News
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Celebrate the New Year With Canopus

12.31.2012
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By Alison Hawkes, Bay Nature
With New Year’s Eve just approaching, you may find yourself staring at the heavens and wondering what 2013 portends. If you’re lucky and put yourself in just the right spot at midnight, you may be able to see the second-brightest star in the sky that’s normally invisible to much of the Bay Area — Canopus. Dale Gieringer, an amateur astronomer and, you could say, Canopus aficionado, has been tracking down sightings of the elusive Canopus since 1972. The Oakland resident has traveled all over the Bay Area in search of spots where the supergiant appears, ever so low on the horizon. “The problem is you have to have just the right conditions — a clear night with a perfect horizon,” he said.

News
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Targeted by Gangs and Thieves, Growing Mayan Community Demands Translators

12.27.2012
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By Rigoberto Hernandez, Mission Local
The killing of a beloved cook in October was the latest in what the Mexican consulate general in San Francisco says are targeted attacks against the city’s Mayan community. “This is something that we are very worried about,” said Carlos Isauro Felix-Diaz, the consul general. “For us, it’s fundamental to prevent these types of circumstances in which our countrymen, the Yucatecos, have been involved in these attacks.”
Jose Chuc Mul, 40, a cook, was involved in an October 16 confrontation with about a dozen men near 16th and Valencia streets around 2 a.m. He was brutally beaten and died from his injuries days after the incident, police said. In response, the consulate arranged a meeting in November between leaders in the Mayan community and Police Chief Greg Suhr, to discuss safety measures. Read the complete story at Mission Local.

News
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Local TV Archivist Restores Lost Bay Area History

12.26.2012
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By Sam Harnett, KQED News Fix
When San Francisco Bay Area Television archivist Alex Cherian got a telephone call from ex-film editor Dave Peoples, he got excited. Peoples, who had worked at local station KRON-4, was offering outtakes, long stretches of B-roll that provided an intimate and unedited glimpse of historical events in the area. Peoples didn’t know, however, if it would still be good after sitting in his storage facility by the freeway in Berkeley for over 40 years. Film, after all, degrades with time. It’s also bulky and expensive to store, let alone archive in some kind of organized, searchable way.

News
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S.F. Juvenile Probation Chief Explores Arming Officers

12.24.2012
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By Amy Julia Harris, Bay Citizen
The head of San Francisco’s juvenile probation department, troubled by a Mission District shooting between police and a former juvenile offender, is weighing whether to allow probation officers who deal with young criminals to begin carrying handguns. William Siffermann, San Francisco’s chief juvenile probation officer, is quietly attempting to build support for the idea of arming a handful of officers who deal with the most violent offenders. He plans to raise the issue in January at a meeting of the Juvenile Probation Commission, which oversees his department. “In my 42 years of experience, I have never seen a more critical need to provide us with an increased level of safety,” Siffermann told the Bay Citizen. “I can’t wait for something to happen and then have someone who has fallen in harm’s way say, ‘Chief, you knew officers were at risk, and you did nothing.’ ”
Read the complete story at Bay Citizen. 

News
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S.F. Tenants Call for End to Ellis Act

12.20.2012
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By Jamie Goldberg, Mission Local
Roberto Alfaro Sr., 67, has lived in his Mission District apartment at 164 Lucky St. for 27 years. Ana Gutierrez, 66, has lived in the unit next door for 34 years. Both are retired, disabled and living on a fixed income. These are the only San Francisco apartments they have ever known.

Environment
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Dirtytech: They Obsessively Sort and Recycle What You Dump

12.20.2012
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If you think of Recology as a set of blue, green and black bins that hang out in the alley of your house that you roll out to the curb weekly — you have no idea.
Over the last 10 years, what San Franciscans have been thinking of “garbage collection” has been transformed into something vastly different and much more industrial. » Read more

News
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The Corner Grocery: Creating Community

12.19.2012
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By City Visions,  KALW
Can the corner grocery store bring prosperity to a community? Consumers are making more trips to drug-, club and dollar stores, and taking precious community money out of their neighborhoods. City Visions talks with Bay Area businesses that are recirculating the food dollars to bring health and wealth to local residents, farmers, and artisans. Guests interviewed are:
Brahm Ahmadi — Founder, People’s Community Market, co-founder People’s Grocery;
Sam Mogannam — Owner, San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Market and co-author of “Eat Good Food: A Grocer’s Guide to Shopping, Cooking & Creating Community Through Food”;
Bill Fujimoto — Consultant, former co-owner and operator of Berkeley independent produce retailer, Monterey Market. Listen to the complete interview at KALW.

News
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Battle to Save City College Divides Teachers and Administration

12.17.2012
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By Jamie Goldberg, Mission Local
Over 100 Christmas carolers recently braved a cold  night to sing outside the City College of San Francisco Board of Trustees meeting. The chorus included faculty, staff and students who earlier had lobbied for San Francisco’s Proposition A, a parcel tax touted as a measure to save City College. But, led by the American Federation of Teachers Local 2121, they sang a different tune, protesting the college administration’s plans for spending that parcel tax money: “We want to serve our students, and retire someday, keep benefits and pay, but they just don’t care what we say!”
Supporters of the eight-year, $79 per parcel tax, which passed with 73 percent of the vote in November, had hoped that the $16 million per year in new revenue would be used to prevent layoffs, offset budget cuts and maintain classes at the financially struggling school — as outlined in the proposition. Now, however, the college is proposing to put Prop. A funds toward other things, including technology upgrades, facility maintenance, retiree health benefit costs, professional development and shoring up its reserve, said Larry Kamer, consultant and acting City College spokesman.

News
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Nonprofit Groups Wade Into Political Giving

12.13.2012
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By Amy Julia Harris, Bay Citizen
As executive director of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, Scott Staub raises money to give to the city’s libraries. In his spare time, he raises money to give to politicians. Staub heads a political action committee that is attempting to increase the political clout of the nonprofit sector in federal elections. Most of the committee’s members are affiliated with charitable organizations. “We want to be a political player in a positive way,” said Staub, chairman of the Association of Fundraising Professionals PAC, an umbrella organization for charitable fundraisers.

Arts & Culture

‘Homeless Bill of Rights’ Seeks Legal Protections for Those on the Streets

12.12.2012
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A new push for a statewide “Homeless Bill of Rights” could lead to free legal representation for anyone citied under laws such as San Francisco’s sit-lie law or anti-panhandling ordinance. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, introduced Assembly Bill 5, as a response to what he said was a national trend of enforcing laws on public behaviors related to homelessness. If it becomes law, California’s homeless residents would have the same anti-discrimination protections for their housing status as others do for race, sexual orientation and other personal characteristics. “We need to stop criminalizing the behavior of people who have nowhere else to turn,” Ammiano said. “People who are in need of mental health services or who have lost jobs and their homes are being told, ‘Move along or go to jail.’”
The bill would bar discriminating against homeless people while they seek or maintain tax-funded benefits.