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by Tom Gomez
I read a piece entitled “Come to S.F. for Hot Time Mayor Urges” in the San Francisco Chronicle. Mayor Willie Brown is quoted telling travel executives, gathered at what is described as a “posh Washington D.C. hotel” to feast on Alaskan crab and white wine, that in San Francisco, “You can lie, cheat, and steal…and we don’t ask you about those things. We accept you as you are.” The Mayor then says to the executives, “Those of you who wear white shirts and red ties, blue suits and regular shoes, all those kind of things for the public to see, but there is a different side of you. Well, San Francisco caters to you. We have places for you to go, where you suddenly become anonymous. You don’t have to give your name…where you will have experiences that defy description.” Am I alone in being glad this asshole is in his last term?
While the Mayor prostrated himself before yet another group of wealthy executives, I was sitting for coffee with an old friend who is disabled since a fall shattered her spine. Last year she spent nine days in our county jail for jumping the B.A.R.T. She was homeless and had no money. Apparently not all of us are “accepted as we are.” The Chronicle itself last year published an editorial by Debra Saunders that called the city’s homeless people “bums.” Yet no attempt has been made to characterize the “lying, cheating, and stealing” executives that way!
The Chronicle characterized the Mayor’s remarks referring to “experiences that defy description,” enjoyed in places where no names are required, as being “an uncharacteristically subtle reference to the city’s alternative lifestyles.” Let me be blunt. When a 50 year old insurance executive from Des Moines comes to this city for a 3 day convention and sneaks off to one of these places where no names are required, what is required is money. I know that, you know it, the mayor knows it, the paper knows it, and the audience knows it! So what is this bullshit about our city’s “alternative lifestyles?”
There is nothing new about predominately white, middle-aged executives coming through San Francisco cruising our streets late at night looking to buy sex, drugs or both. Unfortunately for those of us who live here, this city also has no shortage of seriously addicted, economically marginalized men, women and children ready to supply such needs.
It’s good to know Mayor Brown (who gave a similar speech in South America) is aggressively promoting economic opportunity for our poorest citizens around the world. Mayor Brown has been so unwilling to use public money to provide services such as shelter for families or replacement of the 500 SRO rooms destroyed by fire in the last 10 years, that I was beginning to think his administration lacked vision. Think of it that way the next time you see some emaciated and hollow-eyed person turning a trick or selling dope to a tourist in your neighborhood.
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