Yesterday, Burning Man finished up another year. For those that attended, they are undoubtedly already starting their plans for next year while nursing sun and other anatomical “burns”. For those who did not attend, the once-a-year opportunity to try out Mission & Haight hot spots has passed (Steve should have realized.)

Amidst all the articles that are bound to come this week about how it “changed my life” or “I’m so totally moving to San Francisco now” or “I’m so totally moving to New York now because my Burner roommate won’t shut up about it and the apartment is full of this shit Playa dust” there on the Burning Man blog was an interesting article entitled, State of the Man. Most people are focusing on the fact that Burning Man LLC is finally going to shift to being a non-profit enterprise, which is one of those, “it’s about time” kind of moments. Something that really hasn’t been hit upon (yet) is the location of where they plan to be based in the future, which is somewhere along the 6th Street, Mid-Market corridor.

Obviously, most people outside the area would ask, “Why?” but it makes a good deal of sense due to it being a neighborhood in San Francisco that is in pathetic shape and is currently being locked down by the homeless/advocate industry to create the stagnation in development that you see. A Burning Man arts center would add a stabilizing element that would bring an interesting, eclectic flow of people to the area, albeit a mostly white one initially.

Short of tossing out the current residents of the Mid-Market area, this is one way to improve the area and bring in non-charity based money, that would branch out to grow other businesses. I’ve said it before, but the only way that the Tenderloin is going to grow is a break-out of the lock these certain groups have has upon it for the last two decades. And while I don’t really believe in Burning Man, I do believe in this.

For those who know of it, 555 Post is a very nice, Tenderloin/Union Square building. I am quite familiar with this building as I briefly worked for the company that used to occupy its premises, Euro RSCG. They’re a design and ad agency that lives up to nearly all the bad stereotypes of agencies and has since moved over to Telegraph Hill.

555 Post has however been empty since they moved out back in June. It’s a cool building though as it used to be a gentlemen’s club and as such it has a full, dark wood bar in it as well as the old contours of a swimming pool that was in the basement with a subterranean gaming room. I swear you can still smell cigars and Scotch in the walls of the lowers floors to this day. The upper floors are relatively nondescript, but it’s within this history that apparently the SF Flex Academy is opening on the 7th as in next Tuesday. I really have no idea what this is and after searching around a good deal, I think I have even less. Officially they claim to be:

…a full-time, tuition-free public charter school located in downtown San Francisco, serving students in grades 9-12 from anywhere in the Bay Area.

California’s first full-time, five-days-a-week hybrid school combines the best of online education with traditional, onsite schooling. SF Flex uses the curriculum from K12, the largest provider of online learning for grades K-12, to offer courses in the core subjects (Math, English, History and Science) along with a robust catalog of electives. Students attend school in our building every weekday, are supported by professional, certified teachers, and can participate in extracurricular sports, activities, and clubs…

There’s a bit more than, but you get the drift. Unfortunately that’s about all you get. Trying to find anything else on their site that describes them in heavy detail is all but impossible. Furthermore, a search on SFGate turns up no related results for them which is really weird for a brand-new school opening up in the heart of the city. Also, they call themselves a “public school” yet they’re not listed anywhere as a San Francisco public school.

To further muddy the waters, when reading their PR announcement, I saw that the parent company of this, K12, is a publicly traded company based in Virginia. So, not only is it not a true public institution nor a non-profit, but it’s a private company that’s publicly traded. If anyone finds this to be a good idea, let me point my finger at the awesomeness that is our current publicly-traded, capitalism-based health case system that keeps me stocking up on the much cheaper meds whenever I visit those “commie” systems in Europe.

All of this is just weird and in case you didn’t get the point by now, I have serious doubts to this thing. An 11,000+ square foot building, despite being on the edge of the Tenderloin, is not cheap, and will cost about $400,000 in rent yearly. That’s why an ad agency (who regularly pulled in very, very fat contracts) left and it leaves me wondering how a learning institution that is in theory “free” (i.e. not charging the $25k a year that the AoA does) is able to fill the space and not be dodgy.

My Google News alert fed me this lil’ gem, about the SRO Bristol Hotel on Mason Street at Eddy. It’s a newspaper article from the San Francisco Chronicle, dated September 4, 1985. Apparently, some of the Bristol’s residents thought the former room of serial killer Richard Ramirez kept its bad juju even after its Satan-worshiping tenant had been re-housed on San Quentin’s death row. Ramirez, known as the Night Stalker, stayed in the Bristol during part of his 1985 cross-California murder spree. He was eventually convicted of 13 counts of murder, 5 counts of attempted murder, and numerous counts of sexual assault and burglary. The hotel’s manager was critical in catching Ramirez, as he contacted police after seeing a sketch of the suspected Stalker.

Ramirez sexually assaulted, raped, and mutilated women, and during his time in San Francisco he lived in the same building as famous Society for Cutting Up Men (SCUM) founder and would-be Andy Warhol murderer, Valerie Solanis. Solanis died at the Bristol in 1988 of emphysema, and it’s not known how long she lived there. Solanas was in her 50′s when she died at the Bristol, twice as old as Ramirez. It’s unknown if they actually ever met one another, even in passing, but it’s certainly interesting to think about what it would have been like. Would there have been a spark of recognition between criminals? Or would they just have seen each other as potential victims?

From the Chronicle:

“The vibrations are so bad in Room 315 at the Hotel Bristol in the Tenderloin that Daniel Sepeda thinks it’s time to bring in the holy water. ‘I should sprinkle some around and say some prayers,’ he said. ‘There are weird spirits here. It gives me the creeps.’ Sepeda and his roommate, James Bowton, attribute those creeps to Room 315′s former tenant, Richard Ramirez. Ramirez is the man police say is the ‘Night Stalker,’ a cold-blooded serial killer who murdered people while they lay sleeping and then scrawled satanic symbols on their walls. Ramirez stayed at the Bristol several times during the past two years, according to manager Alex Melnikov… Melnikov said Ramirez left behind a mysterious odor in the room. ‘It smelled like skunk,’ said one resident who declined to give her name. ‘The cleaning man sprayed like hell, but it wouldn’t go away.’ A five-pointed star, a pentagram, associated with devil worship, was found drawn on the bathroom door…”

Here’s one for you: What has 100 feet and stands? All of the Northeastern firefighters watching four guys go in the Avalon Apartment building at 965 Sutter Street and put out a fire in what appeared to be the third and fourth floors (given that the first floor is the lobby).

You know that when you hear one siren and then another and then another that it’s not just the firefighters going out on a drunk-fall-down pickup call. No, in this case at about 1PM, what appeared to be at least 15 SFFD vehicles quickly surrounded the Avalon building just shortly after I had smelled smoke from mine. In addition to this, police cordoned off Sutter Street from Jones to Hyde.

No idea as to what caused the fire and from my (and 100 of so other people’s) vantage from down on the street, it looked like no one was at home and there were moving boxes in the apartment. I could be wrong as the massive dousing of water throughout that apartment and the one above it really blocked the view. Undoubtedly, more to come, but for now, check out the gallery below.

On a related note, down on O’Farrell, there was another apartment fire early this morning where a woman leapt to her death to escape it. Definitely not the calmest night of sleep for our firefighters in the hood…

Word has come down from the Examiner (wait, what?) that a previously very gay and very bathy house at 130 Turk is going to be a doggy day care business in the possibly near future of early next year:

A doggy day care center with space for up to 60 canines is scheduled to open early next year at 130 Turk St., which is on a rundown corridor between Taylor and Jones streets.
The facility, which could aid city-led efforts to rejuvenate the rough-and-tumble area, will provide only daytime accommodations for dogs, proprietor David Nale said.

Turk is definitely one of the more rough and tumble streets of the Loin and is probably what most people envision when they attempt to compact the premise of “loin” in to one street. Thinking about this stretch, I had to admit that I’ve not been down there recently and was trying to remember what it was like. Oh, right, now I remember.

Love or hate this type of enterprise, it’s always good to see local business owners opening up in what were abandoned spaces, which this most definitely was. Obviously, they’ll have their work cut out in establishing their chunk of sidewalk, but I salute the effort and hope for the best… barring Chris Daly forcing them to have to have low-income dog care on site as well.

The other day, walking down Taylor street, I stopped by the ill-Boeddekker park (which has a well-deserved spot on the public spaces hall of shame) to take a picture. There’s a notice board by the often-closed gate, and I noticed this little map of Safe Havens for the Central City:

I have no idea why they decided to call it ‘the central city’, when it’s in fact a map of the Tenderloin. But it’s an interesting idea of designating ‘safety areas’ in the neighborhood where “kids, seniors, and the disabled can go to when they feel unsafe”. I guess other types of people, such as women, are not included in the list since there’s no chance they’ll feel unsafe here.

According to the Safe Havens website, which hasn’t been updated since 2008 so I’m not sure how reliable it is, there are 39 of such safe areas. And they’re recognizable by a neon-green sign with their logo in the window. They may be small businesses, offices, hotels or or churches – any community space willing to designate itself as a place of safety. In theory, some guy adding, “my pants” to the list would not be welcome.

Interestingly though, Morty’s Deli is one of actual spots on the list, and I have to say when I’m basking in their sandwich goodness I do feel safe indeed. Or at least very happy.

I caught a MSNBC  special on sex trafficking a few days ago that focused on Sunflower Massage on Jones and Ellis. According to the report (which may have originally aired last year) Sunflower has hidden girls in walls and crawl spaces when inspected by police In 2007, SFPD found a crawl space with 12 beds in the parlor, evidence they say of girls living there, indicating possible sex slavery or trafficking.

As a Jones Street resident myself, I have to say I haven’t seen much activity around massage parlors. Empire (O’Farrell Street)  is usually pretty quiet, even at night, and I’ve only once or twice seen anyone coming or going into Les Nuits de Paris (Taylor Street). I realize these places don’t offer the kind of massages I want, but it was still a bit shocking to see them on television in a story on sex trafficking. I guess after seeing them every day, I kind of forget about what’s going on behind the doors. But just a little Googling finds a first-person story of sex trafficking at the Sun Spa on Geary and Hyde and NSFW reviews of other San Francisco massage parlors. I’m all for safe, sane, protected sex work, but this isn’t it.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker found that the ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. Yay!

See you all tonight in front of City Hall at the Civic Center at around 6:45 to march and celebrate.

Photo by Steve Rhodes

It’s interesting what a minor change of neighborhood name does to an article. The article in question is this one from The Chron. In the original, naturally, they post this bizarre incident as happening in the Tenderloin. Of course the argument can be made that the neighborhood is also Union Square as the 300 block of Ellis is in that transition zone that goes from Hilton Hotel to Glide Memorial soup kitchen line across Taylor. Yes, it’s Loin, but yes, it’s Union Square. It’s a bit of food for thought. That and the fact that once again, it goes to show that if you’re looking for trouble when you head to the Loin, trouble you shall find. I have to disagree that this is par for the Loin in that for the rest of us, we seem to manage living our Loin lives without the need for body armor.

I live on Jones Street, which I like. One exception: the nearly constant fire engines and ambulances wailing down the street, often late at night. I don’t know why they like to use Jones so much. It could be that it’s a straight, low-traffic way to get to Market, and thus the rest of the city. Or it could be that their fire engines are actually attending to people further down Jones or near the famously drug-addled 6th and Market area. Random fact: despite my hatred of fire engines, I really like firemen and actually belong to a local credit union that caters to them. Sometimes at the branch there are hunky guys in gear making deposits. Yum.

Firemen aside, I found this piece in the Examiner that says the SF Moma’s expansion will make room for a new $14 million fire station on Folsom between 5th and 6th. According to the article, this would help take the weight off of other fire stations like station #1, which is at 3rd and Howard, which also serve “the Sixth Street corridor and Tenderloin neighborhood.” The article didn’t specifically mention my local fire stations (#41 at Leavenworth and Jackson, and #3 at Polk and Post) but given the number of fire engines that go straight down Jones, all the way to Market, I can’t help but think this new station will help reduce the number of daily sirens I hear. At least, it will when the new station’s completed in 2012. Until then, I’ll keep pausing the TV for 10 seconds when fire engines go by and try to tell myself I’ll miss that sound when it’s gone. This neighborhood is quickly gentrifying, and I’m sure someday I’ll talk about the good ol’ days when it had “personality.”