Aerial view of the Bay

The Bay Area is eagerly pushing this phenomena of “greening” our cities and our lives through the banning plastic bags to giving perks to those driving smart-fuel efficient-hybrid cars. However, last week the Bay Area was struck by devastating and ever growing scandalous toxic oil spill during prime migration season for birds. Wednesday morning a cargo ship dumped 58,000 gallons of heavy tar like fuel onto the Bay. There has been much frustration and discussion about why clean up is taking so long and why volunteer have been physically prevented from helping clean the Bay. The reasons are still a mystery and the media is not telling us what’s up.

In the midst of this disaster, 36,000 people attended this year’s Green Festival. This festival is a joint project by two local nonprofit organizations, Global Exchange and Co-op America, and takes place in four different cities: Washington DC, Chicago, Seattle, and our very own San Francisco. This mega event strives to bring together local and national socially responsible businesses, and environmental, social justice and community organizations. At the Green Festival you can eat organic, shop fair-trade, learn about green building, urban renewal, and learn how mushrooms can save the world. Although the general fee was $15, the festival does provide attendees with many ways and opportunities to attend the event for free. Aside from the presentations and speakers, the Green Festival (as is the case for many festivals in the Bay) is primarily a good opportunity to buy “green” and most products are not cheap. I wonder if the this movement can go from being a consumer trend to making these “green” products and solutions accessible and affordable. Or will “green” cities only be inhabited by those who can afford to live there?

The other night at our weekly Ethsix* editorial meeting, a guest social worker clued us in to something called the Behavioral Health Court. Something most of us had never heard of, it’s an new SF institution that is trying to tackle the seemingly insurmountable problem of homelessness and crimes committed by the mentally ill with a court that emphasizes rehab and support. Mandated medication, counseling and a shove in the right direction seems to have dropped recidivism rates and created a few more happy, adjusted people stepping out the other side. We were all over it and were looking forward to breaking the news in our next issue. The Chronicle, despite the constant scorn heaped upon it, was right on top of it with a story today on the new courts, the UCSF study on corresponding recidivism rates and an update on Newsom’s pet project, Community Justice Court, that while it seemed a mere dream lost in a haze of SF bureaucracy when I wrote about it here, is slated to be open for business as soon as April. I would be very curious to see what social workers or people close to the courts have to say about the article, starting with the fact that it was covered at all. As a working journalist, I feel it’s part of my job to crack as many papers a day as I am able, and while there is admittedly some shabby stuff out there, there’s just as many good stories told that go unnoticed and unappreciated.

A warm foggy still evening and the town abounded with art and music film and song- among the constellation of events were two bright stars in the family of san francisco arts and writing publications: Hamburger Eyes

Photo Show by Ray Potes at the aptly named hamburger eyes epi(c)enter and Instant City’s launch of a brand new issue at cozy Adobe.

As many of you know our cover photography for this last issue was shot by Ray Potes, and his brother in the east side dave potes was a contributor to the first issue of ethsix*. Hamburger Eyes is a San Francisco phenomenon, which much like any true phenomenon actually carries with it an entire state of being, a frame of mind. Hamburger Eyes are a reliable brand of san francisco black and white photography and a culture of folks. This all photo publications has been responsible for some of the most amount of beer spilled in a 49 geary gallery, the best after party after a Yerba Buena Center Event and the kind of place where people may get a little trashed but trash little. The epi-c-enter has a gallery and full darkrooom capacity- pro deals and sweet equipment in the former color arts dark room on lilac alley and 24th st.

pics

ray!

fun lilac alley

skateboards inside!

Ray has a poetic eye for image and his work is like little city poems, all things you see, the seamy the stupid the beautiful the banal and even transcendent. The show is collaged together along the walls and draws you in to a connection with the time and space of the city, and yes the atmosphere of young hip laid backs folks makes it real but go see it anyhow and say hi to ray coz he works all the damn time at that dark room.
Just down the street on sweet sixteenth adobe book store (community center) San Francisco’s own Instant City had a launch and reading amid the book case labyrinth. The new issue on the topic of Crime has just arrived and I found myself deep into the new issue throughout the day, any spare five or ten minutes I was deep in to the sordid sad tales of betrayal, robbery and history! The cover bears a photograph of an impressively colorful San Francisco made out of jello molds that is somehow still very spooky in spite of gelatinous colorful contours.

instant editor eric z

evan rehill, writer

kim artist/musician

This issues is as ever filled with quality fiction and art, as many of you know Instant City and Ethsix* had a reading together at 111 that was an awesome cacophony of experiences amid murals and conversations. Some sweet ethsix* adored artists are in this issue including Rachel Styer, Jana Flynn and Rich Nyhagen! Now go! go go go to adobe and get yourself a copy right now and say hi to what ever deep soul is working-

As a Canadian-American, I’ve spent a great deal of time alternately defending and celebrating my two halves. As a kid, visiting Canadian friends was like being a celebrity. I was the girl living in California! (read with excitement and envy over all the ponies I must own). But here in “The States,” as they say, I’d have to try to convince the people I knew that Canada wasn’t all snow banks and hockey games and funny accents. Sometime in the last decade, though, the tables oddly turned. Suddenly, I was the girl living in California… (read with pity and a little disgust). When I traveled, Canadians had big red maple leaf patches sewn on their bags — a sign saying, “Hey! Don’t confuse me with an American, please! I’m on your side!” Now when I go visit my grandparents and friends, I’m trying to convince them that things here aren’t really that bad.

But sometimes, I can’t even convince myself. I made the drive up to B.C. a few weeks ago. Since I always visit my teeny tiny hometown and there’s a whole lot of nothing much to do, my friends and I ended up seeing a movie. What did we go see? Michael Moore’s “Sicko.” Oh, the horror. What’s worse than seeing a movie that examine’s the U.S.’s repugnant and obviously insufficient healthcare system? Watching it in the land of socialized medical.

After the film — in which we learn how Canada will fix you for free and France offers free in-house child care after you give birth and even Cuba has their shit together better than we do — I had to face a barrage of questions: How does insurance work? You guys really have to pay every time? Why do you guys put up with that?

And the answer to that last one? I have no idea. Why do we put up with this? Why haven’t we revolted? I can only hope that we better end up embracing universal health care soon — or I may be moving back to the Great White North.

A buddy of mine who had served a 2-year Peace Corps commitment in Moldova with his wife blew my cell up three times because he wanted to put me in contact with his co-worker named Indiigo, who worked with him at the Vista Program in Seattle. Indiigo was contemplating a move to the bay area with her 7 year old son.

I expected her to call early, but she didn’t get a hold of me until 8pm.

We began talking about 15 things at once, slowly unpacking and labeling our critique of all the societal blockages to a humane existence in the bay area and world. Then the topic turned to mental illness….

view from San Quentin by night (e. ekman)

Damon: Yeah, society is sick and as an organism and in deep denial and rationalizing and blaming, therefore there’s no choice but for it to point the finger and continually diagnose individuals as mentally ill rather than to see what it’s doing to cause the problem.

Indiigo: Anyone could or should be crazy in today’s environment. We’re all walking a tightrope.

Damon: Tell me about it. I just took my slippers off and put my pole down.

We then began to dissect the even closing gap between the client and the worker.

Indiigo: When you see how many mental health jobs there are, the qualifications they want individuals to have, all the things they want you to do, and the low pay they are offering, you have to wonder who it is that think they can get to do these burnout job?

Damon: Hey, I know the answer to that. I remember being at a Walden House function in ’96 and talking to a guy that was a senior executive director. He was telling me about how he used to be an addict, but worked the Walden program up to Director. At the time, I was working at a methadone maintenance program that had only graduated one client off methadone in 13 years, so I asked him how difficult it was to maintain sobriety. He said he had relapsed over three times since becoming direcor, and each time he’d lost his job, he enrolled in the program he had been running and worked his way back up to be Director again. It kind of blew me away.

This “real spit” went back and forth for 19 minutes between Indiigo and I. Finally the topic turned to what my experience of mental illness was at my job as mental health director at Alameda County Jail, the 6th largest penal facility in the United States. I told her, “y’know, I was talking to my friend Eve the other night, and we were able to figure out that jails and prisons are going to continue to grow and grow, because unlike every other program on the face of the world, penal facilities are unique. Most programs have eligibility criteria, you need some kind of insurance, you have to follow the rules or get kicked out… but jail, you don’t need any money, or benefits, or to meet eligibility and no matter how many rules you break, they’ll never kick you out. It was the ultimate in acceptance. Eve called it, ‘unconditional love’.”

In a way, it makes sense of why so many people continually come back time and time again. They need that place where they can kick back and be “themselves”, safe from the temptation of law abiding citizens and their vices. I guess you could say that prisons have morphed into a strange type of bargain basement, industrial heaven on earth for people whose minds are out of synch and/or can’t keep their hands to themselves.
Damon Eaves

Greetings-

I do not endeavor to make the blog a place for political re- postings however as a I am currently finishing research and writing on an article around the socio-economic- health gradient- a finding that clearly shows the higher correlation of mortality to those of lower socio economic status the news of this email was especially poignant-

this city is ever divided in its distribution of wealth and services and closing a hospital that serves such a huge community of folks in the bayview and outer mission is devastating-
see below note forwarded from a friend

Dear friends,

I am writing to update you on a crisis facing St. Luke’s Hospital (SLH) in San Francisco. California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) and Sutter Health plan to close SLH and are currently eliminating departments such as inpatient pediatrics and the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in preparation for a total closure in 2009. The closure has been cited for financial reasons only.

St. Luke’s serves predominantly the southeast segment of San Francisco, an underinsured and underserved population. SLH also provides a “back up” role to an overburdened San Francisco General Hospital, which serves the uninsured of the city and receives federal aid to do so. Annually, 1300 babies are born at SLH. Our Emergency Department treats 28,000 patients, 5,000 of which are children. SLH is the only hospital other than SF General Hospital available on the southeast side of town, and its closure will reach far beyond the Mission neighborhood where it is located. San Francisco currently lacks enough inpatient beds to respond to a city wide emergency; should we suffer a major earthquake, pandemic or terrorist attack we do not have adequate medical resources to respond. The closure of St. Luke’s as an inpatient facility will double this deficit.

Women throughout the bay area have been choosing to deliver their babies at SLH for the collaborative care of midwives and obstetricians providing safe, low intervention births supported by pediatricians and a NICU. Our uninsured population has been receiving this same high quality care. This department serves as a model of integrated care for all, regardless of socio-economic or ethnic differences. With the planned closure of St. Luke’s labor and delivery unit, our patients living in the southeast segment of San Francisco will have only SF General Hospital nearby for their births. This will more than double the obstetric patient load for an already strained city hospital.

A national debate over healthcare access and a widening gap between the rich and the poor of our country is underway and San Francisco can and should lead the nation in finding solutions. Instead of closing St. Luke’s, our hospital should be revitalized as the national model for integrated healthcare, proving what a truly progressive city can achieve.

If you are interested in learning more about the efforts to “Save St. Luke’s,” please visit the newly constructed website at http://savestlukes.org. The site gives dates and information about upcoming health commission and city supervisor hearings, online petitions and the history of St. Luke’s. Please feel free to forward this email to your friends and colleagues or to contact me for more information.

Thank You,

Julie Sherwood, CNM
Dept of Obstetrics
St. Luke’s Hospital
San Francisco, CA

the night before the monthly oakland art murmur I and another ethsix* editor happened up on a performance, a perforation of space, human wall graffiti in the form of dance-

in the narrow alley way just west of mission on 24th three women flew and sun through the air above the head of rightfully wowed crowds

sky dance, on twenty-fourth near mission

this group is called sky dance and though yes that is what it is dancing beyond gravity it still does not seem to capture the absolute awe that this inspires- it is one of those wonderfully jarring moments of city life, where culture and art interrupt your everyday and remind you why you pay the high rents to ride on crowded trains and wait in line with busy grumpy people to get coffee and on- a little bit of the sublime in the everyday- they will be performing all month but I would recommend not looking at the schedule and just frequenting the corner so you may be as taken aback as I was that evening with the random surprise of it all- yay dance mission
Oakland hosts a first friday event monthly to showcase the gallery scene that has sprouted out like a spore circle around the funky easy arty mama buzz café. this event is EARLY- like before 9pm and for us city folk it can be a challenge to get our work weary selves over east on a Friday but boy is it worth it! Especially this week because above and beyond a couple very impressive pieces of art, many beer swillin hipsters in good cheer and the live hip hop and girl scout booth there was the PARTY BUS, party bus party bus party bus yeah! I had not seen this converted sam trans unit since cinco de mayo when there were a number of bands that played inside off 17th street and Bryant- the true magic of the party bus is the backboard affixed to the back- I have a deep affinity for backboards in awkward places, as some of you may have experienced the 924 gilman street back board that was quickly in use following the last band on any given night. Wedged high in the rafters and flanked by a sad army of deflated worn couches this backboard was not regulation by any means but among my fondest memories of that good old punk club and like the party bus hoop it was impossible to not hit innocent by standers/get them in the game- and had somewhat the same ecstatic effect of the sky dancers on my sublime view of the city-

But back to the murmur- there was a solid group show at mama buzz(see link for details)- one artist had a really compelling peice- the composition and texture drew me in at length- here it is:

gallery ego park took the cake for the evening with a charged and varied exhibition including minature files that needed to be looked at with a magnifying glass, an epic and disturbing wall portrait of a wailing woman over a man in a body bag- definitely worth dropping by

question of the decade for the art murmur: how to get your event to be more integrated to the community? open for comments