SAN FRANCISCO

Liz and Lee Heidhues 4.13.2024

“There are so many ways it could have ended for him. He didn’t want to quit.”

The moving tribute to an old-timer who loved the thrill of covering combat for the New York Times.

We sat mesmerized as the whirr of helicopters and staccato rat-a-tat-tats of machine guns exploded across the giant screen of “Civil War (2024)”, a genius of a war film which opened Friday at the AMC Kabuki in San Francisco.

The modern-day scenes in the film evoked the chaos of the 1960s at the height of the Vietnam War.

There are some scenes that made us writhe in pain. When an insurrectionist demands of the journalists whom he has taken hostage to prove they are American by speaking unaccented English to his questions, and two of them fail his test, we felt the agony of the guy who was Asian, as his tongue froze in fear and he barely managed to blurt out the words that he was from Hong Kong. Those were his last words.

April 12^th also marked the 163^rd Anniversary of the start of the original Civil War, when Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor on a Friday on April 12,1861,capturing Union territory.

April 12^th is also the 6^th Anniversary of Liz’ first False Citizen’s Arrests in 2018.  An act totally beyond the pale of any human conduct. Our next-door neighbors falsely arrested and imprisoned Liz for asserting her rights as a property owner. Liz was brutally handcuffed because of their false arrest. Taken away by SFPD and placed in a filthy cage in county jail for hours. Until Lee Heidhues raced to her rescue on his bicycle with $20,000 cash to buy back her freedom. A False Citizen’s Arrest in the hope of inflicting such mental distress on Liz, we would sell our house we have owned for decades and move away.

With its police barricades and tents in the streets, its low gravely voices and endless cigarettes, its F- bomb laced shouts and protestors being beaten by baton-wielding police, “Civil War (2024)” seemed a re-enactment of the long-ago Vietnam war until a huge explosion shatters the screen. Our attention then becomes riveted on a small group of journalists rushing into the carnage to document the bodies lying crumpled in the mayhem.

This corps of journalists wearing “Press” flak jackets now commands the screen. The lurid circus of civil insurrection has begun. Journalists must photograph and record it from every angle, even to the point of insanity and the sacrifice of their own lives. “Civil War (2024)” transfuses our veins with the adrenaline that is the grueling, shocking, and unforgettable drug of war.

The glossy pages of 1960’s Life magazine jumped into mind, with its enduring photos of grime-streaked bloodied faces of GI’s sitting around a campfire, or an Army truck stacked high with body bags, an eerie “déjà vu” one gets watching a graphic war film similar to “Full Metal Jacket” or “Apocalypse Now” reminding us that war is inhuman. “Civil War (2024)” is in this same category of mesmerizing images. War is impossible to describe with words. The horror and moral terror can only be felt in watching graphic scenes and hearing its inhumane cacophony.

“What a fucking rush,” says one lifer watching the militias fight one another.

The weariness of the war journalist: Every time I shot a war zone and got the photos right and sent them home that said, “Don’t do this” . . . is embellished by the grim irony the camera is not as useful a tool as a machine gun in war: “It’s not a story if it never gets filed.”  

The voyeurism of seeing bodies blown to bits and the reality that the next fusillade might bear the names of the journalists aiming their cameras at the carnage is part of the overall suspense.

There are sardonic exposures of the apathy of family and neighbors who pretend that war in the nation is not raging, and atrocities are not being committed: “Your parents? Where are they?” “He’s sitting in his farm in Missouri pretending none of this is happening.”

Liz’ biggest gripe about this film is – its targeted audience is American and it is rife with that which appeals to American tastes – endless car crashes, a stunt where two cars recklessly speed side-by-side down a winding road and the occupants in them trade vehicles squeezing through rolled-down windows, loads of shoot-em-ups, a hairy gas station stand-off, cigarettes smoked down to their butts and tossed into the environment, and a splendid scene of a freeway jammed with scorched and twisted bodies of cars in a true apocalyptic vision of where America is going to end up with its car crazed culture.  

The scene of the journalists driving through a forest set on fire by the rockets and bombs of war predicts the doom of climate change when it shows a vast cool stream over which a lone helicopter darts, much like a dragonfly, while behind, drifting burning orbs light up the horizon.

When a bullet hits the out-of-shape, lifer, old reporter driving the vehicle of the journalists away from a confrontation, we know that he is not going to make it through this war when he says “I can’t drive” as he bleeds to death in the vehicle. The admission that he cannot drive anymore are his last words. What is meant to be a moving scene of bereavement when his friend and lifelong colleague washes his blood off the leather upholstery of the driver’s seat left Liz musing why so much of this film was centered around cars. What if all the stunts had taken place on bicycles?

The civil war in Vietnam was won by Indigenous people who fought the invading force, the Americans with their arsenal of napalm, Huey choppers, and fighter jets, on bicycles and with far less sophisticated firepower, and won.

“God Bless You All and God Bless America” are the words of the fictional president as The End closes in.

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 4.11.2024

It’s been nearly two years since the San Francisco MAGA gang spent 8M in its successful political lynching of District Attorney Chesa Boudin.

Chesa has diplomatically and quietly, perhaps too quietly, departed the toxic political scene of San Francisco. Now ensconced at the University of California School of Law as the founding executive director of the Criminal Law & Justice Center.

Nonetheless Chesa is still convenient political fodder for reactionary Republicans and credulous Democrats in the US Senate. The subject of this abysmal behavior is the nominee for a position on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia. Adeel Mangi would be the first Muslim to serve on a federal appeals court.

Why are the know nothings in the Senate so put out? Adeel Mangi serves on the advisory board of the Alliance of Families for Justice. A New York non profit. So, what?

Here’s the rub. The Alliance sponsored a fellowship in the name of Kathy Boudin. Chesa’s mother. She was imprisoned 20 years for her part in the October 1981 robbery of a Brinks truck. Three police officers were killed. Kathy Boudin never fired a weapon. She was a getaway driver.

After her parole, with the help of then law student Chesa in 2003, Kathy Boudin became a stellar citizen. She earned a doctoral degree. Became a college teacher in social work and law.

Chesa was a year old at the time of the 1981 incident in Nyack, New York.

Still, the San Francisco MAGA crowd kept this yoke on Chesa’s back from the time he announced for DA in late 2018 until his political lynching on June 7, 2022. And Chesa continues to have abuse tossed his way.

Now the abuse is moved to a national stage. Adeel Mangi may pay the price. It’s the worst kind of character assassination and guilt by association. Directed toward the nominee, Chesa Boudin, and his late mother Kathy Boudin.

Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle – Bob Egelko – 4.5.2024

Chesa Boudin’s background as the son of radicals imprisoned for taking part in a fatal armed robbery helped to fuel the campaign for his recall as San Francisco’s district attorney in 2022. Now, President Joe Biden’s nomination of an attorney who would become the first Muslim to serve on a federal appeals court appears to be doomed because of the nominee’s distant connection to Boudin’s late mother.

Adeel Mangi has been endorsed for the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia by groups that include the National Council of Jewish Women and the Anti-Defamation League as well as the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the NAACP. But three Democratic senators, Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen of Nevada and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have come out against him, probably enough to block his confirmation in the closely divided Senate.

The reason? For Cortez Masto, it’s Mangi’s membership on the advisory board of the Alliance of Families for Justice, a New York-based nonprofit that provides support and legal representation for the families of prisoners.

Mangi, who practices civil law in New Jersey, said in a letter to Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., that he is not involved in the operations of Alliance of Families for Justice and worked with them only in a legal case for the family of a mentally ill inmate who was killed in prison, winning a settlement that required installation of cameras and microphones at the prison. He said he did not know Kathy Boudin and had nothing to do with the fellowship named for her.

“I condemn any violence against law enforcement officers,” Mangi wrote, noting the endorsement of his nomination by several police groups, though others have opposed him.  

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said Mangi “is being targeted by a malicious and debunked smear campaign solely because he would make history as the first Muslim to serve as a federal appellate judge.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/muslim-nominee-kathy-boudin-19387930.php

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 4.7.2024 – Photos by Liz Heidhues

It was just over 24 hours ago that Supervisor Aaron Peskin dove into the San Francisco Mayor’s race. It was a tumultuous joy felt celebration in the heart of San Francisco.

Out here in the San Francisco countryside by the Pacific Ocean it is a much quieter scene.

Mayor in waiting Aaron Peskin is an avid swimmer. The photos taken this afternoon will be an oceanside venue where Mayor Peskin will get some relief from the ardors of City Hall.

Top photo: Aaron Peskin takes a swim in the frigid San Francisco Bay near Alcatraz Island.

SAN FRANCISCO – CHINATOWN PORTSMOUTH SQUARE
Lee Heidhues 4.6.2024

When it comes to Mayoral campaign opening day crowds, Supervisor Aaron Peskin has no competition.

Launching his campaign on a sunny Spring morning in a packed Portsmouth Square in San Francisco’s Chinatown, Aaron Peskin was joined by several hundred beyond enthusiastic supporters. It was a gathering of the City’s Progressive glitterati and a representative sampling of multi-cultural San Francisco.

The other entrants in the race. Mayor London Breed; Supervisor Ahsha Safai; Levi Strauss & Co. scion Daniel Lurie and Mark Farrell can only dream of having such a throng cheering them on.

Aaron Peskin’s opponents displayed their boorish behavior. A small cadre brandishing bullhorns and whistles tried vainly to disrupt the festivities. The ringleader of this pathetic crew was Jade Tu whose day job is campaign manager for one of the Mayoral aspirants Mark Farrell.

Top photo: The crowd cheering on Aaron Peskin under the San Francisco skyline.

SAN FRANCISCO 4.4.2024

I am totally appalled at the ceaseless cruelty of my fellow human beings.

The Federal government wants to shoot and kill more than 500,000 barred owls in Northern California, Oregon and Washington.

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

The callous murderous reasoning, which boggles my mind, is the slaughter is necessary to protect a closely related species of the barred owl. The northern spotted owl.

The word which comes to my mind is Eugenics. Rather than being practiced on humans as did the Aryan Nazis in Hitler’s Germany against Jews through genocide. The American government proposes to promote one animal species by eliminating another.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 3.26.2024

A collection of 75 animal rights and wildlife organizations sent a letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland on Tuesday asking her to stop a plan by federal wildlife officials to shoot more than a half-million barred owls in Northern California, Oregon and Washington in an effort to protect a closely related species, the threatened northern spotted owl.

The plan to shoot the barred owls, the letter said, will result in accidental shootings of other native owls, the poisoning of habitat if lead ammunition is used, and the disruption of forest ecosystems. The letter also claims the plan is destined to fail because of its large scale, covering millions of acres, and the limited success of previous federal efforts at controlling species for conservation purposes.

“This plan will cause severe disruptions to wildlife from the forest floor to its canopies, producing an untold number of mistaken-identity kills of other native owl species (including spotted owls), disrupting nesting behavior for animals, poisoning wildlife from dispersed and fragmented lead, and causing rapid dispersal and social chaos among many other species inhabiting these forest ecosystems,” the letter said.

The letter was spearheaded by two animal-rights organizations, Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane Economy. The other dozens of signers are mostly state and local animal-welfare groups.

They first appeared in the West in the 1970s, state wildlife officials said, but their numbers began increasing in the 1980s and 1990s and have continued to rise. Meanwhile, the less-aggressive spotted owls have seen their populations decline.

Federal wildlife officials last fall proposed hiring hunters with shotguns to kill barred owls in forests on public and private lands across the three states. They would shoot about 20,000 the first year, then continue killing them for the next 30 years. The plan has been studied and gone through a public comment period, according to the groups, but not yet approved. No firm timeline for the approval process exists, the groups said.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/climate/article/groups-urge-halt-to-us-plan-to-kill-barred-owls-19370248.php

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues – 4.2.2024

A note to Heather Knight – New York Times San Francisco ‘Nightcrawler’ correspondent (formerly at the San Francisco Chronicle) 4.2.2024

Heather

Seeing your laudatory piece on Mr. Garry Tan.

Going into journalistic contortions. Trying to paint a picture of Garry Tan as nothing more than a civic minded do gooder.

You can’t hide the reality. Garry Tan is a vicious political operative with a fat wallet “trying to buy City Hall.”

Makes me think of your fawning articles on former San Francisco District Attorney Suzy Loftus and current DA Brooke Jenkins. Who replaced the progressive DA you helped destroy with your pen, Chesa Boudin.

The good news is San Francisco Chronicle readers are spared your misleading propaganda cheerleader style reporting. 

The bad news is NYT readers may take this PR blurb re Garry Tan as truth.

And I thought you are scribbling for the Times not the New York Post.

Excerpted from The New York Times – Heather Knight – 4.2.2024

Garry Tan. A man evangelizing for change in San Francisco, owning a condo that used to be part of a church comes in handy.

(Blogger’s Note: Sound familiar? Accused felon Donald Trump hawking his “God Bless USA” bible for $59.99)

Last year, Tan scooped up the $3.95 million space near the city’s palm-tree-studded Dolores Park to hold events like this one — events he hopes will shift San Francisco from its idealistic progressivism toward nuts-and-bolts centrism.

Under cathedral ceilings and soaring stained glass windows, Garry Tan clutched a microphone as he greeted a crowd of political centrists, including San Francisco’s mayor, local prosecutors and police brass.

“Welcome to the church of turning San Francisco around!” said Mr. Tan at a fund-raiser he was hosting for local Asian American female political candidates just days before the Super Tuesday elections this month.

But Mr. Tan’s passion, as it is for a growing number of tech industry leaders, is San Francisco politics. He is one of a cadre of love-them-or-hate-them tech executives and investors with lots of opinions about the city and endless piles of cash to, as they say in the tech industry, move fast and break things. (Their critics would say it’s more like they’re trying to buy City Hall.)

To some of San Francisco’s political establishment, Mr. Tan, 43, has become the most annoying in a parade of wealthy tech executives. He has created a bombastic online persona while spending about $400,000 on local politics in the past few years — with potentially a lot more to come. And on the social media site X, where he has 425,000 followers, Mr. Tan doesn’t just rub some people the wrong way, he enrages them.

Just after midnight on Jan. 27, he posted on X, formerly Twitter, that seven left-leaning members of the city’s Board of Supervisors, listed by name, should “die slow,” punctuated by an expletive. It was a subtle reference to the rap legend Tupac Shakur’s famous track “Hit ’Em Up,” released 28 years ago as an insult to his music rivals. But to some people, it sounded like a threat.

Mr. Tan was, he admitted when an X follower asked him, drunk.

A few hours after his post went up, Mr. Tan deleted it and apologized. But plenty of people had already seen it.

A couple of days later, some supervisors received anonymous letters at their homes bearing Mr. Tan’s face and the words: “Garry Tan is right! I wish a slow and painful death for you and your loved ones.” Aaron Peskin, a supervisor who is considering challenging London Breed, the San Francisco mayor, in the November election, was one of a few supervisors to file police reports based on Mr. Tan’s post.

Mr. Tan has tried to learn from his online mess — or says he has. In person, he speaks kindly and calmly and smiles often, frequently bowing to people while making a prayer gesture with his hands. At his political fund-raiser in the former church, he said he was sipping a mocktail, a “Green Goddess” with apple, celery and cucumber juice.

“Alcohol doesn’t have a lot to teach me these days,” he said. Asked whether that was because of the drunken post that got him in hot water, he said, “There’s some correlation.”

He thinks moderate Democrats with common-sense ideas are taking back their city, and he’s supporting centrists on the November ballot in hopes they will seize a majority of the board of supervisors.

Mr. Tan encouraged his fellow middle-of-the-road Democrats at the church turned condo to keep the faith. “Politics can be rough. As centrists, we find ourselves facing criticism for questioning policies that haven’t delivered,” he told his quasi-congregation, his voice rising. “My dedication to making San Francisco a city that works for everyone is a commitment I will not abandon.”

The crowd of about 100 roared.

Mayor Breed then spoke about the “dogfight” of San Francisco politics and thanked Mr. Tan, one of her donors, for braving it.

Several supervisors named in Mr. Tan’s controversial post called for candidates who received his donations to return the money. None did. Mr. Tan said the police had never contacted him about the post. The San Francisco Police Department did not respond to requests for comment on whether an investigation was being conducted.

“And no, I’m not giving my money back!” she said to laughter.

Top photo: Irving Penn exhibit – de Young Museum San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 4.1.2024

It’s April Fools Day. But when it comes to Donald Trump it’s never a joke.

Never mind that the Trial for his election interference hush money payoff to porn performer Stormy Daniel begins on Tax Day April 15 in a Manhattan courtroom.

Never mind that Trump’s campaign posted a picture of President Biden tied to the back of a pickup truck.

Never mind that Trump Media & Technology Group, the parent company of Trump’s Truth Social platform, closed Monday at $48.66 per share after its opening at $80 last week.

The big news is Trump’s “God Bless USA” bible he’s shilling for $59.99. The New York Times Maureen Dowd nails this shameless con artist Trump to the cross of hypocrisy.

Excerpted from The New York Times – Maureen Dowd – 3.30.2024

Declining faith in religion and rising faith in conspiracies create fertile ground for a faker like Donald Trump. If the profane pol is re-elected, we’ll all reap the whirlwind.

On this holy weekend, one man is taking the Resurrection personally.

Trump is presenting himself as the Man on the Cross, tortured for our sins. “I consider it a great badge of courage,” he tells crowds. “I am being indicted for you.” Instead of Christlike redemption, he promises Lucifer-like retribution if resurrected.

In January he put up a video on Truth Social about how he is a messenger from God, “a shepherd to mankind.”

Trump is, as the nuns who taught me used to say, “a bold, brazen piece.” He is a miserable human who cheated on his wives, cheats at golf, cheats at politics, incites violence, targets judges and their families and looked on, pleased, as thugs threatened to hang his actually pious vice president.

Yet, more and more, Trump is wallowing in his messiah complex.

Two-Corinthians Trump wouldn’t know the difference between Old and New Testaments. So he may not realize that, rather than a sacrificial lamb, he is the golden calf, the false god worshiped by Israelites when Moses went up to Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments.

Just as the Israelites melted their ornaments and jewelry to make the calf, Trump is trading tacky products for gilt to pay gazillions in obligations. After his $399 golden Never Surrender High-Top Sneaker, Trump is selling a $99 Victory47 cologne for “movers, shakers and history makers,” in which “a crisp opening of citrus blends into a cedar heart, underpinned by a rich base of leather and amber, crafting a commanding presence.” A gold bust of Trump tops the bottle. (Victory47 perfume for women comes in a Miss Universe-shaped bottle.)

Weaponizing his martyrdom, Trump is selling $59.99 “God Bless the USA” Bibles adorned with a flag and the chorus of Lee Greenwood’s song handwritten by the singer, plus the Constitution, Declaration of Independence and Pledge of Allegiance.

“Happy Holy Week!” he wrote on Truth Social. “Let’s Make America Pray Again. As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible.”

David Axelrod says that, even as a secular Jew, he’s offended: “This is a guy who has violated 11 of the Ten Commandments.”

Trump posted a promotional video claiming “Christians are under siege” and vowing to “protect content that is pro-God.” He held up the Bible — recalling the appalling moment in 2020 when Ivanka handed him a Bible from her designer bag and he clutched it in front of St. John’s Church, opposite the White House, moments after the police tear-gassed protesters and journalists in adjacent Lafayette Square at a demonstration about George Floyd’s murder.

“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many,” Trump barked. “It’s my favorite book.” Maybe the Bible has replaced that Hitler book Trump’s ex-wife said he kept by his bed. But it’s all a scam. Running for president is about enriching himself, just as when he peddled NFTs, steaks, ties, suits, bath towels, vodka, water, office chairs, Trump University and mug-shot mugs. He even sold pieces of the suit he was wearing when he took the mug shot.

Just what the world needs: a soul cleanse with a grifter Bible, where the profits could well be going to pay legal costs in trials about breaking commandments — bearing false witness to try to steal democracy, coveting a porn star, then paying the star hush money to keep quiet about the sex.

What could be more Elmer Gantry than that? As Sinclair Lewis wrote about his corrupt, power-hungry, narcissistic, womanizing preacher, “He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday school, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.”

Religious snake-oil salesmen have a storied history in American literature and films, from Flannery O’Connor’s “Wise Blood” to Peter Bogdanovich’s beloved movie “Paper Moon,” about a conniving Bible salesman and his small helper. But it’s shocking when the charlatan might be in the Oval.

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 3.25.2024

Donald Trump’s strategy to avoid his criminal reckoning is delay delay delay.

Trump has failed in his home town New York. It is all too familiar with this man who has evaded accountability for decades.

Trump’s strategy in his effort to stop prosecution of his payoff to porn performer Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 election has wilted.

Excerpted from The New York Times 3.25.2024

Donald J. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial on charges that he covered up a sex scandal will start on April 15 after a judge on Monday denied the former president’s attempts to delay it further.

The flurry of activity is unfolding nearly a year to the day after the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed an indictment of Mr. Trump, accusing him of falsifying business records related to a hush-money deal with a porn star, Stormy Daniels.

The judge, Juan M. Merchan, appeared unmoved by Mr. Trump’s request for more time to prepare for his criminal trial on charges linked to conduct that could have derailed his stunning victory in the 2016 presidential election.

For roughly an hour, he slammed arguments from Mr. Trump’s lawyers that his case should be delayed further because of newly disclosed documents from a related federal investigation, saying that he found no harm had been done to the former president by the delay. After a 45-minute break, he returned with the new trial date.

Justice Merchan suggested that Mr. Trump’s lawyers were dragging their feet and scolded them for accusing Manhattan prosecutors of misconduct without seeming to substantiate their allegations.

“You are literally accusing the Manhattan D.A.’s office and the people assigned to this case of prosecutorial misconduct and trying to make me complicit in it,” the judge exclaimed incredulously.

He noted that many of the new documents were not relevant to the case. “This court is of the opinion that there are really not significant facts to be resolved,” Justice Merchan said, a sign that he might be close to finalizing a trial date.

The judge also pressed one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Todd Blanche, on the number of documents the defense thinks are relevant, saying, “I just want to get a sense of how much time you need.”

A little taken aback, Mr. Blanche consulted papers on the desk before him, and finally came up with “tens of thousands.” Unsatisfied, the judge said that Mr. Blanche was not answering his questions.

One of prosecutors, Matthew Colangelo, estimated that only about 300 documents were pertinent to the trial, and that “99 percent” were irrelevant.

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 3.24.2024

When will it end? The criminal kow towing to motorists in San Francisco.

A City government which pays lip service to safe streets and the goals of Vision Zero.

It’s all just mindless blather. The San Francisco leadership from Mayor London Breed on down does absolutely nothing to stop the carnage caused by reckless criminal entitled motorists.

Coming close on the skid marks of the horrific act by a 78 year old driver and her Mercedes SUV. An entire Brasilian family was wiped out at a bus stop just a week ago. A woman who should be criminally charged. The police may cite these drivers. But, in laissez faire San Francisco the District Attorney will do nothing in the way of pursuing criminal charges.

Now we have yet another reckless criminal motorist crashing into another bus stop. The press will blithely report the fact nobody was killed. Life in San Francisco will go on as normal. Drivers will continue to act in their oblivious criminal entitled manner.

Fortunately an alert citizen was able to capture the scene as a graphic reminder of yet another criminal act by a motorist.

The number of dead will continue to grow on the streets of San Francisco. Caused not by gunshots. But by automobiles.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 3.24.2024

A pedestrian was injured by a vehicle that crashed near a bus stop near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on Saturday, authorities said.

The victim was struck just before 4:50 p.m. near a bus stop at Fulton Street and Park Presidio Boulevard, the San Francisco Police Department said. He was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.

Fabian Skibinski said he was near the bus stop when a fast-moving car “came out of nowhere” and struck a pole with a “loud bang,” trapping a man underneath. He said the pole grazed a young boy and came within inches of a teenage girl and several other people

It was “basically a miracle that no one died or was maimed,” Fabian Skibinski said, adding that the pole prevented others from injury because it stopped the car.

“The man trapped underneath was in shock but seemed like he was going to be basically OK. He was talking and breathing normally … no visible blood,” he said. “The driver was also in shock, but not injured. Police came within a few minutes.”

The driver, identified as a man, was cited for “multiple moving vehicle violations,” police officials said.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sf-crash-bus-stop-19365853.php

Top photo: A pedestrian suffered non-life-threatening injuries Saturday when he was stuck under a pole near a bus stop after a crash near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Courtesy of Fabian Skibinski

SAN FRANCISCO

Lee Heidhues 3.21.2024

It was 51 years ago the Nixon administration expelled John Lennon from the United States.

Officially it was the Immigration and Naturalization Service which did the deed. In reality it was the Nixon administration which was aghast at John and Yoko Lennon’s political activities.

The story most vividly told in the 2006 documentary ‘The U.S. vs. JOHN LENNON.

Had he left America John Lennon’s fate may not have been his assassination in New York City on December 8, 1980. An event I will never forget. The previous night I had gone to bed with a flu. The next morning I woke up and turned on NPR’s Morning Edition. To hear ‘In My Life’. I knew immediately. Even before Bob Edwards came on the air to announce John Lennon’s death.