Dems beat Greens for new San Francisco Mayor

Gavin Newsom, riding voter frustration with homelessness and fueled by nearly $4 million in campaign contributions, won election Tuesday as San Francisco's 42nd mayor in a campaign viewed as a test of strength for the city's dominant Democratic Party organization.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/12/10/MNGQV3IVM61.DTL
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Buff Our S.F. Bubble, Mr. Mayor
Attn: Mr. New Mayor Guy -- can you please do something about all the
garbage and ennui?
(By Mark Morford)

Congratulations, Mr. Candidate X! You won! You pulled it off even though many thought you were unlikable and smarmy and lopsided! You are the new mayor of San Francisco!

And you're so young! Wow. Proud indeed, you must be. And your parents. And your former college buds. And the nasty bouncer who still cards you at that dive bar in Burlingame.

Why you would want this job in the first place, well, that is a rather different question.

See, word has it that San Francisco's in a bit of a shambles. A pale quivering scantily clad altar-boy ghost of what it once was. This is what they say.

Just look around: Curmudgeons wander the streets mumbling grumpily about the sepia-toned glory and nice stiff top hats of the S.F. that was, quoting old Herb Caen columns with lots . . . of . . . ellipses . . . and references to dry martinis and Pacific Heights galas and long nights at Harry Denton's.

Tourists who flock in from parts unknown but apparently mostly from Asia and Germany for a stroll on the Golden Gate Bridge and a well-armored tour-bus ride through the Castro and maybe a large steamed overpriced crab at the Wharf are forced to step over 16 panhandlers and 17 syringes and something that looks like a puddle of human bodily fluid but could very well be the last remains of webvan.com.

There are no trees. Why are there no trees in San Francisco, Mr. Mayor? Apparently, years back, the City's tree-planting budget was slashed and the concrete-paving budget was quintupled and, hence, you can drive for five square miles in the Richmond and see nothing in the flora category, save for what some medical-marijuana entrepreneurs are growing in their hydroponic basements. We need more trees. Green is good for morale. Can you take care of this?

Why did you want to be mayor, anyway? This is no city to be proud of right now. Or is it?

Oh sure, we voted in record percentages against the lumbering onslaught of Ah-nuld, and we are an anti-BushCo stronghold and we love dog parks and lesbians and yoga and we still have a thing for leather and whips and street fairs, but that seems to be about it.

New Yorkers will tell you we are still perpetually one step behind in terms of fashion and about 10 years behind in decent live theater and the arts, and they all wonder why the hell we can't get more taxicabs along with an honest, authentic deli in a city that prides itself on gastronomic adventure.

Chicagoans all laugh at our meager pizza offerings and dearth of bearable public transit, and marvel at our lack of actual seasons and warm summer nights and fireflies. Of course, you can't really do much about the weather thing. Can you?

See, the city is not the City. This is the general sentiment. We are adrift in a sea of ennui and monetary woes and far too many Baby Gaps per capita. These are some of the complaints.

Of course, all major cities are suffering in BushCo's budget-gutted, warmongering world, but S.F. feels like the hardest hit, if only because, given our radical sense of openness and awareness and record number of Nobel Laureates and gay leather shops, any decrease in our glitter reservoir is that much more profoundly felt.

The massive implosion of the mixed-blessing dot-com era left a gaping hole where our pulse once was. The exodus of bands and artists at the same time left a gaping scar where our bitchin' dragon tattoo once was. The influx of badly dressed newbie dot-millionaires who are still gouging the housing market left a huge hole where tolerable condos for under $500K once were.

We got problems. To stroll down historic Market St. from, say, 10th down to Fourth is to walk the gauntlet of misery and sadness and lots of screaming ranting wildly gesticulating hissing spitting psychotic gangrenous homelessness, with no end in sight. I don't care how noble or altruistic or perky you are. That walk will hammer your soul and embitter your humanity as you scramble for some disinfectant.

The City is filthy. Garbage everywhere. This is deeply embarrassing and obnoxious. Mysterious smells emanate, and not just from the guy with the massive teetering shopping cart of overstuffed garbage bags. Hell, L.A. is cleaner than this, and they have 11 million smog-choked people and enough fast-food strip malls to gag an ocean.

Why do you want to be mayor of our fair, grungy, problematic city anyway? Much of BushCo's 'Murka hates S.F. Are you sufficiently aware of this? We are often loathed by the flyover states for our temperate weather and our astounding food and our funky clothes and our diversity and our general SUV abhorrence -- at least as compared with, say, Idaho.

But mostly we are loathed, if my e-mail is any indication, because we are incredibly progressive, and proudly liberal, and openly sexually adventurous, and deeply articulate, and not at all tolerant of bogus ranting jingoism or sanctimonious religious dogma or Fox News.

In short, we are disliked -- openly feared, even -- because we are different. Very different. We are a bubble. And we are proud of the fact that we are a bubble, no matter how many cracks and fissures and Starbucks logos appear in its walls.

So, above all, Mr. Mayor, whatever else you may think your job entails, your real gig is to polish and hone our fine and tarnished bubble every damn day. To make it stronger, bolder, funkier, shinier, a goddamn gleaming astrodome of bookstores and hot sex and gourmet chocolates and intelligent political discussion and organic vegetables. Let's get this
straight, right now, from Day One.

Your job is to make our glorious gemlike screwed-up bubble more able to deflect the slings and arrows of outrageous homophobic conservatism, while still remaining pliable enough to allow a kaleidoscope of viewpoints and ideologies and dog parks and sexual positions and gay rights legislation and sake-tasting shops.

This is the real question, Mr. Mayor. Not merely how are you going to fix the troubling array of standard-issue socioeconomic and political woes of this fine city. Not merely how are you going to improve public transit and expand housing and pick up the garbage and plant more trees and get the homeless off the streets and create more parking spaces in the neighborhoods of certain columnists. Oh no.

But much more important, how will you enhance, and promote, and buff, and proudly represent this crazy whack amazing progressive hippie burned-out coffee-shopped idiosyncratic proudly atypical spiritually incendiary American bubble? You must ask yourself this question right now, and from every day hence. Now, get to work.