Two events which should be different:

The Street Food Street Fest, which will happen Saturday from 11 to 7 on Folsom St. between 25th and 26th. Why there? It’s the block where you’ll find La Cocina Community Kitchen, a four year old nonprofit business that incubates community food-oriented businesses run largely by immigrant women. Among the food vendors will be Sabores del Sur and Laiola.

On Saturday and Sunday, visit the San Francisco Zine Fest from 11 to 6, at the Hall of Flowers (known also as the County Fair Building) off Lincoln Way and 9th Avenue in Golden Gate Park. Not just an exhibition, the event features panels of all kinds for DIY publishers, journalists and artists. Admission to the whole event is FREE.

Until this summer, Kiva focussed on lending (what in the U.S. are) small amounts of money for third-worlders (pictured at left, a group of farmers in Kyrgyzstan). Kiva was so successful that in December they actually ran out of people to lend money to and had to turn away lenders. So starting in June, the group began allowing American entrepreneurs to solicit money on the site. This has led to a backlash as some Kiva lenders protest that Americans don’t need the money bad enough.

Whatever. There are still plenty of deserving third world people on the kiva.org website who need your money, and will pay it back with interest.

Another vignette: One day during a summer school session, I broke up a fight in the hall. My shirt was torn, and frankly I couldn’t afford to buy too many shirts in those days. I went to the principal and reported the incident, and asked naively, “How do I get reimbursed for my shirt which was torn in the line of duty?” Instead of laughing out loud, the patient man said, “There is no budget for that, but tell you what: I’ll open up the supply closet and you can take a box full of stuff.” Yes, that was the compensation for my torn shirt: the principal unlocked the supply closet, which was normally shut tight. That’s the kind of poverty mentality that pervades the public schools. And if you think it’s gotten better since the 1980s, you haven’t been reading the newspapers.

So I’m a little ambivalent about the Donors Choose thing. On the one hand, it allows you to give direct help for specific purposes to classrooms in your town. And they are super good, almost too good, about accountability. Not only do you get an acknowledgement of your donation, you get pictures of the happy, happy kids using the art supplies or whatever you have donated.

On the other hand, there’s a certain pathetic quality about the requests. $200 for 70 copies of a book for kids to read. $250 for a set of math resource materials. $700 for a classroom set of dictionaries.

Dictionaries, people. There are elementary school classrooms in this country without enough dictionaries. How many millions of dollars did that Michael Jackson memorial cost? What the fuck are we doing as a country?

If you can see the website through your tears of rage, I suggest using it to find a worthy project, something you can make a difference on, and giving them money. And then, when you get back the thank-yous and the pictures and all, consider forming a permanent relationship with the school or the teacher you helped.

Not only will they come and plant a tree in front of your house for free, they’ll maintain it for free, replace old trees which have lived out their lives, and employ young people while they’re at it. They involve neighbors and homeowners in their Saturday planting days, because when people help plant the tree in front of their house, they’re more likely to care for it. I love the two trees in front of my house, each now more than ten years old.

They’re planting in Noe Valley this coming Saturday. Contact them and help out.

Funny to think of San Francisco as a windswept, barren, sandy and flea-ridden peninsula. These days it’s starting to look like a garden oasis, and if you spend time walking on the hills, behind Noe or Eureka Valleys, on Telegraph Hill or Russian Hill, Bernal or Potrero, you are in for a treat!

His Nowtopian blog is solid on my RSS feed.

Just find the cancelled classes in their online schedule — the Music Department, for example, looks like this, with the cancelled classes highlighted in red:

As a late Father’s Day present, how about choosing something your Dad loves, and naming a City College class in the subject after him? For example, The A.E. Pritchard class in electric organ. (I don’t think they have a class in electric organ, but you get the idea.) Does the $6000 sound a little pricy in this economy? How about getting your friends to chip in? Maybe your writing group would like to sponsor a “Basic Writing” class. Because it’s time to stop making fun of people who can’t write and do something about it.

He was practically standing still when they tackled him. There was no shout, no order. The first cop hit him squarely from the back, another hit him from the side. They knocked him face down on the pavement, hitting his head on the neighbor’s motorcycle fender. More cops jumped on top. There was no resistance from the guy at all. Now there was a lot of hollering, which seemed to be about handcuffing the guy. It sounded like the cops were saying to each other to get the cuffs on him. There were so many of them — five cops — on the guy, I’m sure it was difficult to do even the simple task of handcuffing an immobilized, unresisting suspect. The guy must have had an even harder time breathing.

The man survived the arrest.

Update: Mission Loc@l has the story on the origins of the police chase and arrest, including a suggestion of why the cops had such hard-ons for the suspect: there was some belief, evidently unfounded, that a police officer had been injured in the chase.

(Disclosure: the author of the Open Salon post is my wife.)

When: Happy hour 6pm – 9pm (but open late)
What: Donate $5 to our organization and enjoy drinks and appetizers at happy hour prices; $3 pints and $5 apps for extended happy hour (till 9pm). Also enjoy the musical stylings of Polemo.

If you’d rather see something artsier, experimental music maven Pamela Z (pictured at left) is presenting the second in her ROOM series of performances, tonight at 8:00 pm at the Royce Gallery, 2901 Mariposa St. at Harrison.

And if you’re up for something mystical, dark and theatrical, attend one of the many Easter Vigil services held at Christian churches tonight. Classically, a congregation would meet in the “undercroft” of the church, the sub-basement where the skeletons are buried, to remind them of the tomb from which Jesus rises. Nowadays you’re more likely to find yourself in a candle-lit church basement, but the service is still great theater, with scripture readings that move from the creation to the exodus from Egypt to the passion and resurrection. Good bets are Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in North Beach, 8:00 pm; St. Gregory Nyssa Episcopal Church on Potrero Hill, 8:00 pm; Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill, 8:00 pm; or St. Francis Lutheran Church in the Castro, 7:00 pm.