Results tagged “cityhall”

The Board of Supervisors will be casting votes today on whether to override Mayor Newsom's veto of Supervisor David Campos's legislation amending the City's sanctuary law. As you may recall, the legislation approved by the BOS protects illegal hooligan youth who've been arrested for allegedly committing crime in the streets, from being unduly reported to the feds by city employees prior to actual conviction.

Breaking news, folks. It looks like Newsom will return to San Francisco tonight, and be back to work come tomorrow morning. The mayor, if you recall, vanished from San Francisco and City Hall after announcing his withdrawal from the California's governor race.

As we all know, San Francisco nightlife has been under fire quite a bit lately. In addition to the ongoing saga of the Alcoholic Beverage Control's enforcement of arbitrary rules they've set for all-ages music clubs, a group of conservatives have been showing up at hearings at City Hall claiming that night-time entertainment is the cause of "violent crime, murder, prostitution, public urination and defecation and any host of problems that the city has been facing for decades."

According to AlertSF, "San Francisco City Hall will be conducting an EVACUATION DRILL today 10/21/2009 at approximately 0930 hours. Tenants will completely evacuate the building and assemble in the Civic Center Plaza. There will be emergency vehicles in the area to monitor the drill. No street closures are planned." Fun!

Update: Thanks to Sarafina for the update on the hearing's schedule change from next Monday to the following Monday, October 26th at 1 p.m. at City Hall, Room 263. That gives you all more time to spread the word and write those letters!

       

A charming French lady by the name of Meshá Mongé-Irizarry is hosting a little event outside City Hall right now featuring free grenadine, bread, paté, and pétanque. The event functions both as a "celebration of Franco-American Unity," a show of artworks by a man who makes sculptures out of recycled cork, and a remembrance of her son, Idriss Stelley (featured in the painting pictured at right) who was shot 48 times by 9 SFPD officers at the Metreon in 2001. (Meshá went on to sue the city and won a settlement with which she started a foundation.) The cork Eiffel Tower is pretty cute, and we do enjoy free things. Anyhow, the sun is kind of peeking out (since these pictures were taken a couple hours ago), so stop on by if you're in the 'hood. Or just look at the pics.

       

So many protests causing a ruckus at Civic Center / City Hall these days, it's an embarrassment of riches, photo-wise. Today, we present to you Steve Rhodes' choice set of images shot at yesterday's protest against state budget cuts to health care. A total of 17 disability activists were later arrested in Civic Center for blocking traffic.

Scene from yesterday's budget rally to, like, help save public health. Read more about it over at SFBG.

      

Around a 100 or so people showed up at today's Bay to Breakers Rally at San Francisco City Hall. But numerous speakers (e.g., Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, former Supervisor candidate and progressive Alix Rosenthal) and loads of media turned out. If you recall, many fans of drunk jogging pitched a fit after ING altered the rules of this year's Bay to Breakers race. After last year's melee, a ban on booze, nudity, and floats was handed down.

What's going on here?

                    

What with Bush leaving office and local ire having no direct target, layoffs continuing to abound, and the recession devolving into something worse, American Apparel setting up shop on Valencia Street created the perfect storm for a surprising amount of anger on both sides of the argument.

Since your editor is too busy looking for somebody with a vagina who likes other vaginas to take with him to Orson this evening, he couldn't possibly make it to City Hall. (All those Missionites? Heavens no. We just bathed.) But Mission Mission is reporting live from the scene. Allan Hough starts of by describing the scene leading up to room Room 400 at City Hall.

Josh B. snapped up this scene from inside a toilet stall in the bathroom outside the Board of Supervisors chambers. Which leads us to ask: Who did it?

About what cuts? Well, cuts that could be symptomatic of the "greatest crisis since the Great Depression," said Mayor Newsom, according to SFist sources, who spoke to the Board of Supervisors today. That is to say, the whopping $118 million cuts (or what he calls "mid-year solutions") to San Francisco's budget. The entire list will become available later this afternoon. According to Newsom, "there was not a program or project not considered" for cuts. Gulp. (Word is the Mayor had animated discussions with Supervisor Bevan Dufty and his staff about cuts to AIDS funding, and similar discussions with Ross Mirkarimi about snips to criminal justice.) More to come.

Happening at around 10:30 a.m., this small gathering could get bigger. What today's scene outside city hall about, you ask? Supervisor Tom Ammiano's ID card legislation, which was approved by the Board of Supervisors last week. The municipal identification cards - which would be available to all city residents, illegal immigrant or otherwise - passed in a 10-1 vote and would "make San Francisco the largest city in the country to issue municipal identification."

Well, at least he can officially turn off his cable and utilities in that San Francisco house now -- Ed Jew, complaining about being "picked on" and "set up," finally admitted what all of us knew all along and pled guilty to lying about living in Burlingame while representing the Sunset on the SF Board of Supervisors.

During last Sunday's early voting period at City Hall, the line of those itchin' to vote stretched well around the building. And had Sarah Palin been there, she could have taken advantage of the pleasantly placed newspaper racks to read, well, you know.

6. The newly strengthened dollar will hurt S.F., like reduced tourism for example.

     

Oh wow.

Despite the God-like powers of Mayor Gavin Newsom's bedroom eyes, large hands, and gravelly voice that managed to woo Terry Childs to handover the passwords to City Hall's system, administrators are still having trouble accessing some parts of the network, or so says Network World. Admins, it seems, are "still locked out of the city's VoIP system and LANs within the Sheriff's Department and the Recreation & Park Department." Zoinks.

With a whole lot of charm and little bit of pluck, Mayor Gavin Newsom managed to get the much-needed passwords from former IT nerd Terry Childs during a jailhouse visit last night. If you recall, Childs, City Hall's former network administrator , has been incarcerated since July 13 after failing to handover the correct security codes to his bosses after getting the boot. Newsom, it seems, had a secret meeting with Child last night, one so intimate that neither the District Attorney Kamala Harris' office nor the knew about it. Childs remains in jail with several felony computer-tampering counts on his head, with a reduced bail set at 5 million.

Can you believe Flashdance is turning 15? Not in years, but in incarnations. The fifteenth in the irregular series of dancing flash mobs happens tonight at 7:30. Where, you ask? In the seat of power! Or at least, right outside the seat's window, on Van Ness by City Hall.

The entertaining/controversial Chris Daly, who seems a bit quiet as of late, has a new target now: wafts of cigarette smoke. We're told that his latest push of legislation "calls for a smoking ban outside of restaurants, in waiting areas, within 20 feet of nonresidential buildings," and in common areas of apartment buildings. That is to say, you might have to look elsewhere to spark up that Capri or Virgina Slim while eating out. The Board of Supervisors will vote on the measure come Thursday.

Terry Childs, 43, City Hall's computer network administrator, was arrested and charged with four counts of computer tampering this past weekend. Why? Well, according to the Chronicle, he "tampered with the city's new FiberWAN (Wide Area Network), where records such as officials' e-mails, city payroll files, confidential law enforcement documents and jail inmates' bookings are stored." That is to say, he created his eyes only a master password for the entire network. And after his supervisors triedfiring him for poor job performance? Childs decided not to reveal the critical password. It's a case of good old fashion job insurance, folks. Anyway, Child now sits in the clink rwith a $5 million bail. Alas, an IT geek from Pittsburg has finally -- finally!! -- brought the City to its knees. Bravo, Childs. Bravo.

All good things must come to an end, so until the first California gay divorce happens, here is your last same-sex wedding post. (Probably.) And it's only natural that the final post should involve Tila Tequila (nee Thien Thanh Thi Nguyen) and her tireless, tenacious crusade against human rights abuses.

We briefly touched on this yesterday, that someone at City Hall had a heart attack during the celebration cum protest. According to SF Weekly, local AIDS activist Michael Petrelis saw what went down. Apparently, a local troubadour -- who might or might not be named "Joni" or "Francis" or... something -- was singing a song of love to Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon just before going into cardiac arrest:

This has to be the most adorable image we've seen thus far during today's queer marriage melee. Really, how can you hate these people?

We like the homeless, and we loathe talking too much shit about folks without homes because (arguably) it's like kicking a dog while it's down. Homeless people not only fill out the other end of the bell curve of living the capitalist lifestyle (thanks, guys!), but they're also the eyes and ears of this city when it comes to reporting crimes and seeing brutal things go down in neighborhoods where most of you would never dream of going.

                            

Exciting stuff, folks.

"Orders bust of himself erected at City Hall," reports SF Citizen. Will advise of impending doom.