We just got this from a reader who wanted to lend a helping hand, but feels manipulated by the Mayor's office. Hit it!:
-- Clare CorcoranEditor:
Something smelled a little oily at the mayor's 'volunteer event' Sunday. After an email from the Mayor's Office urged me to help 'collect stressed birds and assist with hazardous materials' in San Francisco's 'spill-affected wetlands,' I showed up at Heron's Head park at 9:30 a.m., where a smiling official handed me a trash-grabbing tool and a garbage bag. The instructions to walk along the shoreline looking for oiled birds and
picking up trash seemed at odds with the State Fish and Game Department's instructions to stay away from beaches so as not to scare hypothermic oil-matted birds back into the cold ocean. Later, my bag heavy with garbage, having spotted no beached birds but scared many swimming ones, I was told by a different official to stay away from the water because all the volunteers were scaring birds away from this sensitive bird sanctuary, but if I wanted to weed the park that would be nice. At that point I began to suspect that this whole volunteer event had more to do with the mayor's PR needs than with the birds' survival needs.
So, what is the right thing to do for citizen's when there's an oil spill? Cell phone, emails and google maps have made broad action possible in an instant, yet only a fraction of the Bay got mobilized in the initial critical moments. Are we going to see "Oil Clean-Up" flash mobs emerging in a few years?
--David Downs
Here's a little Monday cure for freelancers, loners and the un/underemployed suffering from cabin fever from sitting at home in front of the computer too long: co-working space! Pull up a desk at Berkeley Coworking or Citizen Space in SOMA, and get to work you lazy bastards. For about $300 a month you can even rent your very own desk.
-- Brian Bernbaum
Today's popular, front-page Chronicle contention that there's a shortage of cheap, talented, experienced chefs willing to work for low pay in San Francisco is more retarded than a CCA drop-out.
Who are her sources?
Craigslist. Hmm. A dash of eatery owners and some anecdotes. Irrelevant. There's no real data showing a lack of cooks for SF! Her argument can be applied to any industry in SF. For example:
Editors Decry Lack of Cheap, Talented Experienced [[Insert Occupation -- Reporters]] Willing to Work for Low Pay. Now you try the madlib with any other job.
Face it. It's always hard to find good people. That's a proverb. It's not news. So bad, Chronicle! No cookie.
--David Downs
Welcome to this week's Monday Morning Hangover. The mimosa headache still beats fresh behind our eyes, yet we bring it every Monday at 9 a.m.(ish).
I'm your web editor, David Downs.
Let's start with the funny. Two words: Anime Dorks (see above). It's one thing to like Samurai Shamploo, it's another to dress up like Mugen and head to Japantown. Peep the fresh flicks.
John Gaul has many a story to tell. But it is a race occasion, such as this, that he will
By Joe Eskenazi
Listen! John Gaul has come unstuck in time.
Bedecked in a bowler hat, a sky blue shirt, a red-striped tie and with a Liberty's head dollar dangling from a chain on his houndstooth gray vest just above his steel-plated cane, Gaul looks as if he's just clambered out of a portrait of Charles Darwin, late in life.
But Gaul does not want to talk about the artificial selection of pigeons in Victorian London, as Darwin did in the first chapter of "On the Origin of Species." No, the 82-year-old wants to tell you a story about the creator of Treasure Island - and he doesn't mean that hunk of landfill in the middle of the Bay.
At 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 13, Gaul will revive a tradition...
By Benjamin Wachs
The Writer’s Guild strike is on this week and that means that some city meetings are in re-runs. I don’t understand it either, but, hey, we’re a union town.
It’s also Veterans Day on Monday, and as of Sunday night there’s not a single proclamation on any board agenda to end the war. Coincidence? Good taste? Writer’s strike?
