallinan saga is indirect and faint, but the AVA is a newspaper, above all, and the Supreme Court is now Action Central as Antonin Scalia's protege ascends; so here's some relevant…

The Trial of Ken Hayes & Mike Foley

In May, 1999, two men who ran CHAMP, a cannabis dispensary in San Francisco's Castro district —Ken Hayes, then 33, and Mike Foley, 34— were arrested in Petaluma, along with Hayes's pregnant girlfriend, Cheryl Sequoia.…

Liaison to the Pot Partisans

Over the Transom #1 (a sampler) Terence Hallinan's pro-marijuana perspective led some growers from outside the city to contact the DA's office seeking the green light for projects in San Francisco. Santa Rosa's premier pot…

A Farm in the City

"My liaison to the medical marijuana community" is how District Attorney Terence Hallinan sometimes introduced me. "Public Information officer" was the job description, and I gave the City and County of San Francisco their money's…

Kayo v. DiFi

Trying to breathe life into the extinct mammoth Republicanus Liberalis, former Congressman Tom Campbell recently launched a start-up called the Common Sense Party. Campbell served five terms in the 1990s representing Silicon Valley. When he…

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