Shooting At UPS Center On Potrero Hill, At Least Three Killed /  by Jay Barmann

by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist, June 14, 2017

A deadly shooting took place Wednesday morning in an industrial section of San Francisco that by all accounts appears to have been committed by a UPS employee against his fellow employees. The shooter took his own life, and at least one news source has identified him.

The area of San Bruno Avenue and 17th Street on Potrero Hill was temporarily on lockdown as of about 9 a.m. due to an active shooter situation reported inside the UPS headquarters there. NBC Bay Area reported that multiple ambulances were on the scene and that at least five people were shot, and possibly more.

The Associated Press later confirmed that SF General had received "multiple" victims but has not gotten a definitive number. CBS 5 reports that three were wounded.

KRON 4 reported that there were multiple deaths, and first reported that the shooter was among the dead. ABC 7 says that the gunman died as did three other people, and that the gunman shot himself upon being confronted by police.

The Chronicle has it via a UPS spokesperson that "at least four employees were involved in the incident." In a further update, the Chronicle reports that three people were shot and killed, and that the gunman died as well.

Though it was initially unclear where the shooting began, it quickly became clear that it was inside the UPS sorting center and warehouse on San Bruno Avenue. Mission Local and ABC 7were among the first to report the location, and via a UPS employee who escaped unharmed, ABC 7 learned that the shooting occurred during a morning meeting among drivers.

Heavy police activity began in the area just after 9 a.m., and as of 10 a.m., ABC 7 says that police have the building under control.

A media staging area originally planned at 17th and Potrero Avenue has been moved to Mariposa and Utah.

A photo of the UPS warehouse from the corner of 17th and San Bruno:

Photo: Google

Photo: Google

ABC 7 further shows us the activity around the UPS building, and some tweets suggest that some UPS employees had escaped to a roof and were calling for help. One witness in the area suggests that the shooting suspect is a UPS driver who targeted another employee.

We'll update you as we learn more.

Update: UPS has issued a statement saying "UPS confirms there was an incident involving employees within the company’s facility in San Francisco earlier this morning. Local law enforcement have control of the facility and are conducting an investigation. The company is cooperating with law enforcement. We cannot provide information as to the identity of persons involved at this time, pending the police investigation.”

Update 11:25 a.m.: Police continue to comb the UPS facility for more victims and witnesses, and possible accomplices. The shelter-in-place order remains in effect for the immediate area from 15th to 18th Street, between Potrero Avenue and Vermont Street.

Update 11:45 a.m.: CBS News reporter John Goodwin puts the number of dead at three, saying six victims were shot and the shooter then turned gun on himself. It's unclear whether the shooter is being counted among the three deceased.

Mayor Ed Lee issued the following statement: "“At this point, the San Francisco Police Department is still investigating the events that occurred this morning. I want to thank our brave officers of the San Francisco Police Department, and our dedicated employees at 911 and San Francisco General Hospital.

I also want to offer my condolences and thoughts for the individuals and families affected by the senseless act of violence at the UPS facility. We all know the familiar faces of our local UPS drivers and delivery persons. Today’s tragedy will be felt in every community served by these committed employees.

We are always saddened when someone loses a life to gun violence. Even one shooting and one victim is too many.”

Update 2:20 p.m.: The shooter has been preliminary identified as Jimmy Lam, a resident of the Sunset district and a father of children.

 

Loma Prieta 25 Years Later: What The Quake Felt Like For A Kid /  by Jay Barmann

loma-prieta-kids-oral-histories-quake.jpg

by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist

For the last few days SFist has been running videos from various sources documenting the 6.9-magnitude Loma Prieta Earthquake and its aftermath, marking the quake's 25th anniversary, which is today.

Everyone who was here has a story, and for those of us who weren't, and for whom this long-ago natural disaster was just another item on the evening news — or something we were too young to have even seen live on TV — these stories are all the more gripping. We reached out to friends and colleagues who are from here and experienced the quake first-hand on October 17, 1989, all when they were kids, and their memories of it are vivid and fantastic.

I was at Candlestick Park when the earthquake hit. It was about half an hour before the World Series was suppose to start, and I was trying to get autographs by the elevator that came from the player's clubhouse to the suite level. Often, retired players and other celebrities — a frequent visitor was Willie Mays — would come off the elevator to head to their suites to watch the game. I was waiting with a couple of fellow autograph hounds when out walked Joe and Jennifer Montana. Almost before I could get out the words, "Mr. Montana, could I have your...", the earthquake started. I don't remember much, except hearing the screams of Jennifer Montana as we all tried to find the closest railing or wall to hang onto.

Later, one of the other autograph hounds claimed that during the earthquake, Joe had valiantly grabbed his shoulders and put him under a doorway for safety. Who am I to question this?
- Christine P. Sun, ACLU attorney


I was a senior in high school and was out at the Polo Fields for field hockey practice. It was a warm, still day ("earthquake weather" as we call it) and there were all kinds of teams out practicing, including a football team at the west end. When the earthquake hit, we all stopped practicing, stood up and rode it out. I recall the optical illusion of the football team moving back and forth as I looked down the fields. After it ended, we all looked at each other and shrugged, and went back to what we were doing. We were natives so earthquakes were nothing new and without buildings around us, we had no sense of what had transpired. The eucalyptus trees that line the perimeter of the Polo Fields were all of a sudden swaying — but there was no wind. It was very eerie. Then a man walked by with a transistor radio (I know, really dating myself with that reference!) and he said he heard the press box collapsed at Candlestick, where the World Series Game was being held between the Giants and the A's. This turned out not to be true but immediately we all realized this was a bigger quake then we originally thought. Getting home was eerie as well — no stoplights were working and everyone was out on the streets, talking to each other and checking in. After reuniting with my family, we swapped stories. My father worked in the financial district and recalled walking over broken glass on the sidewalks from fallen windows to get to his parking lot and then being delighted that the parking attendant couldn't collect his fees because of the power outage. We didn't have power for the next three days, so I never saw any of the visuals of the Marina burning or the Bay Bridge collapse — we only heard about everything by radio. I did walk down to the Marina District on Day 2 or 3 and remember the smell of gas. It was sad to be down there and see so much damage (buckled sidewalks, wilted building fronts, bricks and glass) and displacement, people trying to figure out what to do, a shelter set up at Marina Middle School. I never felt any aftershocks from the earthquake. My mother was overseas in China at the time and heard on an English station only these words in a brief announcement: "There has been a large earthquake in San Francisco and the Bay Bridge has collapsed." It took two days for her to even get a phone call through to find out what had actually happened. 
- Sarah Bacon, founder, Richmond SF blog


My memories of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake are inextricably tied to the World Series. I was seven years old at the time, and obsessed with baseball.

I was that kid. That kid with a worn-out black cap who read the boxscores every morning — in the Chronicle! — and then went out and threw a ball against a wall for hours, pretending I was Robby Thompson and Jose Uribe flipping a double play. I collected baseball cards. I fell asleep listening to Hank Greenwalk doing the play-by-play on my bedside radio. I kept a stash of Croix de Candlestick pins. I loved the game.

So you can imagine the thrill of a seven-year-old when the San Francisco Giants made THE WORLD SERIES. And of all things, they were going to play the crosstown Oakland A's. The Bay Bridge Series. Think about that, and how ridiculous the city would be nowadays if that match-up happened again.

Game Three of the Bay Bridge Series was about to start. I was at my grandparents' house in South City, sitting cross-legged in front of the old television next to my little sister. The earthquake hit during the pregame show.

For some reason, the shaking didn't seem like a foreign sensation. I forget if it was because we had practiced protocol in school, or because I had felt other earthquakes. It was such a prolonged shake that my grandmother had time to run into the room and tell us to hide under the table. We did. I don't recall being scared though, probably because I didn't know any better. Not much was ajar in the house.

That part is all fairly vivid, but my memories of the aftermath are all blurry snapshots: fires, bridge breaks, checking in on family members, broken plates, earthquake kits, listening to the radio. I do remember that there was no baseball that day.
- Paolo Lucchesi, Chronicle food reporter, Editor of Inside Scoop SF


I was just a few minutes into my piano lesson on the second floor of our house in Pacific Heights when the earthquake struck. I turned to my piano teacher and said, "We need to get in the doorway." As the shaking intensified, he hugged me close and said, "This is it. It's all over. This is it." I was NOT feeling it — his doomsday prophecy or his arms wrapped tightly around me — so I did what any little girl would do: switched doorways mid-quake. We had no power and the phones weren't working, so we sent him home afterwards and then went to a family friend's house on Filbert Street, where a large group of us sat in the dark, listened to a tiny radio, and watched the Marina burn. I was so scared and just didn't understand why we would ever choose to live in a place where something so horrible could happen with no warning. Of course, today, there's no where else on earth I'd rather live. I do, however, blame that piano teacher for my intense hatred of hugs.
- Daisy Barringer, SFist football columnist and editor of Thrillist SF


It was so long ago that I don't remember the before, just the during. I was at my best friend's house. Sitting up against one side of the bed looking at a book, I wondered why all of the sudden my friend had started pushing, really pushing the bed towards me. She made a strange sound, sort of indicating an annoyance (we were six at the time, we didn't know how to express ourselves clearly). Before she could muster up anything else her mother burst into the room screaming "GET OUT OF HERE!!! FOLLOW ME!!!" I think she even shouted "RUN RUN RUN!!" I was really scared, not because of the movements (it still hadn't registered that something bad was happening), but because I had never seen her mom act so out of control. She was terrified, which terrified me. We ran down the hallway, through the living room and slid under the dining table. It took about 10 seconds to do that, and by the time we were under the table I could see the floor moving. Vases, photos, bookshelves, they were all falling down. I blinked and the quake stopped. I don't remember what immediately happened after that, but I still have images stuck in my head from the news the following days. The freeway collapse. The bridge breaking. What happened to the Marina. I remember seeing photos of bloodied rescue workers. It was very scary because up until then I thought adults were invincible, or at least firemen and police officers. I remember hoping my home would survive. When I say "home," I'm talking about the Bay Area. Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Cruz ... I remember wondering if something so broken could be fixed. I think that's one of the reasons I still can't move out of the Bay Area. I saw parts of it crumble, and people stayed to rebuild it. I think it was my earliest memory of feeling prideful. This horrible catastrophe had happened: people died, homes were destroyed, but then people stayed and helped fix it. It feels good to call a place and a people like that home. 
- Sally Kuchar, city sites editor, Curbed


I remember the earthquake vividly. I was a sophomore at Carmel High School and my friends and I were hanging out by the outdoor pool, behind the gym, watching the water polo game. My brother was at football practice and I could see him on the field below. A good minute before the shaking, we heard what sounded like an enormous scaffolding collapsing inside the gym, metal-on-metal clanging that was so loud it was incomprehensible and then the ground started shaking. The pool was sloshing water and players around. Parents (clearly not natives) were on their knees screaming. I could see my brother and his teammates, little red and white specs on the field below, riding the huge waves that were rippling across the field. Beyond the football field, I could see these waves flow over the Santa Lucia mountains that frame one side of Carmel Valley. It was pretty humbling, the scale of these waves that were so much bigger than us, our town, the mountains. We are truly just existing on the very top bit of crust, absolutely insignificant to the massive scale of movement below.
- Joelle Colliard, architect, TEF Design

Cal Grad Makes Total Fool Of Himself On 'The Bachelorette' /  by Jay Barmann

If this is just a GLIMPSE of ""Whaboom"", we can't imagine what we're going to see later in the cocktail party... The Bachelorette premieres Monday at 9|8c on ABC! Subscribe: http://goo.gl/mo7HqT

by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist, May 24, 2017

The internet is loudly mocking/hate-tweeting about 30-year-old Lucas Yancey. The Cal grad and Woodside resident is one of the contestant bachelors on the latest edition of The Bachelorette, and if the above video is any indication, he was cast on the show in order to inspire "what a douche" comments on social media and to irritate the rest of the cast until he makes it to the final three.

The Bachelorette this time is Rachel Lindsay, the first African-American bachelorette in the franchise's history — and that's out of 33 combined seasons of The Bachelor/The Bacheloretteon ABC. Rachel is an attorney from Texas, and as they've done with previous seasons, they plucked her out of the last round of The Bachelor in which she vied for the love of four-time failed marriage prospect Nick Viall.

Uproxx pegs Lucas, with his megaphone entrance, Jim Carrey-esque forced zanyness, and "Whaboom" catchphrase, as a bit of hate-watch casting, and they're likely spot-on. Did I mention that in addition to introducing himself with a catchphrase, "Whaboom" is also a t-shirt line that he's pimping — he steps out of the limo in his first episode wearing one of his own t-shirts bearing the word/brand. He also lists Whaboom as his occupation in his bio. He also needed to say it and act insane during the rose ceremony.

Vulture, which dug up the easily findable video below — some kind of spec commercial Yancey made for Doritos — suggests that casting Yancey, with his obvious thirst for showbiz fame, is "an extremely cynical casting move" even for this show, which long ago gave up on the ruse that anyone's really on it to find love.

Doritos Fanatic Wins a Bet, and his buddy is not feeling so lucky! Tough loss... :( Created by: Lucas Yancey Actor 1 Doritos Guy: Lucas Yancey Actor 2: Brian Regal Actor 3: (On table) - Nat Anglin Actress: Katie DIx DP: Corey C.

I know. Big news, right? Attention-hungry, wannabe famous actor goes on reality show to get attention/fame.

But this time, he's from the Bay Area. So, we're all to blame.

Photographer Michael Jang Watched The SF Punk Scene Blossom, And Now He's Selling Photos Of It For $20 /  by Jay Barmann

Pearl Harbor and the Explosions on stage. (Photo by Michael Jang)

Pearl Harbor and the Explosions on stage. (Photo by Michael Jang)

Well respected SF-based photographer Michael Jang already has plenty of his work in museums, including the permanent collection of SFMOMA, and this year he's been pulling some work out of his own vault that documents the vibrant, chaotic punk scene of the late 1970s in San Francisco — something he witnessed first-hand as a grad student at the San Francisco Art Institute. "The punk scene: That's where the juice was. And it matched my energy for what I wanted to do as a photographer," Jang explains in a 2015 interview with SFMOMA. "I wasn't really part of that scene. But I used my camera to get in." He took photos of some of the biggest names in punk, including the Sex Pistols at their last concert ever in 1978, at SF's Winterland Ballroom, and some intimate shots of Johnny Rotten and the rest of the band the morning after they broke up as they were leaving the Hotel Miyako in Japantown.

Jang grew up in Marysville in Northern California, got his bachelor's degree at Cal Arts in Los Angeles, and his MFA at the SF Art Institute. Stephen McLaren of the British Journal of Photography wrote, "If you had to invent a photographer who captured the essence of California in the 1970s and 80’s — its exuberance and dubious fashion sense, its rebellious subcultures and obsessions with celebrity — you would have to invent Michael Jang."

Some of the photos Jang took of the SF punk scene have been exhibited before, but many have spent "40 years... collecting dust in boxes" as he told Vice earlier this year, on the occasion of a pop-up exhibit of the photos and some hand-made 'zines by Jang in Tokyo in January.

Referring to an earlier batch of family photos that he sat on for years and just sold to SFMOMA in 2008, Jang said, "I'm the Rip van Winkle of photography. Thirty-five years later, I'm coming out and showing this stuff."

I asked Jang, 67, why he'd kept some of these punk photos under wraps for so long, and he said, "Punk recently had a 40th anniversary. I wanted to wait till its 50th but I figured I better get some of it out now in case I don’t make it."

Though he says "I wasn't so much into the big names, I was into the energy," he happened to be there when the big names performed in SF, and he ended up producing album cover photos of lesser known punk acts like Pearl Harbor and the Explosions and The Dils (see slideshow). "The shows were all memorable," Jang says. "I found a way to get backstage most of the time but only one person ever came up to me and actually started a conversation: Joey Ramone."

He says the bands that sprung up at the Art Institute also had "very loyal followings" and he just "naturally fell into" the scene because it was happening around him, with bands performing at parties in the painting studios with black plastic bags taped up over the walls to protect the art.

Now, on May 5 from 7 to 10 p.m., Jang will be doing another pop-up show at Seeing Things Gallery in San Jose (751 West San Carlos Street), which will be filled with hand-made 'zines, posters, Xerox prints, and photos, all for sale for $20 apiece. The show is called "Michael Jang Is No Fun," and he wanted it to reflect the DIY aesthetic of punk itself.

I asked Jang what the impetus for the show was, and he quoted Robert Frank, the 92-year-old American photographer, who said of a recent show of his own work on newsprint, "I want them cheap, quick, and dirty!"

Follow Jang on Instagram here.

MarthaStewart.com Recipe Finder Project /  by Jay Barmann

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Role: Producer on original Recipe Finder project, helping navigate between editors, designers, copy editors, and engineering staff. Launched with 1050 recipes from the magazine archive, creating a highly usable, searchable database of evergreen content in an inviting form.

See the still extant Recipe Finder tool here. 

Cleve Jones Talks About The 'Surreal Experience' Of Seeing His Youth Reenacted In 'When We Rise' /  by Jay Barmann

Jones, in his youth (left), side by side with the actor portraying him, Austin P. McKenzie.

Jones, in his youth (left), side by side with the actor portraying him, Austin P. McKenzie.

by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist, March 2, 2017

Local activist and author Cleve Jones first attended an eight-hour premiere screening of the Dustin Lance Black-penned miniseries When We Rise at the Castro Theatre last week. This week he's fielding reactions from the public at large and giving interviews in support of the prime-time airing of the miniseries, which is based in part on his memoir of the same title, and SFist grabbed a few minutes with him to talk about how weird this has to be.

SFist: It has to be bizarre seeing your life, and your youth, reenacted on screen. How accurate has the portrayal been?

Cleve Jones: It is truly a surreal experience. I worked on the book for three years and Lance worked on the screenplay for three years (the first half of the book was done in about early 2013), so it's been an extremely long process. It was also difficult that during that time I lost both my parents and both my uncles. But yes, seeing the reenactments is more peculiar that I can possibly describe. One of the things that's very sweet about all this is that the real people behind these characters — Roma, Diane, Ken, Cecilia, and Gilbert Baker [famous for creating the rainbow flag] — we're all still actually friends and we're all still involved in the movement, and that just has added something very wonderful to this, to have someone else to go through this experience with. Roma Guy is someone who's been a touchstone for me for literally decades. She's someone I've checked in with about everything from which candidate to support, to you name it. Gilbert Baker is probably my oldest and dearest living friend. Ken Baker and I have known each other and worked together off and on since I think the late 70s, starting at The Stud bar. I'm completely overwhelmed with watching it, yes.

The weird part with the miniseries is how it's so fictionalized. I tell people "It is not accurate yet remains somehow truthful." And we all knew things would be condensed and there'd be these vast distortions of time and space. For instance the Black Cat closed in 1964 when I was 10 years old, so we couldn't have gathered there around Jose Sarria, as shown in Part 1 (and I wouldn't end up meeting Jose for many years). The place we did hang out was The Stud, and that's not shown. The stabbing incident occurred not in San Francisco but in Sacramento. And I met Ricardo, my boyfriend, several years later in Austin, Texas.

How much of these other peoples' stories came out of the book, versus out of interviews Lance did?

Diane is not in my book at all. There are a couple of references to Roma and to Ken. Gilbert is a significant character. At the beginning of this, Lance wanted me to help him identify people who had been there who had been there since the early 1970s and were still alive and still in the movement.

Was the use of the 1971 Life magazine, which featured the words "Gay Liberation Movement" on the cover, your idea, or Lance's?

I told Lance about that. It's featured in the book, and you know it's funny how many older people have told me they also vividly remember that issue.

Is there a portion of the miniseries that is the hardest for you to watch?

Scott [Rempel] and Marvin [Feldman] were just my dearest friends. Not a day goes by when I don't think about them. So, these reenactments, even though they're not particularly accurate in detail, are difficult. And I of course think of Scott and Marvin's families as this is being broadcast.

The show goes a long way to describe how fractured the LGBT community was as this movement took shape in the early 1970s, and that hasn't been widely portrayed before. What do you think the defining moment of coming together was? Was it the Briggs Initiative for Californians? Was it the AIDS crisis?

The Briggs Initiative was a very important one because it targeted all of us who wanted to work in the education system, so everyone felt threatened. Members of racial and ethnic minorities felt threatened, and so did members of unions and the labor movement. That was a real significant moment that grew out of when we built our first coalition with Labor, the Coors beer boycott that was organized by Harvey.

When AIDS came, the response from our lesbian sisters was truly important. But a lot of people have focused on the caregiving aspect, and while that was important, it was a also a period when lesbians came into leadership roles in the movement as a whole. Up until that point gay men had dominated many of these leadership positions, and as so many of them were sick and dying this was a time when women really stepped forward and began taking responsibility for continuing the work that had been started.

What's been the funniest or strangest reaction to the miniseries that you've seen so far, on social media or otherwise?

Right now I'm getting about 50 Facebook or Twitter messages an hour, so I haven't gotten to them all yet and I'm just slogging through. The oddest and funniest thing is that I'm hearing from a lot of people I haven't heard from in decades — who knew so many of my ex-boyfriends were still alive?! And admittedly, there were a lot of them, but my god. They're all coming out of the woodwork.

'When We Rise' continues airing Thursday and Friday at 9 p.m. on ABC.

Former Friends Of Oakland Warehouse Proprietor Say He Was Repeatedly Warned About Unsafe Conditions /  by Jay Barmann

Micah Allison and Derick Ion Almena. Photo: Facebook

Micah Allison and Derick Ion Almena. Photo: Facebook

by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist, December 4, 2016

 

In the hours after the deadly warehouse fire in Oakland Friday that claimed the lives of an estimated three dozen people in their 20's, 30's and 40's, a man thought to be largely responsible for the wooden interior structures and layout of the space spoke out on social media not to mourn the loss of the dead, but to bemoan the loss of "everything I worked so hard for." Now multiple sources say that 46-year-old Derick Ion Almena had brazenly flouted warnings from friends and city officials that his live-work and event space, which was home to about 14 people at any given time, was a ticking time bomb of safety issues waiting to explode. Also, TMZ has gotten in on the action reporting that Almena has an arrest record, and was on probation this year for receiving stolen property.

Almena's wife/partner is Micah Allison, and they have three children together, all of whom were staying with their mother at a nearby hotel during the party on Friday. Almena had, as the East Bay Times reports, been largely responsible for constructing the maze of artists' studios on the warehouse's ground floor, and the bohemian "rave cave," as it was nicknamed, on the second floor mezzanine, which was connected by a rickety stairway made out of wooden pallets — something that made both escape, and access by firefighters, nearly impossible as the blaze took off. "The whole place was wires and cables and wood," former resident DeL Lee told the paper, adding that Almena had "a fetish for wood."

Also on the ground floor, reportedly, were parked several RVs where artists also lived.

It's unclear if at 1:30 a.m. Saturday, two hours into the blaze, Almena was aware that multiple people had perished in the fire and were unable to escape, when he posted the following to Facebook: "Confirmed. Everything I worked so hard for is gone. Blessed that my children and Micah were at a hotel safe and sound... it's as if I have awoken from a dream filled with opulence and hope.... to be standing now in poverty of self worth." It would appear, though, that several of his friends already heard that people were trapped and possibly dead.

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The internet has, naturally, excoriated Almena as news of the fire has made international headlines for being so seemingly callous and self-involved as to ignore the mass casualty and focus on his own home and artwork. And some of his own friends did as well, as the East Bay Express reported Saturday while the post was still live.

 

Another friend, whose note was spotted by the Daily Mail, said "ARE YOU SERIOUSLY POSTING ABOUT THE LOSS OF YOUR MATERIAL POSESSIONS (sic) WHEN YOUR DEATH TRAP MURRRRRRDERED OUR FRIENDS????? I WANT BARRETT AND JONATHAN AND JOEY BACK! F**K YO S**T."

Given the inevitable legal implications that will stem from this awful tragedy, Almena should think twice about leaving up that post (which is still live), with another friend saying, "You might want to not put posts like this up... legally you will be responsible and this will certainly slant a jury towards a lengthy prison sentence for your blatant disregard for humanity and human life."

One friend defended him, as the Daily Mail notes, saying, "Derick Ion posted this 10 hours ago. I do not believe he realized in that moment that others had died. Please do not be so quick to judge him. This is a time for healing, prayers & hope for the survivors."

The Chronicle reports that Ghost Ship and Almena's Satya Yuga collective date back about a decade in the East Oakland warehouse space, and had been the source of numerous complaints over the years. Remarkably, Almena and the other artists who lived there managed to fly under the radar all that time despite building inspections — and the AP reported that sub-tenants were told to say that it was a 24-hour artists' workspace, and to hide away clothes and bedding if inspectors came.

The daughter of the landlord, Eva Ng, told the Chronicle that as far as she knew, "no one lived there," however it appears Almena took over the place after landlord Chor Ng evicted another tenant in 2005 who had been paying just $500 a month for the warehouse.

A whistleblower in all this, with regard to the hazards of the building, was a neighbor and friend of Almena and Allison, Danielle Boudreaux, whose kids go to school with their kids. She says she had a falling out with the couple after alerting Child Protective Services as well as Allison's parents that the children were living in unsafe conditions. The kids were removed for six months, as the Chron reports, in early 2015, sent to live with their grandparents in Southern California, but returned by July 2015 and had been continuing to live there ever since.

Boudreaux says to the paper, "The police and Fire Department were there on more than one occasion. Multiple people warned Derick that it was a death trap. He would laugh it off. This tragedy could have been avoided if it were not for his arrogance."

It remains astonishing that if the Fire Department had seen this makeshift pallet staircase before they would have allowed it to stay, however it remains unclear what they were allowed to see at any given time in what's been described as a labyrinth and a "clap-trap pirate ship" of a space.

The East Bay Times reported Saturday that the building was actively under investigation by the city of Oakland and that building inspectors had cited the property for blight on November 13 due to illegal dumping on the street, and had returned on November 17 to inspect the interior, but were not able to get inside. Darin Ranelletti, Oakland’s interim director of planning and building, explained this at a news conference Saturday, but could not answer for why inspectors had then neglected to return or try again in the ensuing three weeks.

Two things are certain in this, as they are after any great tragedy that could have been preventable: 1) There are going to be a ton of lawsuits likely aimed at the city, the landlord, and Almena; and 2) It's about to become a lot harder to get away with makeshift, illegal dwellings in Oakland as a crackdown is pending.

Update: Reuters has a piece about warning signs at the Ghost Ship space, and suggests that the three children may have been removed from their parents' custody for well over a year, not just six months. They quote Almena's father-in-law, quoting his granddaughter complaining about her father's collecting habits. "She said my dad likes to collect a lot of junk, if he sees something on the side of the road we have to stop. She'd complain the whole house was full of junk.”

The East Bay Times has done their own brief profile of Almena, taking out of context a few things he said on Facebook in recent months, including calling himself "the thriller love child of Manson, Pol Pot and Hitler." Referring apparently to past drug use and mandatory drug testing because of the CPS situation, Almena wrote, "Addictions never admitted armed me as revolutionary… as long as i seek help and healing, have current registration, pay my insurance, piss in a cup twice weekly … i can proverbally (sic) get away with murder."

A former neighbor described Almena in the last decade as having "a way about him like he was founding a new religion."

Previously: Official Death Toll In Oakland Warehouse Fire Rises To 24, Likely To Rise To At Least 35

Millennium Tower, Next To Transbay Center, Is Sinking And Tilting /  by Jay Barmann

Photo: Wikimedia

Photo: Wikimedia

by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist, August 1, 2016

San Francisco's Millennium Tower, completed in 2009 and famed for being the home to some high-profile locals like Joe Montana and Hunter Pence, has apparently sunk well over a foot — sixteen inches — into the earth in just eight years. And as the Chronicle's Matier and Ross report, the 58-story tower has also tilted two inches to the northwest according to an independent consultant.

The sinking and tilting do not, surprisingly, represent a significant safety concern for residents, however the consultant called in is Professor Greg Deierlein of Stanford's Earthquake Engineering Center.

While some ground settling is to be expected with large buildings, sixteen inches is more than what would be considered normal, according to Deierlein. He points to the 18-year-old Petronas Towers in Malaysia, saying they have sunk less than three inches, and tilted less than half an inch.

It seems likely that the excess settling was caused by the fact that the building's foundation, including 80-foot pilings, are in mud fill just off what was the original shoreline of the city, combined with the fact that the developer, Millennium Partners, opted for concrete construction rather than lighter weight steel.

Millennium Partners, however, may be seeking a big payday from the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, and in turn taxpayers, because they're shifting blame for tower's sinking and tilting to the large hole that was excavated next door for the Transbay Transit Center. Construction on that began in 2010 and included underground buttressing for Millennium Tower — and the trouble with this theory is that Deierlein's initial report found that the tower had already sunk 10 inches by 2010.

Deierlein suggests that residents should be concerned for their investment, as tilting can cause elevators to malfunction, and the settling can cause cracks to appear inside the building. This is a bit ironic given the fanfare with which the tower went up, and the high price of its units — it was even named to Worth magazine's list of the world's top ten residences in 2012.

No word on when this thing turns into our very own leaning tower and they can start charging admission.

Napa Earthquake Update: More Injuries Reported, About 100 Buildings Red-Tagged /  by Jay Barmann

 

by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist, August 25, 2014

The tally of earthquake damages in Napa continues to roll in as of this morning, and schools are closed today across the county. The injury count has continued to rise, with 208 people reportedly injured, and injuries range from cuts and bruises to hip fractures; six people are now listed as critically injured. One of those is 13-year-old Nicholas Dillon, who is in serious condition after a chimney collapsed on him, and is being treated at UC Davis Medical Center, as the Chronicle reports.

One woman, 31-year-old Leigh McDermott, was taken off life support after "suffering a heart attack or some other medical emergency" that may or may not have been related to the earthquake. She was found by her parents in the home they shared unconscious and not breathing about 10 minutes after the quake.

90 to 100 buildings have been red-tagged and deemed uninhabitable, according to KTVU, up from a count of 33 on Sunday. 20 to 30 more inspectors from the state's Department of Emergency Services were expected to arrive Monday, as KRON 4 reports.

About 70,000 homes and businesses in Napa lost gas and electrical power, as the Marin IJ reports, and all but 82 had their utilities restored as of this morning. About 600 hundred homes remain without water due to broken water mains and pipes.

Videos below show images of damaged buildings, including homes, historic buildings, and a collapsed carport at one apartment complex.

For his part, architecture critic John King says that downtown Napa "will survive" this setback, with the city continuing a decade-long effort at revitalization, and most of its historic buildings damages but not destroyed.

Airbnb Reveals 20% Of SF Listings Are By Hosts Listing Multiple Homes, Vows Crackdown /  by Jay Barmann

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by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist, April 2, 2016

Airbnb has issued a mea culpa of sorts today, and a reversal of some of its previous rhetoric surrounding the issue of hosts who illegally use the platform to turn themselves into small-scale hoteliers, and who appear to be renting out multiple complete homes on a short-term basis. For the first time, the company has released what appears to be real data regarding the number of SF hosts renting more than one entire unit or home, in direct violation of the 2014 law that forbids that. According to a statement from the company's PR fixer and head of global public policy, Chris Lehane (once employed by the Clinton White House), "We want to continually evolve the platform so it serves the best interest of each city we’re in. This is a step in that direction, to make sure that each host has only one listing in San Francisco."

Previously, Airbnb had been reluctant to share hard numbers with the city, and refused to share user data on privacy grounds. But now, in an effort to curb backlash and act in good faith, the company appears to be ready to do some policing of its hosts and set this issue to rest — something that will hopefully stem the tide of greed among real estate investors who are taking long-term rentals off the market to turn them into full-time vacation rentals.

The new data, taken as a snapshot on March 15 shows:


  • Out of 9,448 active listings in SF, 1,149 of those are managed by hosts with multiple properties on the site. This represents 20 percent of local listings.
  • 3,812 of these listings are private rooms or shared spaces.
  • Of the 5,636 entire home listings, 4,487 are shared ostensibly legally by hosts with only one entire home listing — though this does not prove that the listing is also their primary residence. The release also does not detail how many of these homes are shared more than the legal 90 days per year.
  • Out of the 1,149 homes managed by hosts with more than listing, the company claims that only 671 appear to be in violation of the law, being managed by 288 hosts, who will be the initial focus of this crackdown.

This echoes an independent study in January that said that just over 22 percent of Airbnb's revenue in San Francisco was generated illegally, by hosts violating local law. In their release today, the company says that these short-term, entire-home hosts with multiple listings represent 17 percent of total host revenue.

Contrast these numbers with those that the company bandied about 10 months ago, when they asserted that only about 348 units were being kept off the long-term rental market and rented full time via Airbnb.

While not every city has passed a law restricting the use of Airbnb quite like San Francisco's law, places like New York, New Orleans, Paris, and Berlin have all seen similar backlash against the growing company in recent years, as the Chronicle reports.

And, in fact, SF's law is lenient by comparison: New Orleans outlaws all rentals of less than 60 days in the French Quarter, or less than 30 days in other parts of town; and New York outlaws the rental of entire units in multiple-unit buildings, and only allows rental of rooms where hosts are present in the unit, per Nolo.com.

Airbnb spent a reported $8 million this past fall fighting Prop F, which sought to further tighten Airbnb restrictions and ostensibly make complaints from neighbors easier, but now according to the Chronicle, the company is promising to add features on the site itself that allow for neighbor complaints, so that the company may begin dealing with these internally.

As for whether this change of heart in San Francisco and effort to make good on its promise to crack down on scofflaw hosts will be nationwide, the company isn't making any promises that they'll be doing anything similar in other cities.

Per the company's release:

As we said in [The Airbnb Community Compact], each city is unique and one size fits all approach will not work. We are taking this action in San Francisco to make good on the commitment we outlined in the Community Compact to help prevent short-term rentals from impacting the availability and cost of housing in cities that have had historic housing challenges. We are committed to treating every city personally and providing solutions that allow everyday people to share their homes so they can make ends meet while also addressing local concerns.

Airbnb's impending SF crackdown follows on an ongoing one by the city's Office of Short-Term Rentals, which in December reported having issued $400,000 in penalties so far to 37 different properties.

Apartment Sadness: Furnished Hovel With Stripper Pole, No Actual Kitchen, $1785 /  by Jay Barmann

Photo via Craigslist

Photo via Craigslist

by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist, May 1, 2015

I don't even know what to make of this Lower Nob Hill sublet that appears to be the current home of of either a) a very messy hooker, or b) a self-employed businesswoman who likes to be dirty sometimes (sexually). It's advertised as furnished, and as is often the case the furnishings are not a selling point. There's a crappy futon, a desk, and a very cluttered looking office area that perhaps doubles as a vanity/make-up area, as well as a "make-shit" [sic] kitchenette because this is perhaps some kind of SRO or communal living situation. The Craigslist ad refers to it as a "jr. 1 bedroom" but what it actually is is two rooms without a door between them, and a bathroom. The price? $1785 a month, with a full move-in cost of $5,570 (first, last, and deposit).

Below you can see what this "make-shit" kitchenette consists of: some Metro shelves, a hot plate, a toaster, microwave, a fly strip (upper left), and a stand-alone dishwasher (not pictured). There's also a smallish fridge which is over in the office section that you see above. Note that kitchenette photo has been used as a marketing tool for an Airbnb rental. Dear god.

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Then check out this photo from the other side of the same room. The suitcases and closet with no door are a nice touch. This is one of those situations, actually, where the poster should have considered showing fewer photos.

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A telling fact: there is "also a community [kitchen] just down the all with a large counter, sink and full sized oven." So, yeah, this isn't a real apartment.

But what really takes the prize are the bathroom photos, which include a shower equipped with an obvious douche nozzle, and a sink that appears to have a plumber's snake sticking out of it. And some random plastic hoses leading to god knows what. Also, it looks filthy. Like, a-little-Pine-Sol-aint-gonna-cut-it filthy.

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I'm really confused about the bedroom. As you can see below, there's one photo of the bedroom area in daylight, and then another photo at night where, magically, there's suddenly a stripper pole? And a leopard-print duvet? Is that the same room? One clue may be in that leopard pillow you see in the daylight photo.

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The stripper pole is not listed as an amenity, but then there's this other blurry photo that appears to be showing off a projection TV situation, with the stripper pole clearly visible again at right. And is that lesbian foot-fetish porn??

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Now, the reason I say this could be the home of some kind of self-employed person is because of the double-monitor situation on the desk in the first photo above. And the current tenant — who actually does not mention that this is a sublet until the very final line of the ad, referring to it as "Glitterhaus sublet" — says she'll be leaving behind a media server that's filled with "33000 hours of commericial-less TV programs and movies." And I say it's a woman because there's that makeup area with the makeup brushes by the window — but who knows! It could be a drag queen. Or a couple.

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So, would you like to spend $1785 on this fun pad and still probably have to move again soon? And check out all the **** that are in the ad — is this person kind of crazy, perhaps? There's some serious exclaiming going on here:

**** SERIOUS INQUIRIES - ONLY!!!! ****
** appointment deposit may be required!!! **
DO NOT tell me your whole life story! Just age, job, a couple hobbies, etc.

But by all means, get in touch. Douche nozzle included!

All previous editions of Apartment Sadness.

SFist Exit Interview: Jonathan Groff /  by Jay Barmann

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by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist, November 21, 2014

We don't get too steady a stream of celebrities here in the Bay Area, but we do get some gracing our theater stages here and there. And with that in mind we'll be kicking off a series of "exit interviews" with people here from out of town to tell us about what they love, and what they don't love, about staying in San Francisco. Starting us off is Jonathan Groff, star of the HBO show Looking, which just wrapped shooting on its second season this week.

SFist: You guys have been here a long time for this shoot — significantly longer than last year's shoot, am I right?

Jonathan Groff: Yes. Well, last year the season was eight episodes but we'd already shot the pilot, so we were here for a period of time to shoot seven episodes. But this year we did a total of 10, and we've been here since the end of August, and I leave on Friday.

This is it, this is the end. I'm so bummed. Tomorrow's my last day of shooting.

Where were you living this time during the shoot?

I am living in like the Castro/Mission gray area. I love it here.

What was your most fun shooting day this time around?

There's been so many. The first episode was really fun because it was the first one back and we were all on location in Russian River. We were in canoes and hiking through redwoods and pretending to be on drugs at a party, and it was really beautiful. I'd never been up there before so that was really kind of an amazing experience.

Yeah it's beautiful up there.

So beautiful.

Would you say that was the best location you discovered?

We shot outside of the city a couple of times this year. We were in Russian River, and then we shot in Modesto, we shot in San Leandro, and Oakland a little bit. We were kind of spreading our wings a little bit exploring the Bay Area, more than just San Francisco which was kind of fun. I don't want to give anything away but we're sort of exploring different character areas, like where they're from, and it's interesting to see how the different parts of the Bay Area sort of informed us about different storylines and different characters in the show. And it was cool to be outside the city a bit.

So, I saw you perform at Cleve Jones' 60th birthday. Had you ever met him before?

I met him when were here last year. Danny Glicker, the costume guy on Looking did the costume design on Milk, so he knew Cleve from that. So I got to meet him with Danny last year when we were here. And he told me that his birthday party was coming up, and I want to say in March he was planning it, and he said "save the date!" And I was planning on going to it and about a month before we had brunch and he asked me to sing at it. I was so excited. It was so cool, such a fun night.

Did you meet anyone else that night?
I met Armistead Maupin and his husband Chris and I'd never met them before. And we're all such crazy Tales of the City fans. So that was pretty thrilling. And he had us over for dinner at his house we had The Comeback premiere viewing party and Armistead was there.

Sidebar: What did you think of The Comeback re-premiere?

Ohmygod it's everything that I wanted and more. I'm a huge huge Comeback fan. I literally watch it so much that throughout the course of shooting this season they've had to tell me to stop saying my lines like Valerie Cherish. Like, "You're line's sounding a little Valerie Cherish can you just take it down a notch," and I'm like, "Oh, right. Sorry sorry sorry." Sometimes we'll actually rehearse our lines as Valerie Cherish while we're rehearsing a scene. We are all obsessed with the show.

I've seen you and Russell Tovey (especially Russell) out on the town a lot this trip. What have been some of your favorite haunts?

There's this bar that was recommended to me that I've now been to a couple of times this year... Zeitgeist. I love Zeitgeist, with that back area. I love it because it's like a mixed crowd, all different kinds of people. And because when I order a vodka soda and they're so giant and cheap! Really good Bloody Marys, too. I'm all about an outdoor space at a bar. Bourbon & Branch — I went there for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and that was really good.

How about restaurants?

I always love Kitchen Story. That's like my go-to. I went to Foreign Cinema a couple of nights ago, and it was beautiful. The lighting was gorgeous. I'm at Bi-Rite like every day. Starbelly I enjoy — but I've only had brunch there French toast. Tartine. Locanda I've been to a bunch of times. West of Pecos — I love it there. There's so many good restaurants in San Francisco. You eat so well here.

It's true. It's hard to stay thin.

It really is!

Is it safe to say you've all fallen in love with San Francisco a bit?

More than a little bit. We are all so upset to be leaving. I love this town. It's been so good to us. It's been so generous and kind. Everyone's been really sweet. Almost all of our crew is from San Francisco and they've just been the best. This year is different going to to restaurants and bars because last year the show hadn't aired yet, and this year people have seen the show and there's just been an amazing amount of people coming up to us and expressing their love for the show, and it's been really awesome. Every week I go to Sit & Spin on 18th Street to do my laundry and get a coffee and learn my lines, and without fail somebody comes up — all different kinds of people walking by — somebody will come up and tell me something they like about the show, or talk about something they connected to, or they want to know about Kevin or Richie and they ask questions.

I noticed that night at Hi Tops when you were out a few weeks ago you were incredibly generous with your time talking to fans.

That was crazy! I'd never experienced anything like that before! I don't know what was happening that night. It was like non-stop love. It was really amazing. Everyone was excited too because that was the night the Giants were going to the World Series. So that was part of it.

The show means so much to us, and it feels so real to us. Andrew Haigh, our executive producer and head writer and one of the directors on the show, his thing is always about trying to make it as real as possible, and a lot of the writers' and actors' personal stories end up in the show. So it feels really personal. And when people come up and say that the show feels really personal to them that just means everything to us. Especially when it's people who live in San Francisco. That's the most important crowd [to please].

Is there anything that's annoyed you at all compared to life in New York?

Let me try and think. I guess it's a good sign that I'm having trouble thinking of something. We have such a romantic view of the city because we breeze in for three months, right when it's San Francisco summer, September, October, November, and then we breeze back out again. We're all in love with getting to do the show. We're lucky because we get this fairytale honeymoon experience of being here. I can list a hundred things I hate and love about New York City because I live there, but it's harder to do with San Francisco. Because we have such a rarefied kind of existence here.

Do you have a go-to karaoke song?

I never do karaoke. I love going to see people do karaoke. I hate doing it myself. BUT, I will duet on "Islands in the Stream" if someone will be Dolly for me. I will totally whip out "Islands in the Stream" if I have to.

What can we look forward to on this season of Looking that's different from last season?

Well, we've got 10 episodes instead of 8, so there's more of it. And I think last year we spent a lot of time teeing up the characters and setting up the stories, and it was only toward the end of the first season that the complications came bubbling up. And this season we certainly dive right back in where we left off. One of the things I got most excited about as the scripts came in was that the writers didn't avoid anything that was set up in the first season. They really dig and go deeper with all of the existing storylines. They weren't afraid to get right back in where we left off. I hate it when I watch a show and you come back to a new season and it's like they pressed the restart button. They certainly didn't do that with this. They really get into the complications, and the love triangle between Richie and Patrick and Kevin is further explored.

There's more story that happens this year versus last year, in a major way. There's a lot more Doris which is always fun, because she became a season regular.

What are you off to next, project-wise?

I'll just be trying to crawl out of the deep depression that I'll be in after this show is over. I don't know what's next. I leave San Francisco on Friday and whatever will be will be. I have no plans. Looking for the next job I guess. That's the thing about acting. You never really know what's coming around the corner. Hopefully it's Season 3 of Looking.

Well, you can always come back and visit. I hope you don't miss us too much.

I will miss you very much. And hopefully we'll be back again. Fingers crossed.

Silicon Valley Recap: 'You're Gay For My Code' /  by Jay Barmann

They shot this at the actual Tech Crunch Disrupt last September. Still via HBOGO

They shot this at the actual Tech Crunch Disrupt last September. Still via HBOGO

by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist, May 19, 2014

In last night's Silicon Valley, the gang comes to San Francisco for the TechCrunch Disruptconference and many jokes are made about how few women there are in tech. Also, Erlich proves himself to be an irresistible alpha male among all these dweebs, and many jokes get made about the use of the phrase, "making the world a better place" with regard to every app in existence.

There's some last-minute tension around a few things that Richard still has to code for their demo, and he's coding in the bathroom while pooping, and coding in the car on the way up to S.F. Following a pointless, gratuitous shot of the Golden Gate Bridge, we're taken inside the conference — San Franciscans will recognize the location as the Concourse Pavillion, where many a low-rent conference (and Beer Week!) takes place. And they shot this at the actual Disrupt in SF last September.

There's also tension around Monica being way more on top of organizing things and getting everyone ready for the conference and competition than Jarred — who of course had to make his way back from that robot-inhabited island from last week's episode, and he still seems a bit shaken. Monica explains that they need to present Pied Piper and get it through a preliminary round of judging so that it can make it to the final round on Friday — and it's clear that the final episode of the season will also be taking place at the conference.

Sidebar: Peter Gregory, Monica's boss, is once again missing from this episode and we're told that he's "on safari with Lorne Michaels and Kanye West." We only heard him for a moment on the phone with Monica in last week's episode, and this is because the actor who played him, Christopher Welch, became too ill to complete shooting last year — he died after a four-year battle with lung cancer, at age 48, in December. You can read more about his career in this piece from New York Magazine, and about how he landed the role right before finding out that the cancer had spread to his brain.

Monica warns the guys not to get too distracted by the sudden influx of females around them. "Normally the tech world is 2% women. These next three days: 15%," she says, and Gilfoyle responds, "It's a goddamn meat market." Gilfoyle immediately gets roped into writing some Java for a cute blonde and her Cupcakety app, and then the same blonde works over Dinesh, setting up another love triangle like we (almost) had with them last week. This time, the joke is that Dinesh falls for this girl after seeing her elegant Java code, before finding out that Gilfoyle wrote it all for her. Which leads to much amusement on Gilfoyle's part ("You're gay for my code. You're code-gay.") and much anguish on Dinesh's part after the code actually gives him a boner.

Richard also gets distracted after seeing a girl he went to school with, Sherry Caldwell, whom he was allegedly obsessed with, leading to further obsession and some Instagram stalking, all while he needs to be finishing the demo. He tries confronting her at the hotel, And then Sherry overhears Jarred talking about how he's devoted every moment of his life to Richard, his partner, and she leaps to the conclusion that they're gay.

We get a bunch of hilarious fictitious startups described via the conference, including HumanHeater (which microwaves people to keep them warm) and another brief cameo by BitFlenser, which was mentioned in the pilot. And the writers may have made up MicroDrone.com, the annoying, insect-like mini-drone that harasses Jarred and that Gilfoyle swats away in one of the episode's funniest moments, but it appears someone is doing something with that URL.

Swat!

Swat!

Erlich reveals that he slept with the wife of one of the judges in the Startup Battlefield competition, a guy named Dan Melcher, and he goes about trying to figure out if Melcher knows that this happened three years before. He finds that he's remarried, so this might be water under the bridge, but he meets Melcher's new, very attractive wife Madeline and ends up screwing her too. Things conclude with Erlich doing his Steve Jobs best with six spotlights on him and a black turtleneck, and with Melcher tackling him on the stage and screaming, "You son of a bitch!"

This leads us to see that Richard will have to do the presentation for the final round, as shown in the preview for next week, because somehow they make it through without being eliminated? In any event, the season finale's next week, and if Mike Judge and his team have shown us anything, it's that they know how to write a hilarious kicker. It should be good.

SFist Reviews: Janelle Monáe At Davies Symphony Hall /  by Jay Barmann

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by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist, May 17, 2014

It's not often that you get to see the symphony crowd, populated as it is by S.F. society types and mostly a bit long in the tooth, get on their feet and get funky. But that is what happened last night when Janelle Monáe performed with the full San Francisco Symphony, as well as her own Arch Orchestra. She did about a dozen songs, culminating at about the two-thirds point with her hit "Tightrope," after which she came back with an encore of her new single "Q.U.E.E.N." And throughout Monáe had this crowd, only half of whom were probably familiar with her, awed and grinning.

She is, undoubtedly, one of the country's greatest singing talents at work today. Very few singers — we're thinking a short list here consisting of Adele, Mariah, and maybe Christina Aguilera — have voices big and powerful enough to withstand the tidal wave of sound that comes from a full orchestra, without the buffering aid of a soundboard or production team. But Monáe took command of the stage with her first song, "Sincerely, Jane," and never wavered, belting out songs like "Cold War" (a powerful and grand version with such a huge string section behind her), covering the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back," and crooning through her ode to Georgia, "Peachtree Blues," with equal finesse and extraordinary energy, and not a single sour note.

It was fantastic show, and one that people will talk about for years.To see a performer this great, at the top of her game, in such close quarters and with the lush accompaniment of 70-odd musicians, is not something you easily forget.

Also, she danced. The stage at Davies has not seen a ton of dancing over the years, but Monáe brought her signature, James Brown-inspired grooviness to the evening last night, even climbing down into the audience and working the aisles when she came to the "booty don't lie" section of "Q.U.E.E.N." - which got every cumberbunned gentlemen and rhinestone-crusted-gowned lady to his or her feet, dancing right with her. The rows of cellists and violinists, not used to having to keep a beat quite this rocking, sat still and respectful as the Arch Orchestra's electric violin and cello players rocked out centerstage alongside the "funkiest horn section in [the] metropolis."

The event was a benefit for the San Francisco Symphony's Adventures in Music initiative, which brings music programs to otherwise music-deprived kids at SF Unified School District campuses, and all told seems to have been a huge success in terms of broadening the Symphony's base. The crowd was, by and large, far younger than its usual audience, and the event extended to an afterparty in the City Hall rotunda, at which this younger audience drank and danced some more to a Michael Jackson cover band.

Monáe left the stage by the end of the show saying that she was truly "humbled" by the standing ovations (she got at least two), and by the opportunity to perform with a full orchestra, which she said was her life's dream. Next up, she's supposed to be performing with the Chicago Symphony, and they, like some of the people present last night, may not know what hit them when it's all over.

'Looking' Episode Eight: Going Out With A Bang, On The Office Floor /  by Jay Barmann

Another dimly lit room, courtesy of HBO.

Another dimly lit room, courtesy of HBO.

by Jay Barmann
Originally published on SFist, March 10, 2014

Last night's first-season finale of HBO's Looking brought us a heaping pile of peri-peri chicken, a nice helping of inappropriate office sex, some teary moments, and some quick and dirty plot developments to tide us over until Season Two.

First off, both Augustin and Patrick get dramatic, reality-check talking-tos from their respective boyfriends, with Augustin's being the most satisfying if you, like me, have been completely annoyed by him all season. As he's trying to patch things up with boyfriend Frank in their Oakland apartment, where he has yet to pack up his stuff (and where they're so goddamn hipster they have a rack of cassettes), he tells Frank to say whatever he wants to say to him. And Frank does. He calls Augustin's dumb photo series with CJ the hooker, "The musings of a bored rich kid." And he lets him have it about his art career overall, saying, "You're never going to be an artist, and if you ever manage to follow through with anything it will be mediocre at best. Leave the key under the mat." Cut to Augustin taking some pills (speed? molly? oddly, they never say) and going into a tailspin.

Patrick meanwhile goes and stalks Richie at the barbershop where he works, which Richie does not like, telling Patrick he needs some space and doesn't want to talk yet. Then Patrick goes back to work and Kevin apologizes for the drunken kiss at the wedding, which Patrick tries to brush off as nothing.

The gang then converges at Dom's chicken pop-up where once again it's all about Doris. Dom is nervous about no one showing up, and nervous because he hasn't heard from Scott Bakula, but then Scott Bakula shows up with a guy on his arm who appears to be a boyfriend, and Dom is sad. There's ultimately a tense moment where Scott/Lynn tells Dom that he thinks this should be the end of their business relationship, but after Doris tells him (dramatically), "Dom's worth it," Scott/Lynn and Dom end up making out, right there next to the peri-peri chicken, and we now see that Dom will indeed be having his first adult relationship in Season Two.

Sadly, we do not get a good idea of how good/bad the chicken is. Patrick and Augustin talk with their mouths full for a while about Richie, and how Patrick would just like to "lick his armpits all day long," and then Patrick tells him about the Kevin kiss and when Kevin keeps texting and calling from the office Augustin forces him to answer, and Patrick takes off to go into work at whatever hour this is. Say 10 p.m.

He arrives, finds out it was all just a pretense to get him alone, Kevin hands him a beer and tells him, "Do you know how much effort it takes to be around you every day?" And even though Patrick pretends he wants to leave, he lets Kevin kiss him this time and it looks really hot and then bam. Cut to them having sex on the floor. With Patrick on the bottom. Which he said to Richie before he didn't like but now he seems to like it. A lot. But when Patrick asks, "So now what?" Kevin seems kind of cold as he's putting his clothes back on and just says, "I don't know, Patrick."

Follow that with Patrick going home and finding Richie waiting for him on his stoop. Richie says he's "this close" to falling in love, but he's pulling back because he doesn't think Patrick is ready. And fresh from hot sex with his boss, Patrick realizes he's probably right. And there are tears. (We know that actor Raul Castillo who plays Richie, though, was upped to season-regular status for Season 2, which means he's not gone for good.)

Then the season closes out with Patrick back in the old apartment with Augustin, in bed watching The Golden Girls on a laptop. We can hear an exchange between Blanche and Dorothy that ends with Dorothy saying, "I have compassionate friends around me." The Golden Girls theme then plays over the closing credits, which: oy.

Looking back on this freshman season of Looking, I can forgive almost everything story-wise except a) letting Ann Magnuson disappear too soon, b) making us wait until Episode 7 to meet Julia Duffy as Patrick's mom, c) not doing any justice whatsoever to Folsom Street Fair, and d) letting Augustin whine so much. Also, Augustin's beard could really use a trim. The show is nothing if not sweet and earnest, and it's hard to hate on it for that even though those are not two adjectives that I typically associate with the S.F. gay scene. And on some level, it has all felt a bit like an outsider's perspective on San Francisco life — and Patrick's seeming naivete about everything doesn't really jibe with being here eight years.

But here's hoping that Season Two will be a little less cautious, and slow.