Was the BatKid thing a waste of time and money? No.

On Friday the city kind of came together in a way that rarely happens to watch and participate in the BatKid thing.  IMO, it was pretty awesome, both for the kid, Miles, and for the city as a whole.  For one day, at least, we could set aside Ellis Act evictions and bicycle vs. car wars and everything else and have some fun.

Not everybody, though.  A guy named Caleb Garling, who writes for the Chronicle and a few other pubs, posted these three tweets early on in the day:

I'll say it: All this time and money for #SFBatKid should be spent on other people with terrible diseases. We look ridiculous, San Francisco
— Caleb Garling (@CalebGarling) November 15, 2013

This city is ravaged by disease and drug abuse and we've got the SFPD and FD sidelined so one kid can drive a Lamborghini around.
— Caleb Garling (@CalebGarling) November 15, 2013

I hope he lives a beautiful life but this just seems like an ostentatious display of myopia about this city's real problems
— Caleb Garling (@CalebGarling) November 15, 2013

These tweets made a lot of people feel things ranging from annoyance to rage. Before we move on to why that was, and why I personally completely disagree with Mr. Garling, let's unpack these a little.

Tweet Number 1. What he's saying is that the money and time being spent on BatKid should be spent on other people, not him.  (This assumes that a lot of money was spent, which is apparently incorrect.  My understanding is that everyone donated the money and/or time.)  I guess he means that the money should be spread around and it could help more people that way.  If $10,000 was spent on BatKid, that $10,000, I guess, could be split up and help a larger number of people.  But that's true with everything!  If you extend Caleb's point to its logical extreme, we would have to eliminate the Make A Wish foundation, since that money could ALWAYS be split up and spent on more people.  I don't like that idea.  Maybe Caleb does.

You could apply Caleb's point in all kinds of contexts.  Even journalism.  Why are you writing about a Twitter parody account, Caleb Garling, when there are wars and misery you could be focusing on?  WHY ARE YOU SQUANDERING YOUR JOURNALISTIC TIME, CALEB?

My reaction to this tweet - and probably a lot of other people's - was this: Can't we ever just do one nice thing for someone, even if it costs money that could be better spent?  Can't we just have some fun without some killjoy shitting all over it?

Tweet Number 2. I don't think the police and fire departments were "sidelined" in any meaningful way.  I didn't hear about a surge in crime on Friday or any houses burning down because no one could respond.  In fact, a review of Saturday's SFGate showed no stories about anyone getting murdered, and they usually report murders pretty comprehensively.  So this tweet is based on an erroneous premise.

Also, sure, there is disease and drug abuse, but I wouldn't necessarily describe the city as "ravaged" and anyway, how would cancelling the BatKid event in any way ameliorate those problems?

Tweet Number 3. I'm not sure what an "ostentatious display of myopia" means, exactly.  That the BatKid thing is keeping us from seeing the city's real problems?  Give me a break, Caleb.  We spend the other 364 days CONSTANTLY talking about the city's problems.  Some days it feels alike it's ALL we talk about.  Would cancelling the BatKid thing do ANYTHING, anything at all, to solve a single problem?  Can you explain, specifically, the mechanism for that?

After getting ROASTED on Twitter (and, as much as I disagree with him, I don't think the ad hominem attacks were that cool of an idea), he posted an explanation, of sorts.  Not an apology!  An explanation.  Here's some of it:

A five year old with leukemia absolutely deserves every bit of love possible. But this is a question of proportionality. “So what?” people say. “It’s just one day.” Well, if it’s just one day why not take all the police, fire department, public workers and onlookers that showed up for BatKid to San Francisco hospitals and tell ALL the kids in the cancer ward that they’re superheros.

(Nevermind the parents that have to explain to their kids fighting cancer why they can’t be Batman today.)

Well, I'm pretty sure that people make special visits to San Francisco hospitals to visit kids with cancer on a pretty regular basis!  Here's the 49ers visiting UCSF. Here's sailors and Marines visiting kids in General. These stories are not hard to find.  In fact, the day after the BatKid thing, UCSF hosted a head-shaving event that raised $22,000.  So it's not like we ignore people with cancer, except BatKid.

And also, Caleb, not every kid fighting cancer WANTS to be Batman.  I'm pretty sure the Make A Wish foundation grants all kinds of wishes, not just this kind.

He continued:

And the point I was making in those tweets should not need explaining. San Francisco has a terrible layer of poverty and sickness — from both drugs and disease — which we tuck in alleys, vacant storefronts and the area between Geary, Market and Van Ness. It’s almost trite to bring it up anymore and that’s sad. But it ain’t going away.

Absolutely true! It ain't going away.  Whether the BatKid thing happened or not.  THAT'S THE POINT.  If the BatKid thing never happened, everything else would be EXACTLY THE SAME.

But we did do it.  And you know what?  It made a lot of people, not just Miles, really happy.  What price do you put on that?  Maybe it resulted in more people volunteering or making donations to any number of charities. I hope so.  Wouldn't that be a good thing?

(Here's one tangible result: sales of BatKid t-shirts have so far raised $10,000 for the Make A Wish foundation.)

I guess we could just NOT have done it.  You wouldn't have had anything to complain about then.  But I think it did a lot more good than bad.

I suspect we're never going to agree on this, Caleb, and that's fine.  I share your concern about the problems facing the city.  But let me suggest this: What happened on Friday was worth it, both for Miles and for the city as a whole.

(Eric Mar also posted something similar and got similarly shit on but this is already too long and what's the point anyway.)

I can't even with this. What the fuck, Louisiana?

Via Carolyn Kellogg comes this brain-injuring LA Times article:

Official wants to de-fund library, users should 'go back to Mexico'

Library funding in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, may be diverted to a new jail thanks to a legislator who doesn't approve of the library's programs. Jail proponent and chair of the Lafourche Parish Council Lindel Toups supports a ballot measure that would take funding away from libraries.

“They’re teaching Mexicans how to speak English,” Toups told the local Tri-Parish Times, referencing Biblioteca Hispana, a Spanish-language section of one of the nine branch libraries. “Let that son of a bitch go back to Mexico. There’s just so many things they’re doing that I don’t agree with. ... Them junkies and hippies and food stamps [recipients] and all, they use the library to look at drugs and food stamps [on the Internet]. I see them do it.”

"They use the libraries to look at drugs and food stamps on the Internet"! MEMO TO LINDEL TOUPS: LOOKING AT DRUGS ON THE INTERNET DOES NOT GET YOU DRUGS.  If only.

BUT WAIT!  What does Library System Director Laura Sanders have to say about all this?

"The library is not saying we don't need a jail," Sanders says. Originally constructed in 1968 and expanded in 1977, the jail is in poor condition and suffers overcrowding.

She noted that for Toups, the issue of the jail's condition is a personal one. "He does have family members that are incarcerated," she says.

According to Houma Today, Toups' son and grandson were arrested in 2009 and charged with possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.

BOOM ROASTED. Hahahaha, TAKE THAT, LINDEL.  "He does have family members that are incarcerated."  Laura Sanders, you are my new hero.

Anyway, the election is Saturday, for some reason.  Aren't elections always on Tuesday?  Not that having an election on Saturday is a terrible idea, it's just weird.  Remind me to check back and see if Lafourche Parish defunded its library system.  Fucking hell.

Here are the songs I played on the radio today

I was on BFF.fm as Burritojustice's guest from 1 to 2 today.  Did you hear it?  I thought it went just fine.  He told me to post a list of the songs I played.  Here you go:

1. The Three O'Clock - Jet Fighter

2. Chuck Prophet - I Felt Like Jesus

3. Foxygen - No Destruction

4. Atlas Sound - Mona Lisa

5. John K. Samson - When I Write My Master's Thesis

I had a lot of other great songs that you didn't get to hear.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun!  I felt like I was talking too fast, probably, but I tend to do that in everyday life.  I also hope it's OK to use swears on Internet radio.

I'd do it again.

Stick City? Pick City? Something like that.

Before it became a series of hugely popular books and a TV show on PBS, Armistead Maupin's "Tales of the City" started life as a serial in the Chronicle in the 70's and early 80's.  Apparently hoping to recapture some of that excitement, the Chronicle on Sunday launched a new serial called "Click City."

It's OK, I guess.  It's a fairly transparent attempt to capture the tech zeitgeist of the city (not, so far, the Zeitgeist of the city, though), but it comes across as being written by someone who's read about tech and the kind of people that work in tech without actually knowing or talking to any.  Everybody and everything seems like a broadly drawn caricature.  Oh look, here's the "severe-looking barista" and the adorably quirky programmers.  Here's the cafe on Valencia, except "no one was eating or talking to anyone else."  It's all just too much of a piece, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, haven't we covered the tech-is-the-new-gold-rush ground more than enough?  Isn't there a new article every week? At this point, I'm sick of it.

I'd be down for a new serial, though!  Just not principally about Computers and The People Who Work On Them.  How about these:

Mick City: The story of San Francisco's Irish gang underground, told by one of the newest members.

Flick City: The lives and loves of an extended group of friends who work at one of the last neighborhood theaters.

Trick City: You'd be surprised how competitive - even cutthroat - the world of amateur magicians working the party circuit can be.  [No good?  How about the story of a hapless pimp who struggles to control his band of wisecracking hookers? Same title.]

Hick City: We follow 23-year-old Junior Huddleston, a recent arrival from rural Arkansas, as he tries to navigate life in San Francisco.

Rick City: It's about a guy named Rick.

Chick City: About a group of four female friends and their lives and adventures in the city, written by a guy but I've totally hung around with enough women to know what they're like so don't sweat it.

Tick City: Told from the POV of a Rocky Mountain Wood Tick who arrives in the city on the back of a dog returning from a vacation.

Why we love Love/Hate

Remember when we were talking about what show we could watch next now that Breaking Bad is over? Well, I hope you've got a Netflix account and no plans this weekend, because once I tell you about this show you're going to need plenty of free time.

It's called "Love/Hate" and originally aired on Ireland's RTE.  Here's a trailer:


As one can tell, it's basically the story of, as the trailer puts it, a "drugs gang."  But that's like saying Mad Men is the story of an advertising agency.  It's also about the complicated personal lives of the various people involved.  It's completely compelling and addictive.

I do have one word of advice for My Fellow Americans: use the Netflix feature to TURN ON CLOSED CAPTIONING.  As you may or may not know, The Wife is from Ireland originally and unsurprisingly has no problem following what's going on but until we turned on the captions I had to pause it every few minutes and ask for a recap.  For whatever reason, I think Irish accents - and particularly the kind of accent the people in this show have - are far more difficult for Americans than your off-the-shelf Downton Abbey British.

[DIGRESSION ONE: The last time we were in Ireland, I noticed that I could understand the accent of one guy in particular better than anyone else we were hanging around with.  Turns out this guy was from Northern Ireland, and all the other Irish had a hard time understanding him. Language!]

Like any good drugs gang show, L/H is spectacularly violent, just as a heads-up.  People are constantly getting shot and beaten up and any other band thing you can think of that people can do to each other.

[DIGRESSION TWO: We haven't gotten to Season 4 yet, but a cat gets shot in one of the episodes.  This cat shooting was apparently so upsetting to the Irish populace that the cat had to go on the Late Late Show so everybody could see that the cat - Cleo, as it turns out - was OK.  Here's a clip:]


I'm trying to figure out what makes it so addictive.  Probably a lot of the same things that made Breaking Bad the kind of show you just wanted to binge on.  The characters are really well-drawn and fleshed out.  They seem like real people and not just "types."  And it's expertly plotted.  That's really the key, isn't it?  You just want to know what happens next.

The first three seasons are on Netflix.  If they don't get season 4 up soon I guess we'll be ordering DVDs from Ireland or something.  Anyway, do check it out.  We need someone else to talk to about it.

Now that it's all over, here are a few pointless thoughts about the whole 8 Washington thing

The usual disclaimers, I'm hopelessly ill-informed, don't know all the background, etc., &c.

In case you're just joining us, 8 Washington was a waterfront condo project along the Embarcadero in San Francisco.  There are height limits controlling how tall buildings along the Embarcadero can be, because it's on the waterfront, and so the developers had to put a variance to these limits on the ballot.

I THINK.  I'm not 100% sure but I think that's what happened.

I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say the whole thing seemed shady.  The public faces of the pro-Prop B & C forces were Ed Lee and Gavin Newsom, who I think it's safe to say are both loathed by the city's progressives and also are widely believed to be crooked as hell.  So the Bay Guardian dutifully came out against it.

But wait!  There's another line of thought on this.

If rich people can block development through referendum, hold on to your hats, b/c we're a city of rich people.
— Olu Johnson (@periqueblend) November 6, 2013

As it turns out, some of the opposition to this whole thing was funded by Boston Properties, which owns 4 Embarcadero Center, whose views would be blocked by the new thing. I guess those are the "rich people" Olu means.

So great.  It's like the baseball strike all over again.  Who are you for, the millionaires or billionaires?

I wasn't really convinced one way or another.  In the end, I ended up voting "no" on it, but for my usual wacko reason, which is this: I DON'T THINK THE CITIZENRY SHOULD BE VOTING ON ROUTINE CITY PLANNING DECISIONS.

We hire people with advanced degrees in City Planning and pay them what I assume is a lot of money to figure this shit out!  Don't put it on me.  If we put the citizenry in charge of city planning, every block is going to have a Giants Dugout Store, a Gold Dust Lounge, and a Chuck E Cheese.  Golden Gate Park will be replaced by a huge Go Kart track, and every single store in the Mission will be required to stay exactly the same forever.

My idea is this: We have a city planning system in place.  If the SYSTEM is broken, let's fix that, instead of voting on fucking INDIVIDUAL PROJECTS one at a time.  I suggest, and not from a place of snobbiness, that ordinary citizens do not have the information necessary to decide whether or not most building projects should be built.  People go to school for years ans years to figure that out.  So let's let the system work.  If we don't like the outcome, change the system.  But Christ, let's don't start planning our city by voting on each building.

In the end, it lost.  Now the developers can still build something there, just not as tall.  Yay?

Either Glenn Dickey or me is confused about hydrology

"Me is confused"? What am I doing? Anyway.

Examiner scribe Glenn Dickey does not like the idea of the new waterfront Warriors arena planned for Piers 30-32.  And he has some reasons why.  He hates progress, basketball, and fun!  No, not really.  Oddly, he's concerned the new arena will FLOOD THE CITY, literally:

I believe this is a bad idea for several reasons. One is that a huge amount of concrete will have to be poured into San Francisco Bay to provide support, raising the water level for a city that is already threatened by the potential of rising water with climate change. 

Wait a minute. Maybe I'm reading this wrong, but is he saying that pouring a lot of concrete into the bay will make the water level around San Francisco go up?  I THINK THAT'S WHAT HE'S SAYING.  Based on my very limited knowledge of hydrology, I don't think that's how it works.  Let's look at a diagram.

OK, so as I understand it, even if you pour a shitload of concrete in at Piers 30-32, I'm almost 100% sure that's not going to flood the Financial District, because all the water that the concrete displaces is just going to flow out underneath the Golden Gate Bridge into the Pacific Ocean, right?  I mean, every time one of those huge container ships sails by, do you notice water sloshing up over the Embarcadero?  What am I missing here?

That's all I've got.  Have a great weekend.