Josh Haner/The New York Times San Francisco looms large in the imagination of outsiders, who use it as a touchstone to define other places. Above, the city and Marin County, as seen from the Airship Ventures zeppelin. In 1898, in a book called “Skaguay, The Gateway to the Klondike,” promoting the golden promise of Alaska, a civic booster wrote:
The future of Skaguay is assured: she is the San Francisco of Alaska — the Key City of the great golden Northwest and will be the capital and the metropolis of the coming North Star State.
It could not have been the first time that the name San Francisco has been the touchstone, the benchmark, the defining frame for someplace else. As in “Geneva is the San Francisco of Switzerland.” Or “Port au Prince is the San Francisco of the Caribbean.” Or “Brighton is the San Francisco of England.”
As demonstrated by the pages and pages of links that appear with a Google search of the phrase “is the San Francisco of,” the good booster of Skagway was not the last to look to this city for metaphoric help. The city obliges, since the facts of its life resonate at so many levels. It has spectacular landscapes (see Geneva, above.) It is prone to earthquakes (see Port au Prince.) It is a coastal town with a thriving gay culture (see Brighton.)
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While budget cuts are remaking education across the country, California’s still stand out for their severity. Among the resulting changes are admissions and access to the state’s flagship higher education system, the University of California. Here is a look at the new reality.
Competition
Securing a seat in the system has become more difficult than ever, as 100,000 students applied this year. “It’s the highest number of applicants we’ve ever had and the fewest we’ve offered admissions,” said Don Daves-Rougeaux, the university’s associate director of undergraduate admissions articulation and eligibility. The University of California, Los Angeles, was the most selective campus, but the University of California, Berkeley, had the highest average grade-point average for incoming freshmen, at 4.19. All but the University of California, Riverside, and the University of California, Merced, recorded their lowest admissions rates ever, The Associated Press reported.
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Price Tag Soars for Gubernatorial Campaigns | Meg Whitman, the former eBay chief executive, has spent about $68 million of her own money in her campaign for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, including $33.8 million in the past two months. She has said she’s prepared to spend as much as $150 million and has already outspent her Republican primary opponent, Steve Poizner, $42 million to $17.9 million on television advertising. From mid-March to mid-May, according to newly released records, Ms. Whitman’s campaign spent $512,121 a day; Mr. Poizner spent $252,000 a day; and the leading Democratic candidate, Attorney General Jerry Brown, spent $3,900 a day. And while the two Republican candidates have been trying to distance themselves from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Los Angeles Times reported that they are sounding more like him. [The Sacramento Bee, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times]
Is the Marijuana Industry a Fertile Field for Unions? | In what appears to be the first union foray into the marijuana business, about 100 workers at medical cannabis dispensaries are being organized by a San Jose-based food workers union, The San Francisco Chronicle reported. The move, he wrote, could “help efforts to legalize marijuana and open the door for the union to organize thousands more workers if state voters pass a measure in November to allow recreational marijuana use by adults.” But since some of the jobs have no equivalent in other fields, the 26,000-member United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 is considering new job classifications, like “bud tender.” The union’s move is “a major step — some are saying it’s a game-changer,” said Jeff Jones, the executive director for the Patient ID Center in Oakland, where 15 workers are now unionized. Passage of the ballot measure could lead to an expansion of the work force and the union’s rolls. [The San Francisco Chronicle]
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One of my earliest encounters with Supervisor Chris Daly of San Francisco was when he was first on the ballot nearly 10 years ago.
I lived in SoMa, and Mr. Daly and was running for the District 6 seat on the board. I crawled out of bed on Election Day, put on a raggedy old baseball cap and headed over to my local polling place, the Hotel Potter on Mission Street.
When I checked in, a poll worker sized me up, then pointed to Mr. Daly’s name as he handed me the ballot and said, “This is the guy you vote for.”
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Dino Vournas/Associated Press Regional dragon-boat races, like this one off Treasure Island in 2005, attract more and more boats.The Pros, the College Standouts and the Rest of Us | While batting averages and marathon finishing times are part of the familiar background of big-time sports, a whole different class of statistics has its own resonance. Did you know that 2:20:06 is the record time in the men’s challenged-athlete category of the Escape From Alcatraz triathlon? Or that more than 100 boats now compete each year in the Treasure Island dragon-boat regatta? Or how many times one woman has ridden a metric century on her bicycle in the Cinderella Classic? Look up the numbers behind the sports for the rest of us.
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Judge Weighs Gang Injunction | The latest effort by regional law enforcement authorities to use the court system to control gang violence will be under the microscope in Alameda County Superior Court, where officials will press for an injunction to control Oakland’s North Side gang. It would restrain 15 named individuals from a variety of activities, including weapons possession, trespassing and witness intimidation. It would also keep suspected gang members from associating with one another in a 100-block swath of the city and impose a curfew from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. In other Bay Area cities, like Fairfield, civil liberties groups have attacked such injunctions as violations of constitutional rights. In Oakland, opponents argue that an injunction would do little to curb crime and much to prompt racial profiling. A report in The Bay Citizen said that a series of at least four killings put law enforcement’s focus on the north Oakland group. [The Oakland Tribune, The New York Times, The Bay Citizen]
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Want to know what to do this Memorial Day weekend? We have you covered.
Dance | “Petite Mort,” “French Twist,” “Songs of Mahler”
Three years after the death of its eponymous founder, the Smuin Ballet has received wide local notice for the new elements in its repertory, particularly this year’s production of the Czech choreographer Jirí Kylián’s “Petite Mort.” The piece is danced against the backdrop of two Mozart piano concertos, and six male dancers literally have foils as foils. The San Francisco Chronicle called the work “a landmark both in the history of Eurodance and in the choreographer’s career. This skewed fantasia about love in the 18th-century manner is visually compelling.” Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Flint Center, 21250 Stevens Creek Boulevard, Cupertino.
Painting | The Birth of Impressionism
From Lefebre through Millet and Courbet and on to Monet, this exhibition at San Francisco’s de Young Museum is filled with some of the finest works from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. It presents not only a wealth of art but also a wealth of understanding. Yes, there are the images familiar from childhood, like “Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist’s Mother” by James MacNeill Whistler, or “The Piper” by Édouard Manet. But there is much more. Because of the historical emphasis, one can see the development of individual painters and of the whole school, and understand the Japanese influence on the art and, in many cases, the artists’ dependence on one another for inspiration, support and critical judgment. As Nancy Ewart wrote in The San Francisco Examiner, “Far from an Impressionist catalog, this is a show about the context, genesis and evolution of what was so aptly called in its time the ‘New Painting.’ ” The exhibit is open on Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 8:45 p.m. and Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:15 p.m. Tickets are available online and are for specific dates and times. The de Young Museum is at 50 Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, at John F. Kennedy Drive, in Golden Gate Park.
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Gold Coast Homes Pay Tenement-Worthy Taxes | The Bay Citizen‘s Web site made its debut Wednesday with an in-depth review of the tax bills on San Francisco’s priciest hilltop, showing that some of the city’s wealthiest people pay among the lowest property taxes. The piece examines the legacy of Proposition 13 three decades later. As Elizabeth Lesly Stevens writes, “Usually, the financial burden of owning a large and valuable house includes a hefty property tax bill.” She went on to report, “Indeed, if Gladyne Mitchell had sold her house at 2901 Broadway, the new owners would have faced an annual tax of about $500,000.” The actual property tax bill for the house is $7,722. [The Bay Citizen]
Obama, in Bay Area, Supports Boxer and Solar Tech | The Fremont-based Solyndra solar-cell manufacturing company, recipient of a $500 million federal loan guarantee in 2009, is the main stop on President Obama’s itinerary Wednesday as he completes a two-day visit to the Bay Area. On Tuesday, he met with wealthy donors to Senator Barbara Boxer’s quest to keep her seat in the Democratic column in November. He gave them his summary of his meeting with Senate Republicans earlier in the day, making light of the parties’ differences over just about every issue and of his nearly dashed hopes for a postpartisan era. “The day has passed when I expected this to be a full partnership,” he said he told the Senate Republicans. He also engaged a heckler who called for quicker action to repeal the Pentagon’s “Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell” policy on gay and lesbian service members; The San Francisco Chronicle’s politics blog has video of the encounter. [KQED, The New York Times Caucus blog, The San Francisco Chronicle]
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Courtesy of Animal Defenders International Two of the Bolivian lions jetting to San Francisco after Bolivia’s ban on animals in circus acts.Paging four retired circus lions from Bolivia! Your new flight plan to San Francisco has been approved.
The soon-to-be-expatriate lions are the first to arrive in the United States after Bolivia’s 2009 ban on circuses using animals in their acts. Peru and Brazil are now considering similar prohibitions.
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