The San Francisco influence at the Democratic Convention is apparently everywhere but in the party platform. While National mainstream strategists are at pains to distance themselves from left coast issues like gay marriage and Amnesty for immigrants, S.F’s silver spoon Democratic crowd is of course still making the rounds in Denver. Society Columnist Roger Friedman wrote “the 2008 DNC is like a party given for and by Nancy Pelosi”. Nancy’s super delegate daughter Alexandra is there and apparently telling people about her campaign documentary on, uh, John McCain.

Kamala Harris impressed the Washington Post with her tough talk about public safety over criminal rehabilitation. “What Democrats have to do is understand that Republicans have it right” on crime issues.

Maybe she’s right I pondered, as I was stepping over a bloodstained sidewalk two blocks from City Hall this morning in front of Kamala’s alma matter UC Hastings. Gosh, I hardly noticed how safe we have it here in the land of plea bargain hunters. Gee, with an ongoing presence of illegal immigrant crack dealers controlling the very next corner with “Amnesty”, I guess I should thank everyone involved for keeping me safe. Maybe these thugs work for Kamala, whose apparently a “Hot Shot” according to organizers of her panel that was sponsored by Time magazine.

Mayor Gavin Newsom , another Democratic “Hot Shot” also appeared at the Denver breakfast, and is the host of a rock concert Wednesday night complete with VIP area that defines which acts one can see. While the general admission area includes bands like Silversun Pickups, DJ Z-Trip and Clap Your Hands And Say Yeah, a more exclusive intimate area features Ben Gibbard of Death Cab For Cutie, and actress Zooey Descanel of She & Him. One cannot just buy their way into the Unconventional “VIP Gallery” to catch Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley, you have to be “invited”. Sponsors of the Gavster’s Denver shindig saluting “Young Democrats” include Pacific Gas and Electric, so you’d probably have to be up to date on your electric bill before you can expect to be invited.

According to this post on the National Book Critics Circle blog, Oscar Villalon is stepping down as editor of the books section as of August 29th. Here’s an interview with him from two years ago. I don’t know the exact story yet, but as newspaper book sections all around the country are shrinking or disappearing, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be another step towards eliminating the book section altogether.

Local photographer Thomas Hawk blogged 10 days ago about a confrontation he had at SF’s Museum of Modern Art with Director of Visitor Relations Simon Blint. After spotting Hawk taking pictures from a museum balcony and arguing with the photographer — who is well known for his strenuous defense of his right to photograph in public places — Blint had Hawk 86′d, asserting his duty to defend the museum’s employees from harrassment.

The incident became widely known after BoingBoing blogged about it. Last Thursday the incident was analyzed at 10 Zen Monkeys, which tracked down and interviewed a security guard involved in a 2006 confrontation with Hawk. The 10 Zen Monkeys post, by author “Destiny” (for that matter, “Thomas Hawk” is also a pen name), depicts Hawk as a hothead who used profanity in the 2006 incident, which ended with the security guard being fired by his employers. Hawk also recently called for a boycott of Hyatt hotels after security personnel in one of them forbade him to take pictures in the hotel lobby. And Violet Blue blogged about another 2006 incident here on SF Metblog.

Clearly he doesn’t shrink from confrontation. While I tend to admire loudmouthed people who call attention to the abuses of authority, I also think the tactic can be self-limiting. What looks heroic in the short run can, after many repetitions, wind up looking merely quixotic at best, and at worst become an exercise in Ralph Nader-type egotism. But as technology makes ever-more-intrusive inroads on privacy and organizations become more secretive, I’ll come down on Hawk’s side — especially when he’s attacking institutions and not just individuals.

Progressive Reading Series organizer and well-known local author Stephen Elliot writes in the Huffington Post of last night’s successful event to raise money for recycling bins for Houston. They raised enough for 276  18-gallon bins, and more importantly raised the profile of the recycling program of the Texas city.

Previously:
Houston to accept donation

Following up on Monday’s post about the folks at SF’s Progressive Reading Series having trouble getting Houston to accept a donation to help the Texas city purchase more recycling bins: the Hairballs blog of the alt-weekly Houston Press reports the Houston mayor’s office will accept the donation, as long as the requisite paperwork is filled out. Whew, glad that’s settled.

One of the most critically-acclaimed films of the great era of the 1970s, Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, will be adapted for television by AMC, the same network with the hit Mad Men.

The 1974 film, starring Gene Hackman as a nerdish, inhibited surveillance expert, was shot entirely in San Francisco, and features extensive scenes in the pre-remodeled Union Square, the newly built Embarcadero Center, and the Cathedral Hill Hotel on Van Ness, then called the Jack Tar Hotel. The plot concerns Hackman becoming overly-interested in a conversation he’s recorded on behalf of shadowy corporate figures. As in Antonioni’s Blow-Up (and its American adaptation, Brian DePalma’s Blow-Out,) Hackman’s interest in small, unnoticed details of his record of the meeting get him into trouble.

The series would be set in the early 1970s, the same era as the film, according to the news report. Whether it would also be shot in San Francisco remains to be seen. AMC’s Mad Men, set in early 60s New York, is filmed entirely on a Southern California movie lot (as shown in this blog entry by Mad Men cast member Rich Sommer).

The Bay Area is full of tech innovators, and seldom are the achievements of the entrepreneur who operates outside of Software, Internet or Biotech recognized. Ellen Raynor the owner/operator of SF Carpet Recycling is the kind of person I’m talking about. Full disclosure, Ellen is a close family friend, but I think you will agree her efforts are commendable in taking recycling to the next level.

SF Carpet Recycling is a collection site for post consumer carpet and carpet pad for the San Francisco Bay Area. Conveniently located in the 3rd Street corridor in the southeast part of San Francisco, we accept used carpet for the purpose of recycling.

For every 10 million pounds of post-consumer carpet recycled:

• 50,000 cubic yards of landfill space is saved

• 70 million pounds of GHG emissions are avoided (CO2 equivalents)

According to the 2006 CARE Annual Report

Planet Green video and more info

In the same theme as my earlier post today: The company responsible for hauling garbage for much of San Mateo County has been accused of dumping nearly 65,000 tons of plant waste that should have gone to compost in a landfill instead.

The dispute comes as the company, a Phoenix firm called Allied Waste (their website has an animated slogan reading Greener And Cleaner), is set to negotiate a new contract when the present one expires in 2010. The company is also being acquired by Republic Services, which itself is trying to prevent a takeover by garbage giant Waste Management, Inc.

If Metblogs is a city, hub.metblogs is the playground. We kept hearing from people that one of their favorite parts of Metblogs was meeting and interacting with readers and writers from other parts of the world, as well as getting requests for more ways that readers could be involved besides just posting comments. We thought about this for a while and decided that with a network like this, a giant community area where folks from all over the world could hang out, post photos and videos, talk with each other, form groups, play games, send messages, and do about a million other things was probably a pretty fun idea. The Hub is that.

If you have any tech ideas or suggestions join this group and speak up. See you on hub.metblogs!

It’s been a bad week for comedian Michael Weiner, whose national broadcasts as “Michael Savage” from a San Francisco studio have dirtied the airwaves for several years. First his network was forced to clarify and backtrack on his July 16 comments that children with autism are likely just “brats” who should be told to “act like a man” and “told to cut the act out.”

Protests against Weiner continued Sunday with a demonstration in front of San Francisco station KNEW, where he records his nationally syndicated program.

post continues after the jump