TODAY'S RAMBLINGS
MAJOR NEWS FLASH:  The red tail hawk chicks have hatched!!!  If you watch the live stream for any period of time, you'll see the little guys!   

And if you really want to get emotional, not to mention completely blown away, watch this 8 minute clip of one hatching, while the other is being fed.   

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

I had the kind of weekend that reminds me why I love SF to the degree I do.  I spent both Friday and Saturday at Perry's on Union, and Professor Howard Blum Esq., a rather agitated Gunther Strobel, and even my better half all featured prominently.  Saturday's memorial for Kevin Young at Perry's on Union on Saturday was very moving.  We wrapped it Sunday with a great late lunch at the Textbook Pier 23 with the fashion industry doyenne Ol' Purple Label.  Even Nancy Pelosi was there - no joke.  And despite some wonderful rain Saturday morning, the skies mostly were their typical cobalt and the air as fresh and perfect as ever.

So I am now back in the camp that believes, despite the lumps we've endured and still endure, San Francisco is, if not the very best, amongst the very best cities in the world.

But.  There.  Is.  Still.  This.  Right in the heart of The Financial District, and just a week or so ago, on a weekday.

Now, my rant on this is always:  who is this serving?  This woman, with no shoes, so fucked up that this was where she decided to polish off a Mexican Coke and take a snooze?  No.  It is serving my fellow SF left-wing nutjobs and the Homeless Industrial Complex that insist that homelessness is not a crime.  This is not homelessness.  It is sickness and it should be compulsory for her to be treated.  Humanely and transparently, but still:  treatment and care can not be optional.

But who could possibly police all of the thousands of homeless?  How about the actual police, but with training more appropriate for the work involved in a city like SF?  You may be shocked to learn that we have plenty.  In fact, SF has more police per capita than any other city in California.   

OK, but that's just a sudden spike, right?  Wrong - the numbers of police has mostly been consistent through the years.

(Both of these charts were published recently in The San Francisco Chronicle.)

So why the hell do we have open air drug markets, insane amounts of car break-ins, and "shoplifter rows" everywhere? I think it's a complete lack of transparency and accountability.  Don't forget that The City and County of San Francisco has hundreds of employees making in excess of $250,000 per year.   There's no excuse.

It's also a lack of will and leadership to call BS where it is.  And the state of at least parts of The Tenderloin, South of Market, The Mission, The Financial District, and yes, even Marina Boulevard is bullshit.  At least the views are nice from this encampment, precisely two blocks from my house.  These photos were taken seconds apart.

And please:  save the "you just don't want to see it" stuff.  That's true - but not for the reason you think.  I will ask again the question the philosopher John Rawls posed, as a way of assessing the equity and justice of a given community:

Would you join American (or San Franciscan) society if you did not know your social and economic standing in advance?

I don't want to see it because it's just wrong, given the affluence of San Francisco, California, and the United States as a whole.  We must do better.

FROM THE UNWASHED MASSES
As the adult in the room, Dr. Doreen Downs was having none my cooking sherry nonsense:

En fuego!

And the inveterate dreamer Hunter Deuce kept it coming.   But what a cool little RV!

I like the form factor of that much more than a small trailer.  I hope Byron Browne IV is still reading this blog!

Thank you to any one that is reading this newsletter.

KLUF
Ok, not every day, but certainly lately:  Here is Blur with their second album, the aptly titled "Modern Life is Rubbish".