Lee Heidhues 2.23.2021

It is beyond disgusting that a political loser can raise his head in supposedly Progressive San Francisco, incite the mob and receive even a moment of serious attention.  

With obvious backing from the Police Officers Association, a  failed Republican Mayoral candidate  is now pandering to the masses and pushing a recall measure against DA Chesa Boudin.

This misguided  money wasting campaign in the midst of the Pandemic is an insult to San Francisco.  In one year in office Chesa Boudin has implemented many policy reforms he promised as a candidate.

DA Boudin needs to be lauded for his accomplishments during the past 13 months.

Yes. Crime is  a problem in San Francisco.  There has been non-stop sensationalized reporting of criminal acts.  The mainstream media has gone into overdrive to lay every crime in San Francisco at the doorstep of the District Attorney.  This loud, obnoxious chorus has received attention far beyond what it deserves.

Should this POA supported Recall make the ballot tens of thousands of people who voted Chesa into office and support his vision will have to be at the proverbial barricades and soundly defeat this reprehensible political attack.

Excerpted from The Bay Area Reporter 2.23.2021

A group of residents has started the process to recall San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

Approval of the signature-gathering phase of the effort is likely to come in the next week, according to the recall’s lead organizer.

As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, Richie Greenberg, a business adviser and activist who in 2018 was a Republican candidate for mayor, started a petition January 2 urging Boudin to resign.

The elections department is awaiting proof of publication and two blank copies of the petition, a spokesperson told the B.A.R.

“Once the petition format is approved, the proponents may begin circulating the petition,” Matthew Selby, the campaign services division manager with the elections department, stated. “Therefore, the department cannot confirm when the circulation of the petition will begin.”

Boudin did not respond to a request for comment.

According to a recall guide issued by the city in 2010, “valid signatures of at least 10% of registered voters of the City and County at the time the proponent(s) filed the notice of intention” are required to qualify the recall for the ballot. According to Selby, that threshold in this effort is 51,324.

https://www.ebar.com/news/latest_news///302329/effort_underway_to_recall_sf_da_boudin

It was 56 years ago that Malcolm X was assassinated in New York City. His assassination, presumably by Black Muslim followers of Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad, has long been steeped in mystery.

The story of Malcolm’s assassination continues to unravel slowly and belatedly.  Malcolm was young, smart, charismatic. His advocacy for Black empowerment had a profound impact on American history .  Perhaps comparable to Martin Luther King who was gunned down in Memphis three years later.  Both men were 39 at the time of their assassinations.

Excerpted from Washington Post 2.22.2021

 

 

 

 

I am watching the Spike Lee ‘Da 5 Bloods’ a thoroughly engrossing, thought provoking and intense story of four black GIs who return to Vietnam in honor of their slain comrade and in search of the literal pot of Gold they left behind nearly 50 years ago.

Spike Lee pulls no punches in dissecting the long term effects on the black soldiers who carried the brunt of the fighting and the Vietnam culture which bore the brunt of American destruction visited on their country.

This is must see cinema.

Hanoi Hannah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanoi_Hannah

New York Magazine – Vulture 1.29.2021

Best Picture

Best Director

 The ongoing saga of asserting my First Amendment rights to free speech in the face of Nextdoor’s Orwellian censorship continues.  I apparently have violated a Nextdoor policy re “rants.”

At the same time the Nextdoor Supervisor readily admits I have NOT been, “attacking your neighbors or using language deemed inappropriate.”

Attn Nextdoor Supervisor – Holly

Ranting??? Are you kidding?

I presume your venue is outside San Francisco. If it is not, I stand corrected.

San Francisco is the most political City imaginable. Everything is a battle.  When you have 850,000 people living within a 50 sq. mile radius that’s the reality.

It’s a sad commentary on Nextdoor policies that a disgruntled reader or readers have the power to violate my First Amendment right of free speech.

I could have blocked any number of folks who took exception to my commentaries on making the Great Highway by the Pacific Ocean permanently car free.

I have been personally attacked.  The most egregious example occurred when someone told me I am putting myself “at risk” with my posts.

Other critics have told me I should leave San Francisco where I have resided for most of my life and move to Berkeley.  Or, for example, being told I have no business posting on this subject because I don’t own a car.

Upon being released from Nextdoor purgatory I have no intention of going into a Group.

I will continue to exercise my right of protected free speech and advocate for issues in the way I have been doing.

A manner which Nextdoor itself admits have NOT been, “attacking your neighbors or using language deemed inappropriate.”

As I did with your co-workers previous message, I am going to post all of this on my blog

www.leesperspective.com

Best,

Lee Heidhues

San Francisco

From: support@nextdoor.com <support@nextdoor.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 18, 2021 3:07 PM
To: leerossh@gmail.com
Subject: RE: Case # 05938988: NEXT DOOR PENALTY BOX

Hi Lee,

My name’s Holly, and I’m a supervisor with Nextdoor’s Support team. Your case was escalated to me for further review.

When we receive reports of anyone’s content, we will thoroughly review it and determine if it is in violation. In this case, this is the reason why your account is disabled. While I can confirm your posts were not attacking your neighbors or using language deemed inappropriate, they still fall under our Guideline regarding ranting.

If you’d like to continue posting about the highway, you’re encouraged to create a group dedicated to this topic so that neighbors interested can join and participate.

Let me know if you need further assistance.

Best,
Holly
Nextdoor

 

Attn Joyel at Nextdoor – 2.17.2021

Thanks. I am going to forward this to 30 plus individuals, journalists and San Francisco officials to point out how absolutely absurd and ridiculous is the Decision to place me in the ‘Penalty Box’ for espousing a point of view which doesn’t sit well with SOME PEOPLE.

Thank you for providing me with the evidence, my own words, which beyond any doubt prove the absurdity of Nextdoor’s overarching willingness to bow to any complaint, specious as it may be.

Because one person or even 100 people took exception, I say “So what?”

There’s no personal attack. No inappropriate language. Nothing.

I am appalled at Nextdoor acting worse than a Helicopter mom.

Lee Heidhues

San Francisco

PS: The only thing missing below are the two Simpsons photos on the Nextdoor Great Highway Reality Check V post. They are included here.

Nextdoor Message 1.17.2021

Hi Lee,

Thanks for contacting us about this issue.

We temporarily disabled your Nextdoor account after we received a complaint regarding your recent content and found that you had violated our Community Guidelines on ranting.

Here is an example of the content that was brought to our attention:
Great Highway Reality Check V

Having reviewed the nearly 500 comments since the GHRC series hit the shores of Nextdoor a week ago I found a potentially more apt title for this ongoing series. LIFE ON THE DISINFORMATION SUPER HIGHWAY with a little help from Bart Simpson

Great Highway Reality Check IV. Taking to the street

Today is the second day of the Lunar New Year of the Ox. To celebrate a group of 50 plus adults and kids cycled through the Richmond District of San Francisco. Many of the streets we traversed are now car free.

I had the opportunity to engage in conversation with several high placed City Hall functionaries who were along for the ride. I also spoke with a well known local print news reporter. I provided them with my unvarnished point of view about maintaining a CAR FREE San Francisco on The Great Highway.
The City Hall executives listened carefully and are receptive to making permanent the long term initiatives now in place which they promoted.

Great Highway Reality Check Part II

Now that the Nextdoor community has expended its Exhaust I will now list some alternatives for the annoyed and besieged motorist.
There are alternatives which every motorist knows full well but has yet to acknowledge. Why? Motorists would be obliged to go out of their way en route to the destination.
• Going west coming off the GGP Panhandle. People can take Kezar Drive to Lincoln Way and continue to Sunset Drive. Drive south on Sunset to Sloat Blvd. Motor to the Great Highway and continue south.
• Going south through Golden Gate Park.(Option 1). Motorists can enter the Park at 25th and Fulton. Continue to Transverse Drive. Continue to Lincoln Way. Turn West and continue to Sunset Boulevard. Drive to Sloat. Continue to the Great Highway and continue south.
• Going south through Golden Gate Park.(Option 2). Enter the Park at either 36th or 30th Avenue. Head east on JFK Drive. Turn south at Transverse Drive. Continue to Lincoln Way. Turn West and continue to Sunset Boulevard. Motor to Sloat. Drive to the Great Highway and continue south.
I am not providing the eastbound or northbound alternatives because the astute motorist can figure it out. Suffice it to say, there are feasible options.

As a result, your account will remain disabled until at least 02/20/2021. At that time, you can log into your account and access your Nextdoor neighborhood after checking a box stating that you agree to following the Guidelines.

Please let me know if I can help with anything else.

Best,
Joyel
Nextdoor

My initial exposure to Rosamund Pike was in the film Gone Girl, the adaptation of  Gillian Flynn’s runaway best seller. Her understated and off kilter performance got my attention. In the intervening years Ms. Pike has made a number of films.  This one has my attention. 

San Francisco Chronicle – Mick LaSalle 2.17.2021

“I Care a Lot” does something difficult. It holds our attention even as it follows a character that we actively dislike and root against. This isn’t a “Richard III” situation, where we’re seduced into cheering on the villain. The villain is genuinely hateful here.

The movie stars Rosamund Pike, who is steadily becoming one of the most interesting actresses in movies, simply by accepting parts like this one. Just in the past few years, she’s played three women driven to death by their work — Marie Colvin in “A Private War,” Marie Curie in “Radioactive” and terrorist Brigitte Kuhlmann in “7 Days in Entebbe.” She’s equally driven here, for a performance that has already won her a Golden Globe nomination.

Pike is nominated for lead actress in a musical or comedy film, and if you can find a laugh (or a musical number) in “I Care a Lot,” be sure to let me know. Pike plays Marla, who is running a very evil scam. She has a legal guardianship business. She finds old people who have no power or influence and has herself appointed their guardian. Then she pays herself a handsome salary by selling off the assets. She does this with the help of corrupt doctors, nursing home operators and one particularly gullible judge.

In an early scene, we see how easy it would be for a judge to believe the word of this highly polished professional woman over some scruffy, emotional next-of-kin. And once the trap closes, it’s all but hopeless: Who seems more demented than an old person yelling and insisting that they’re not crazy?

“I Care a Lot” (available on Netflix starting Friday, Feb. 19) might have been more unambiguously successful if writer-director J Blakeson had leaned into the comedy, allowing us to watch the action from a distance and regard Marla as more of a force of nature than a malevolent force. But successful movies are delicate mechanisms, and it’s just as possible that an extra push into comedy might have dampened the story’s thriller aspects.

As it stands, “I Care a Lot” keeps us watching from beginning to end, because we keep wanting to know what’s going to happen next. Dianne Wiest has one of her best recent movie roles as one of Marla’s victims, Jennifer. One morning, as she’s sitting in her nice kitchen in her nice house, listening to Debussy — a vision of blissful retirement — there’s a knock at the door, and before she knows it, she’s a prisoner in a state hellhole.

What makes Wiest such fun here is that the woman she plays is not exactly what she seems. The scenes with Marla are some of the best in the movie, in which Jennifer pierces through her with a drugged haze, letting Marla know that she’s picked the wrong woman to mess with.

As a writer, Blakeson understands that no character should be purely functional, and so he gives each character idiosyncrasies and the suggestion of a past history. Then, as a director, he brings those out in the actors. Consequently, “I Care a Lot” is notable for its colorful supporting and featured roles — Chris Messina as a mob lawyer, Peter Dinklage as a Russian mobster and Eiza Gonzalez as Marla’s girlfriend.

But the main attraction is Pike, who doesn’t try to make us like her. She commits to the character’s nature and holds us with her honesty, her intensity and her unmistakable pleasure in getting to play someone appalling.

M“I Care a Lot”: Thriller. Starring Rosamund Pike, Dianne Wiest and Peter Dinklage. Directed by J Blakeson. (R. 118 minutes.) Available on Netflix starting Friday, Feb. 19.

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/review-rosamund-pike-is-genuinely-hateful-in-i-care-a-lot

 

Rec and Park boss Phil Ginsburg, a master at shilling for the corporate dollar regardless of its environmental impact, is exasperated. His latest corporate boondoggle may be doomed to an early demise.

An irate citizenry is saying Enough!!!!!

Supervisors Connie Chan who represents the nearby Richmond District,  Dean Preston from the historic Haight, Aaron Peskin from the North Beach-Chinatown area and Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton who represents the Bayview-Hunters Point are saying, Hold on. Not so fast.

San Francisco has always been about the almighty dollar. Perhaps there is change in the air. And the 150 foot carnival barkers dream may not be part of the skyline.

San Francisco Chronicle 2.17.2021

The public debate over whether to extend the SkyStar Observation Wheel in Golden Gate Park for four more years went round and round like the big wheel itself, at the meeting of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission Wednesday afternoon. At the end of three hours, the commissioners decided let it go round and round some more, as the issue was continued, by a unanimous 6-0 vote, to its next regular meeting on March 3.

Some members of the Historic Preservation Commission were willing to grant a six week extension to allow further study, and even that was shelved in favor of a continuation, at the request of Supervisors Connie Chan, Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin.

Leading up to the meeting, the commission had received hundreds of emails, two thirds of them opposed to the extension and even that might have been understating it.

People against the wheel questioned the economic benefit to the city and questioned whether the park should be in the business of providing economic benefit to begin with, and specifically to an out-of-state amusement operator.

“San Francisco doesn’t owe this business a thing,” said Tes Welborn, a board member for the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council.“We have lots of fun in Golden Gate Park but this commercial use must be stopped.”

And it may all start back up again Thursday when the Recreation and Park Commission jumps aboard to address the same issue. Both government agencies must approve the request by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department to extend the contract for four more years so that the private operator of the attraction may recoup its investment and so that the wheel, which costs $18 a ride for adults and $12 for seniors and children, might serve as an engine of economic growth as the city comes out of the pandemic.

Rec and Park had pressed for a decision so that it might start making improvements to the SkyStar, which is powered by a generator that some citizens describe as too noisy, and under lights that some describe as too bright. The power has been kept on even though the attraction has only operated for 39 days, having been shut down twice by COVID-19 restrictions, which delayed its original opening from April 4, 2020 to Oct. 21.

“I don’t know where this went sideways,” said an exasperated Phil Ginsburg, general manager of the Rec and Park Department. “We’ve asked for four years. We don’t know when it will have a chance to run at full capacity. Six weeks won’t cut it.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Debate-over-keeping-SkyStar-Observation-Wheel-in-15958697.php

Lee Heidhues – 2.16.2021

I have been banned on my San Francisco Nextdoor neighborhood site for advocating that the Great Highway adjacent to the Pacific Ocean  be permanently designated a car free zone.

In the past week I posted a series ‘Great Highway Reality Check I-V.’ Four of these posts have been posted on this site and migrated to Twitter.

The latest Post ‘V’ was titled ‘Life on the Disinformation Superhighway.’ It included as graphics a couple of photos from The Simpsons TV series. The post made mention of the misinformation and exaggerations directed my way regarding making The Great Highway a car free environment.  

There have been approximately 500 comments to date.

There was never one example where I showed personal disrespect toward a Nextdoor user. That is presumably a criteria for Nextdoor banning a user.

 The irony of my expulsion is that I have been personally attacked for my views, including one comment directed at me saying I am placing myself “at risk” for opposing the unfettered right of motorists to drive wherever and whenever they choose.

I also been told I should move out of town to Berkeley and that I have no business discussing this matter because I do not own a car.

So much for progressive San Francisco values.

 

The San Francisco Chronicle is at it, again. 

Like a story out of the best tabloid journalism the blaring headline trumpets the huge “spike in burglaries” in the City’s Richmond District.

What the story glaringly fails to analyze is how well the SFPD is, or is not, doing its job to “clear” or in more readily understandable language make an Arrest.

In the opening of 2021 SFPD has made arrests in less than 6% of the burglaries. In early 2020 the number of arrests was nearly 18 percent.

In reading the stats at the end of the article the question becomes.  

Why have the number of arrests fallen so precipitously?  That’s the story to be told.

https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/clearance-rates-dashboard

San Francisco Chronicle 2.16.2021

San Francisco’s Richmond District has reported a 370% spike in burglaries this year compared to 2020, according to city data.

The number of burglaries reported stood at 108 as of Feb. 7 according to a report from the San Francisco Police Department’s Richmond Station. That’s up from 23 reported at the same time last year.

 

The eyesore which is the 150 foot tall ferris wheel standing astride the Concourse in Golden Gate Park is the worst example of the proverbial white elephant.

The Ferris Wheel, brought here by out of State money makers, was just the latest toy imported to San Francisco by the money hungry and corporate subservient Recreation and Parks Department.

The Pandemic has limited its use for nearly a year. One day the Pandemic will subside. The promoters are pitching the idea that San Francisco can keep this monstrosity four more years. Who will benefit on this desecration of the Park? The promoters who stand to have a nice four year long payday.

Take it down right now.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 2.14.2021

The 150-foot-tall SkyStar Observation Wheel in Golden Gate Park would stay for four more years under a plan by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, but environmental groups and some residents of the area oppose the move.

Seconding that opinion is Sierra Club San Francisco Bay, which objects to the lighting. The local Audubon Society also expressed concern about the lighting.

“Wildlife needs darkness,” Katherine Howard, a member of the group’s executive committee, wrote on a club blog post. “Light pollution can have a negative impact on birds — both resident and migrating — as well as bats, insects, amphibians, and other animals.”

The Historic Preservation Commission, an agency of the San Francisco Planning Department, will vote on the plan Wednesday. If the commission grants the requested Certificate of Appropriateness, the big Ferris wheel will operate in the park until March 2025, and will re-open as soon as San Francisco is removed from the purple tier of restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.

The amusement arrived in March 2020 to be a major attraction for a citywide celebration of the 150th anniversary of the park, which had been scheduled for April 4. But due to the shelter-in-place order, it did not open until 200 days later, on Oct. 8 and then it was allowed to run at 25% capacity until it was shut down again on Nov. 8, after 39 days in operation.

It has been empty ever since and will stay empty until San Francisco is released from the most restrictive tier of COVID-19 lockdowns.

The SkyStar is operated by Skyview Partners, a private entity firm, and costs $15 to ride for adults, $12 for seniors and kids. Five hundred free rides per month were offered to underserved communities in San Francisco. The arrangement calls for a portion of ticket sales to go to the Golden Gate Park Fund. In its truncated life in the park, 65,693 passengers took the ride, which made three revolutions, lifting to 15-stories in height and affording views to the Pacific Ocean during daylight and to Salesforce Tower at night.

Projections were for half a million riders during the first year and the hope is to provide those 500,000 rides and recoup the costs of having the SkyStar sit idle, by extending it for four years.

The meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission is at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, and open to the public via livestream.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Opponents-decry-city-proposal-to-keep-big-wheel-15951104.php#photo-20088244