Tomorrow is Saturday, November 1st, and lots of things are happening that day alone:

First, NaNoWriMo begins. Sharpen your pencils, rev up your laptops, and get ready to create a work of highly dubious quality. Write-ins are being planned all over the city right now: join up on NaNoWriMo and register with the San Francisco cohort on the forums to receive updates. The truly ambitious and impatient can even begin tonight at midnight, before changing out of the costume, or even sobering up much. Just think: an army of inebriated, sexy nurses and vampires, typing their first lines. Yes.

Next up, the Alternative Press Expo is open at the Concourse the whole weekend, from 11-7 Saturday and 11-6 Sunday. This year’s Expo features comic-book superstar Chris Ware. His latest offering, Acme Novelty Library #19, has just been printed up by the truckload, and Ware plans to sign at least a goodly handful of them at the Drawn and Quarterly booth from 4-6 Saturday. On Sunday from 12:30-1:30, he’s got the spotlight panel, in conversation with Eli Horowitz (AKA the “other” McSweeney’s guy), with more signing of Novelties to follow.

After that (as we previously reported), the Cartoon Art Museum is hosting a reading at 8:00 PM. It features Jesse Reklaw (of Slow Wave fame) and many others. Go here for details.

On Sunday, November 2nd, there’s the aforementioned Chris Ware panel at the Alternative Press Expo.

Not much happening Monday, November 3rd, apart from a poetry reading at 7:00 PM by Genine Lentine and Brian Teare, followed by an open mic at Bird & Beckett in Glen Park.

Tuesday, November 4th is ELECTION DAY. So cast your ballot before doing anything else. But in the evening, if you’re not absolutely glued to the TV — or figure the votes’ll be counted whether you’re watching or not — you might head over to Borderlands Books at 7:00 PM and meet up with Ann and Jeff Vandermeer, who edited the smart anthology Steampunk, just out from Tachyon Publications. The question on the table: Steampunk: What Is It?

Wednesday, November 5th brings Michelle Tea’s monthly Radar Reading series at 6 PM at Main Library, Lower Level, in the Latino/Hispanic Community Meeting Room. This month features Stephanie Kuehart, Pilou Miller, Danny el Lute Levesque and Marriage. You don’t need a link from me: just go.

Finally, on Thursday, November 6th at 6:00 PM, the Mechanic’s Institute presents Jonathan Hennessey, whose graphic novel, The United States Constitution, explains just how the dag-blasted thing is supposed to work. With pictures! For We, the Laggards in the Back Row. Details here; free to members, $12 to the public.

[Thanks to Kemble Scott, Borderlands, and D&Q.]

Yikes there’s a lot of people running for the District 3 Seat. OK I’m going to create a little cheat-sheet, and update it as I get more information (as this will take forever to write). Feel free to add in comments corrections/additions. I picked out four major issues:

• Crime: escalating homicides, and the ongoing Broadway Corridor issues.
• Development: everyone’s abuzz with the plywood-ing of North Beach, and general development efforts (letting in chains, not letting in chains, spot zoning, etc.).
• Transportation: The Central Freeway is coming! And, well, the usual suckiness of the 30-Stockton crowded scene on Grant St. any given day, and oh, the rudeness of drivers… cycling hostility, I could go on.
• Rental Protection: Whether you’re for it or against it, it’s an expensive city and people get elbowed out- like our firemen & teachers, and rising rental rates mean less interesting mom & pop stores.

The chart reflects my notes made from the candidates’ web sites and not any other journalistic writeup, observations, conversations or gossip (that’s at the end!).

Candidate Sites:
- Lynn Jefferson (LJ)
- Wilma Pang (WP)
- Joe Alioto, Jr. (JA)
- Claudine Cheng (CC)
- David Chiu (DC)
- Tony Gantner (TG)
- Mike DeNunzio (MD)

More reading:
Extra! ‘Culture of fear’ stalks Grant Avenue! by Tony Long

Joe Aliot, Jr. Enters SF Sentinel

District 3 - S.F.’s hottest supervisorial race Wyatt Buchanan of SF Gate

Opinion & Hearsay
So, I know someone who knows someone in the David Chiu campaign, and he sounds neat. I met Lynn at a fundraiser, and she was nice and eager to fix things. I walk by the Alioto headquarters every day. I haven’t really noticed my favorite shops endorsing one candidate or another. I’m mostly concerned, personally, with transportation and the plywood issue. I’m impressed with Connie’s Angel Island experience, that’s a really interesting bipartisan, historical and cultural level. Wilma has some energy and interest, and I like the global perspective that the Chinatown candidates have.

The issue with this race is that the 3 major areas- North Beach, Downtown & Chinatown - require someone who doesn’t have a real core bias, and can manage the peripheral, but also important areas- North Waterfront, Russian Hill & Telegraph Hill. If you get someone really entrenched with the residential communities like Lynn or Alioto, you miss out on the other areas- same with a Chinatown vote, as well as city-wide concerns (as transit is important across the city of course). So I looked at the more well-rounded candidates, that seem to target and address the issues that I’m mostly concerned with, and ended up with… drumroll please… David Chiu. Note: subject to change.

A very warm day in the middle of a heat wave. I spend much of the day working on my book in a borrowed room, and at the end of the afternoon I go to the Atlas Cafe in the Mission District to have a cappucino and make a few notes.

As I circle to find a parking place, which is difficult in the Mission even on a Saturday afternoon, I notice an unmarked police car with a plainclothes driver keeping an eagle eye out for something. And a couple minutes later I see three cop cars come roaring up the street. They turn the corner by the cafe.

When I reach its front door I see the cops have detained two Latino teenagers dressed in the baggy, neutral uniform of the neighborhood: white t-shirts and black shorts. There are now five cop cars for these two kids, whom I had idly noticed walking quietly along a block away when I was looking for parking.

Inside the cafe, most of the tables are occupied with people studying or working on laptops. A young woman and young man are playing guitars — mostly ragtime and songs from the 1920s. They play a few choruses and then the woman sings one of those old songs in a clear tenor voice. (Their names, I found out when I looked at the CD they had for sale, are Craig Ventresco and Meredith Axelrod, and here’s a YoutTube video of them performing at the Atlas earlier this year.)

The cops let the two kids go and the police cars drive away. Almost no one in the cafe noticed the roust taking place across the street.

After several songs, the woman’s place is taken by a young man, who plays instrumentals while the woman passes a hat. Then a couple in their thirties — the man in a straw fedora, a woman in a sundress — stand up and begin to dance the tango. The guitarists are still playing ragtime but the dancers are good enough to do the tango to ragtime anyway.

Today C.W. Nevius has a column on the latest, scariest crime to hit Glen Park: the carefully planned robbery last Friday night of Buddies Market, and the brutal, gratuitous attack on the store’s owner, Paul Park, who survived — just barely.

Glen Park has been subject to a wave of robberies in the past six months, mostly random street muggings. The reasons are obvious to anybody who spends as much time there as I do: BART station, freeway on-ramps, and residents who generally have iPods or laptops with them. Residents, I might add, who are smart enough to hand the goods over without a fight. No wonder predators are drawn to the neighborhood from miles away. Nevius writes of them: “No one knows who they are or where they are coming from.” Technically true, but residents have their suspicions, and unlike Nevius I’ll tell you exactly what they suspect: thanks to BART, the sociopaths living in Oakland and Richmond are right next door. What with the downturn in our economy, it’s likely that this is a problem that won’t go away.

The solution to this problem is obvious: a small number of officers in conspicuous locations in Glen Park during the times of greatest risk, from about 8:30 PM until 1:00 in the morning, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. How difficult could it possibly be to protect the residents of Glen Park from these crimes? Captain Denis O’Leary of the Ingleside station claims his hands are tied, but give me a break. You don’t need to mobilize a riot squad. He has 109 officers. The presence of a single police vehicle parked in the bus stop at Diamond and Chenery, with two officers nearby, from 8:30 PM until 1:00 AM every night, and two more officers conspicuously posted outside the BART station at the same time, should be enough to deter most of these crimes. We’re talking about four officers at most for nine hours a week.

Was a police car posted there last Friday night? Somehow I doubt it. Maybe this isn’t a good long-term solution, but as an emergency measure? Seems like a no-brainer to me.

The Glen Park Merchant’s Association has started a blog so that residents will have a place online to discuss the problem. The president of the association has started a fund where you can make donations to help with Mr. Park’s recovery.

What do you think? Leave a comment here.

[NB: I'm not a resident of Glen Park, but I work there almost every day and know several people in the community.]

“Miracle fruit” — Synsepalum dulcificum to the degree-holding class — is a strange berry which has little taste of its own but which works to nullify and transform spicy, sour or bitter tastes, making them sweet. The New York Times had an article about it in May, with users saying it makes Tabasco sauce taste like sugar and lemon sorbet mixed with Guinness like a chocolate shake. Thus “the fruit of the poor lemon” becomes possible to eat.

Mugwumpin, the San Francisco theater company planning a trip to Cairo to a theater festival, will hold a fundraiser for the trip featuring the strange fruit on Saturday, Sep. 6 in Oakland. For more info, email info@mugwumpin.org.

Despite efforts by community and business figures to rally Oakland residents to ignore a recent rash of takeover-style restaurant robberies and come out to eat, bandits last night hit another Oakland restuarant, forcing customers and staff into a back room, robbing them, then cleaning out the register.

Oakland residents, horrified that the crime wave hit upscale neighborhoods, demonstrated last night on yuppified College Ave. with candles and flashlights. The robbery took place several blocks west, on less yuppified Shattuck Ave. See a map on the Chronicle’s website of the summer crime spree.

Though high gas prices and “Spare the Air” days like today have more passengers than ever riding public transit — including the ACE Train that runs from Stockton in the central valley to Silicon Valley — sometimes they can’t win for losing. Yesterday the ACE trains were threatened by the heat wave now torturing inland areas, with 110+ temperatures hot enough to warp steel rails. Train workers had to walk in front of the train to make sure the rails weren’t damaged by the heat, delaying the trains one to two hours.

At least there have been no reports of BART delays due to the heat, as in the May heat wave.

Tonight and Monday mark the only two theatrical screenings of The Gits Movie in the Bay Area.

The film explores the saga of one of the better punk bands I’ve ever had the chance to see in action, whose career was cut tragically short not by the usual mix of lethargy and substance abuse, but by the singer’s horrific rape and murder as she walked home from the Comet Tavern 15 years ago this week. The startling crime sent shockwaves through the Seattle rock scene, stopped a brilliant band in it’s tracks, and suspicions and rumors ran amok for 10 years until DNA testing eventually revealed the culprit. Now a whole new generation has been discovering The Gits through their records ( including the newly issued Best Of The Gits and You Tube videos like the one below.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyCXmaRj0Wg

The film documents the faces of the post grunge era, including interviews with the band, and their friends and supporters who include Joan Jett, Kathleen Hanna, and many local SF residents including Broken Rekids label honcho (and now Rainbow Grocery beer & wine buyer) Mike Millet.

The San Francisco screening is on Monday July 7th at The Landmark Embarcadero Cinema with a special post screening Q&A with members of Seven Year Bitch.

The Oakland screening at the Uptown tonight on Saturday July 5th offers the added opportunity to see The Gits drummer Steve Moriarty now a local resident, in action with a new band he’s just started with Dead Kennedy’s bassist Klaus Flouride.

For more info see the links

7/5 Uptown Oakland or 7/7 Landmark Embarcadero in SF

Friend & restaurant owner Pamela Busch is having a fundraiser- 10% proceeds going to Equality, CA (eqca.org)- tomorrow from noon to 11PM at her restaurant, Cav Wine Bar. Check out the info on Upcoming.org. If you want to celebrate some very cool legislation and help the upcoming legal battles, stop by for a wine flight, or their mushroom-themed menu. I was there the day marriage was legalized and wow, the energy in the air was amazing. Cav was selected by Michael Bauer as one of the top 100 restaurants - so come by for a tasty nibble and support a cause! Open table is the best way to secure a spot: http://tinyurl.com/68djzk

May 15th was not only a “Spare the Air” day and “Bike to Work” day; it also was a day of record temperatures in The City. As the day went on, the heat soared to 97 degrees in the city.

As noon approached, trouble began to brew on the BART system. For the next 8 hours, the system was plagued by delays of 45 minutes or longer.

I met the BART problem head-on at rush hour last night. I arrived at Civic Center at about 4:40pm. Trains were being held in between stations and at stations for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. The first train only went to 24th street/Mission, so I didn’t get on. Then I realized, soon enough, the trains were ONLY going to 24th Street/Mission, where you would have to transfer.

17 minutes later, two more trains came and went, absolutely packed to the ceiling. Finally, I got on a train. At 24th Street, something strange happened- the train went backwards. Apparently, while I was zoning out in iPod land, the train had suddenly become a Richmond train and just started going the other way at 24th Street.

At 16th, I disembarked to attempt another try towards my destination. Alas, my “SFO” BART train, again, suddenly became a Richmond train and turned around. But, at least, this time, I managed to GET OFF the train at 24th.

The platform was packed with people, the trains kept turning around. Then two more packed trains rolled by. Finally, I braved one of the packed trains. My last BART train of the evening made several long pauses to cool itself, but I did finally make my destination at 6:20pm.

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