This Just Out 2 November 1999

11:35 PM: Election night here in San Francisco. I got stopped for an exit-poll interview after voting today. I'm sure the guy saw me walking out and thought, "Hmmm, old fart, green hair, dumb Web company t-shirt - must be a policy wonk, I need a couple more of those."

It's kind of exciting, though, in the way that I was happy when the Red Sox made the playoffs, even though I knew they'd lose in the end. Tom Ammiano, local gay pinko comedian and President of the Board of Supervisors, I love my town, is running as a write-in candidate for Mayor, and he just might make it into the runoff. He's going to be close no matter what. I just hope it brings people out to vote for the other propositions on the ballot.

For instance, there's this stupid stub of a Central Freeway that's been half-gone, half-there since the Loma Prieta earthquake 10 years ago. It's become a very annoying tradition around here to have a proposition on the ballot about it every goddamn year.

First the people who live underneath the damn thing, who had their neighborhood destroyed to build it and blighted by its noise, its shadow, its accompanying filth, and its general horrible highway nature, will get a proposition on that says "Spare us!" and everyone says Yes and it wins. So the official policy becomes, tear it down and build a new boulevard.

Then, during the next most inconvenient and ill-attended election (preferably primary for the Republican party or similar endangered species), the whiny-ass middle-class SUV-driving twits from the suburbanesque western part of the city will whine, "But waaah! This makes my commute 10 minutes longer! Waaaah!" And they will get all their Amway-mentality friends to go to the polls, and nobody else bothers to show up, and then they win. Now the official policy becomes, rebuild the freeway and park lots of semis under it, just to show those dumb people down there who runs this city, anyway, yeah. (OK I made that last part up.)

Lather, rinse, repeat. 10 years. This year, finally, both sides are on the ballot. So, possibly, it could really be settled once and for all. On the other hand, I have this fear that perversity, which never lies far beneath the breast of the San Franciscan voter, will lead people to defeat or approve both propositions. Which would mean god knows what, except certainly, we'd have to vote on it again. No more......

In other news, I was very late in to work because I was yelling a lot at stupid non-working MUNI people who would not sell me a monthly bus pass because they had some very important butt hairs to pick. So it was a pretty typical day.

Willfully blind self-indulgent nebbish or amusingly quirky old coot? And how bout that local sports team? Discuss among yourselves.

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All names are fake, most places are real, the author is definitely unreliable but it's all in good fun. Yep. © 1998-1999 Lighthouse for the Deaf. All rights reserved and stuff. The motto at the top of the page is a graffito I saw on Brunswick Street in Melbourne.