Economist.com Cities Guide: San Francisco Briefing - June 2006
News this month
Moving up in the world
“The Towering Inferno”, a 1974 disaster film portraying San Francisco as the site of the world’s tallest building, suggested that skyscrapers were symptoms of modern hubris. The city planners of modern San Francisco are not dwelling too much on this lesson as they aim to transform the city’s skyline with three new buildings, including a 1,000-foot (305-metre) tower that would be the tallest west of Chicago. The plan is for the privately owned buildings to help pay for improvements in transport, including the extension of a commuter rail line. The director of the city's planning department, Dean Macris, made a presentation on May 25th to the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the port authority, showing that the city was, literally, thinking big.
San Francisco’s tallest building is the Transamerica Building, but at 853 feet, it is merely the 69th highest in the world. Built 35 years ago, it has not been overtaken by other city buildings because of a 1985 decision to preserve the historic character of San Francisco's skyline and limit new downtown buildings to 550 feet. To carry out the new projects, therefore, the city will need to raise its height limit. Such a change in zoning laws could take two years.
No longer welcome
The San Francisco Board of Education has given right-wing talk show hosts another reason to rail against the city. The board wants to ban Junior Reserve Office Training Corps (ROTC) programmes from the city’s public schools because of the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which bars openly gay men and women from serving in the military. Board members say this policy violates the school district’s own anti-discrimination policy.
The military-sponsored Junior ROTC programme offers physical education and discipline training, including drill practice. It also teaches military history and requires students to perform community service. Supporters say it builds self-confidence and teaches civic responsibility, and some 1,625 students from seven schools are enrolled. The school district doesn’t plan to eliminate this sort of programme entirely, but plans to develop a similar course without ties to the armed forces. This will do nothing to placate fans of the military, who are still annoyed at the city for its decision to refuse a berth to a second world war battleship last year. It hardly helps that Geraldo Sandoval, one of the city supervisors, declared on a conservative television programme in February that America would be in “better shape” without a military at all.
The avenue of broken dreams
Berkeley’s city officials may finally be getting serious about cleaning up Telegraph Avenue, a road near the university campus that was once considered the heart of the area’s commercial and cultural life. In May they announced the launch of new police and social-service programmes to reduce the blight, drug-dealing and homelessness that have made “the Ave” an unsavoury place to visit and do business. The city plans to assign more police officers and social workers to the area and streamline the process for opening new businesses.
But residents who have watched the avenue decline for years worry that these measures are too little too late. The once-funky road is facing another crisis with the news that it will soon lose one of its most revered institutions, Cody’s bookshop. The owner announced the impending closure after losing $1m. A Gap clothing store and a Tower Records store also recently left. Commercial vacancy rates are close to 15%, and sales-tax revenues have plummeted some 30% since 1990.
The spook room
AT&T, a leading telephone company, faces allegations that it had a secret room at its San Francisco headquarters which allowed the National Security Agency (NSA), the American government’s spy agency, to gather data on customers’ internet records. Mark Klein, who worked as an AT&T technician for 22 years, approached the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil-rights group based in San Francisco, with allegations that formed part of a lawsuit the group filed on behalf of AT&T customers. The foundation is working to prove that the government is violating civil rights in its efforts to catch domestic terrorists. It claims that the NSA started to work secretly with AT&T and two other telephone companies after September 11th 2001 to build a database of Americans’ phone and internet records.
Revelations about telephone companies’ collaborations with the NSA first came to light in news reports in April. President George Bush rushed to assure the public that the government was not “trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.” The foundation, though, claims that AT&T gave the government telephone call records and information on internet use, without the government producing a warrant.
They'll drink to that
California winegrowers were given reason to crow when a selection of the state's cabernets and chardonnays beat some of the finest French Bordeauxs and Burgundies in two blind tastings. The May tastings in the Napa Valley and London were essentially a rematch of the famed “Judgement of Paris” 30 years ago, when a panel of nine French wine experts named a 1973 Stag’s Leap cabernet from the Napa Valley the top wine. This milestone in the history of the American wine industry gave California instant respect as a wine-producing powerhouse.
The French dismissed the results at the time, arguing that their wines aged better. But the judges who convened last month did not agree. They sampled all ten wines from the 1976 event and once again handed victory to the Californians, who claimed the top five places. A 1971 Ridge Monte Bello cabernet from the Santa Cruz mountains was judged best vintage. The Stag's Leap came second.
Catch if you can
June 2006
California Shakespeare Theatre
May 31st-October 8th 2006
For more than 30 years the California Shakespeare Theatre has presented one of the Bay Area’s most beloved summer events: evenings of Shakespeare (and other notable playwrights) at its outdoor amphitheatre in the East Bay hills. Each year audiences with picnic baskets in tow flock to watch some of the Bay Area’s brightest talents perform in the warm summer air.
This year’s programme includes a family-friendly “The Merry Wives of Windsor”, featuring puppets (May 31st-June 25th); the Bay Area premiere of “Restoration Comedy”, a sexy romp by Amy Freed, a local playwright (July 5th-30th); “The Merchant of Venice” (Aug 9th-Sep 3rd); and a musical version of “As You Like It”, Shakespeare’s gender-bending romantic comedy (Sep 13th-Oct 8th).
California Shakespeare Theatre, Bruns Memorial Amphitheatre, 100 Gateway Blvd., Orinda. Tel: +1 (510) 548-9666. For more information visit the theatre’s website.
More from the San Francisco cultural calendar
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