Affordable Housing on Public Land

Every few months, news of another major, market-rate high-rise development coming into Oakland makes headlines. The developers behind the new Uber headquarters are planning two acres of high-rise housing, retail, and office space on a parcel at 21st Street and Telegraph Avenue. The City of Oakland is selecting a developer for the parcel at 1911 Telegraph, hoping to see a high-rise, mixed-used development and a hotel. The Strada group is developing a new, market-rate high-rise and hotel complex at 12th and Clay streets in downtown. All of these proposed developments are on public land.

What would it look like if the City of Oakland worked not just with corporate developers, but with neighborhood residents to determine what should be built on our precious public land in Oakland?

Residents in the Eastlake area of Oakland believe that this sort of community-led development can and should happen on the publicly owned East 12th Street parcel next to Lake Merritt. The E 12th Coalition, an alliance of neighbors and community groups, spent months protesting the city’s plan to sell the public parcel to private developers for a luxury apartment tower with no affordable housing and in violation of the state Surplus Lands Act. Once the parcel was opened up to new development proposals in July, our coalition quickly switched gears and began envisioning what should be built on the land.

We started with the community outreach that the City of Oakland and the developer should have done. We surveyed hundreds of Eastlake residents in multiple languages. We hosted a community design forum, during which two hundred residents gave feedback on how to use the parcel. A team of volunteer architects and designers crunched the data, distilled community design principles to guide development, and put together a comprehensive site plan.

We partnered with a well-respected affordable housing developer, Satellite Affordable Housing Associates, which recently completed a 100 percent affordable building for seniors just a few blocks from the East 12th parcel.

The result from this extraordinary collaboration involving the community, volunteer architects, planners, and professional developers is a visionary, medium-rise building for mixed-income residents — though still 100 percent affordable. The project will blend seamlessly into the neighborhood and is designed to create connections between neighbors in the Eastlake area, residents in the new building, and the public treasure of Lake Merritt.

The design includes 133 units of which 85 percent would be for individuals and families making 60 percent or less of area median income. Recognizing the benefit of mixed income developments and the dearth of workforce housing, the building also includes eighteen units for moderate-income residents.

The building maximizes occupancy density. It can house more than seven hundred Oakland residents — at a time when every day we hear stories from our neighbors of being pushed out or evicted from their apartments due to rising rents.

Our proposal is designed for working families, with a majority of two- and three-bedroom units. The building includes spaces for community and commercial use on the ground floor and environmentally friendly features such as community gardens and rooftop solar panels, along with electric charging stations in the underground parking lot. It includes public open spaces, leading down to the renovated pedestrian walkway along the Lake Merritt estuary channel. More than 200 Oakland residents and 25 local community organizations, service agencies, faith groups, and legal advocacy nonprofits have submitted enthusiastic letters of support for our proposal.

The East 12th parcel is public land, and there is a growing recognition that public lands represent unique opportunities to build affordable housing, especially when we now live in the nation’s fifth most expensive rental market. In San Francisco, voters just passed Proposition K, which prioritizes using public land for affordable housing. The City of Oakland and PolicyLink’s Housing Equity RoadMap, released earlier this year, made a similar recommendation. A recent report produced by a UC Berkeley public policy student showed that out of 21 surplus public lands in the city, only one other — besides East 12th — is suitable for affordable housing.

During our community engagement process, hundreds of Oakland residents shared their ideas and created illustrations of what they want to see on the East 12th parcel. Not a single person mentioned or sketched a market-rate tower, and, in fact, for months, residents across Oakland expressed outrage at the idea of a luxury tower on public land. Even though there are several other proposals for the site, including a project that proposes a tower with some affordable housing tacked on in a separate unit, the reality is — and numerous housing and development experts have testified to this — any tower in Eastlake will exacerbate rising rents and increase displacement. No token inclusion of affordable housing units will change the fundamental and inevitable negative impacts of a luxury tower.

By partnering with the E 12th Coalition, the City of Oakland has the opportunity to establish and promote a replicable regional model of community, developer, and city collaboration for affordable housing on public land.

Our community coalition has offered up a solution to the City of Oakland. We used our volunteer time and resources to facilitate an inclusive public process. We ran the numbers to show our proposal is financially feasible, while meeting both the letter and the spirit of the Surplus Lands Act. We put together the design. We are partnering with a developer.

City of Oakland, it’s your turn to lead.

A Missed Opportunity

By any measure, Chris Magnus’ record as Richmond’s chief of police has been extraordinary. When he arrived in 2006, Richmond was still known as one of the most violent cities in the United States. But by 2014, that was no longer the case — not by a long shot. During Magnus’ tenure, violent crime in Richmond plummeted by 31 percent, and the number of homicides in the city dropped by an astonishing 74 percent — from 42 in 2006 to 11 last year.

But what was truly newsworthy about Magnus’ success was that he turned around Richmond using progressive policing techniques. He had no interest in so-called “tough-on-crime” tactics like stop-and-frisk, gang injunctions, and youth curfews, and instead embraced community policing, while holding police officers accountable for their actions. As a result, use-of-force complaints plunged, as did the number of officer-involved shootings. And as reporter John Geluardi noted in his news story in the Express last week, “Goodbye, Mr. Magnus,” the chief made improving relations between RPD and the community his top priority.

Indeed, Magnus’ remarkable record in Richmond provides compelling evidence that advocates of “getting tough on crime” have been wrong all along — and that progressives and civil rights advocates have been right. Magnus proved that the answer to a high crime rate is not to employ a police force that “cracks down” on the streets and harasses people because of where they live or the color of their skin, but rather treats citizens with dignity and respect and targets the actual lawbreakers.

Unfortunately, most politicians in the Bay Area (outside of Richmond) have yet to learn those lessons. Because if they had, then Magnus wouldn’t be heading to Tucson in January to take over that police department and instead would have been hired to turn around another one here, while lowering crime at the same time.

Magnus, for example, would have been a perfect fit for San Francisco — a city that badly needs a new top cop. The tenure of Chief Greg Suhr has been a disaster, rocked by numerous police officer misconduct scandals, including a few involving Suhr himself, and a stubbornly high crime rate. Moreover, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported in June, SFPD, under Suhr, has gotten worse in recent years when it comes to targeting people of color.

Likewise, San Jose could desperately use a chief like Magnus who holds cops accountable and prizes community policing and rigorous training. As the San Jose Mercury News reported in May, the San Jose Police Department has an extremely troubling record of racially profiling Latino residents in that city, stopping and searching them for no valid reason.

And while the Oakland Police Department has made some progress in recent years under Chief Sean Whent, it’s obvious that it, too, still has a long way to go — as evidenced by an in-depth story by the Chronicle last weekend. Reporter Joaquin Palomino (a former Express contributor) found that OPD is still stopping and searching innocent Black residents in large numbers and at wildly disproportionate rates. OPD often cites the vague legal standard of “reasonable suspicion” for stopping and searching Blacks who have done nothing wrong. Of people stopped for “reasonable suspicion” from September 2014 to September 2015, about 70 percent were Black, even though Blacks make up just 26.5 percent of Oakland’s population. Moreover, the vast majority of those stops resulted in no arrest and no discovery of contraband. Blacks in Oakland are also far more likely to be stopped, searched, and harassed for minor traffic violations and vehicle code infractions.

Civil rights attorney Jim Chanin, who keeps close tabs on OPD and is part of the oversight process of the department as a result of a federal consent decree, believes that OPD officers still need better training. He noted that while some Oakland cops have done a good job reducing the number of Blacks and Latinos they stop and search, others have not. “We have squads that are performing badly right next to squads that are performing well,” Chanin said. “That proves to me that there is still room for improvement.”

But as bad as Oakland still is, Berkeley is worse, Chanin said. And the numbers back up his assertion. In September, a coalition of groups, including the Berkeley NAACP, the ACLU of Berkeley, the National Lawyers Guild, the UC Berkeley Black Student Union, and Berkeley Copwatch released a data analysis showing that Berkeley police regularly engage in racial profiling. The statistics, which came from Berkeley PD, revealed that Black people accounted for 30 percent of all traffic stops and 56.6 percent of all searches in the city this year even though they make up just 8.4 percent of Berkeley’s residents. And even though Blacks are stopped and searched far more often, they’re much less likely to be arrested or cited. In other words, Berkeley police are harassing lots of Black people simply because of the color of their skin. “It’s like if you’re an African American walking around in Berkeley, the first reaction is, ‘Why are you here?'” Chanin said.

Berkeley, in short, could desperately use a progressive leader like Magnus. But instead, the city’s leadership is content with a department that racially profiles its citizens of color. Same goes for San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland.

And it’s painfully ironic that the leaders of a city in a red state like Arizona figured out that progressive policing is the answer — before the rest of the “liberal” Bay Area.

Correction: The orginal version of this story misstated the month in which the San Francisco Chronicle reported that the San Francisco Police Department, under Police Chief Greg Suhr, had gotten worse in recent years when it comes to targeting people of color. It was June 2015 — not July.

Free Will Astrology

Aries (March 21–April 19): “Charm is a way of getting the answer ‘yes’ without having asked any clear question,” wrote French author Albert Camus. I have rarely seen you better poised than you are now to embody and capitalize on this definition of “charm,” Aries. That’s good news, right? Well, mostly. But there are two caveats. First, wield your mojo as responsibly as you can. Infuse your bewitching allure with integrity. Second, be precise about what it is you want to achieve — even if you don’t come right out and tell everyone what it is. Resist the temptation to throw your charm around haphazardly.

Taurus (April 20–May 20): I suspect that in the coming days you will have an uncanny power to make at least one of your resurrection fantasies come true. Here are some of the possibilities. 1. If you’re brave enough to change your mind and shed some pride, you could retrieve an expired dream from limbo. 2. By stirring up a bit more chutzpah that you usually have at your disposal, you might be able to revive and even restore a forsaken promise. 3. Through an act of grace, it’s possible you will reanimate an ideal that was damaged or abandoned.

Gemini (May 21–June 20): To the other eleven signs of the zodiac, the Way of the Gemini sometimes seems rife with paradox and contradiction. Many non-Geminis would feel paralyzed if they had to live in the midst of so much hubbub. But when you are at your best, you thrive in the web of riddles. In fact, your willingness to abide there is often what generates your special magic. Your breakthroughs are made possible by your high tolerance for uncertainty. How many times have I seen a Gemini who has been lost in indecision but then suddenly erupts with a burst of crackling insights? This is the kind of subtle miracle I expect to happen soon.

Cancer (June 21–July 22): In September of 1715, a band of Jacobite rebels gathered for a guerrilla attack on Edinburgh Castle in Scotland. Their plan was to scale the walls with rope ladders, aided by a double agent who was disguised as a castle sentry. But the scheme failed before it began. The rope ladders turned out to be too short to serve their intended purpose. The rebels retreated in disarray. Please make sure you’re not like them in the coming weeks, Cancerian. If you want to engage in a strenuous action, an innovative experiment, or a bold stroke, be meticulous in your preparations. Don’t scrimp on your props, accouterments, and resources.

Leo (July 23–Aug. 22): If you give children the option of choosing between food that’s mushy and food that’s crunchy, a majority will choose the crunchy stuff. It’s more exciting to their mouths, a more lively texture for their teeth and tongues to play with. This has nothing to do with nutritional value, of course. Soggy oatmeal may foster a kid’s well-being better than crispy potato chips. Let’s apply this lesson to the way you feed your inner child in the coming weeks. Metaphorically speaking, I suggest you serve that precious part of you the kind of sustenance that’s both crunchy and healthy. In other words, make sure that what’s wholesome is also fun, and vice versa.

Virgo (Aug. 23–Sept. 22): Your mascot is a famous white oak in Athens, Georgia. It’s called the Tree That Owns Itself. According to legend, it belongs to no person or institution, but only to itself. The earth in which it’s planted and the land around it are also its sole possession. With this icon as your inspiration, I invite you to enhance and celebrate your sovereignty during the next seven months. What actions will enable you to own yourself more thoroughly? How can you boost your autonomy and become, more than ever before, the boss of you? It’s prime time to expedite this effort.

Libra (Sept. 23–Oct. 22): Police in Los Angeles conducted an experiment on a ten-mile span of freeway. Drivers in three unmarked cars raced along as fast as they could while remaining in the same lane. The driver of the fourth car not only moved at top speed, but also changed lanes and jockeyed for position. Can you guess the results? The car that weaved in and out of the traffic flow arrived just slightly ahead of the other three. Apply this lesson to your activities in the coming week, please. There will be virtually no advantage to indulging in frenetic, erratic, breakneck exertion. Be steady and smooth and straightforward.

Scorpio (Oct. 23–Nov. 21): You will generate lucky anomalies and helpful flukes if you use shortcuts, flee from boredom, and work smarter rather than harder. On the other hand, you’ll drum up wearisome weirdness and fruitless flukes if you meander all over the place, lose yourself in far-off fantasies, and act as if you have all the time in the world. Be brisk and concise, Scorpio. Avoid loafing and vacillating. Associate with bubbly activators who make you laugh and loosen your iron grip. It’s a favorable time to polish off a lot of practical details with a light touch.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22–Dec. 21): “Like all explorers, we are drawn to discover what’s out there without knowing yet if we have the courage to face it.” Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön said that, and now I’m telling you. According to my divinations, a new frontier is calling to you. An unprecedented question has awakened. The urge to leave your familiar circle is increasingly tempting. I don’t know if you should surrender to this brewing fascination. I don’t know if you will be able to gather the resources you would require to carry out your quest. What do you think? Will you be able to summon the necessary audacity? Maybe the better inquiry is this: Do you vow to use all your soulful ingenuity to summon the necessary audacity?

Capricorn (Dec. 22–Jan. 19): “Once I witnessed a windstorm so severe that two 100-year-old trees were uprooted on the spot,” Mary Ruefle wrote in her book Madness, Rack, and Honey. “The next day, walking among the wreckage, I found the friable nests of birds, completely intact and unharmed on the ground.” I think that’s a paradox you’d be wise to keep in mind, Capricorn. In the coming weeks, what’s most delicate and vulnerable about you will have more staying power than what’s massive and fixed. Trust your grace and tenderness more than your fierceness and forcefulness. They will make you as smart as you need to be.

Aquarius (Jan. 20–Feb. 18): Aztec king Montezuma II quenched his daily thirst with one specific beverage. He rarely drank anything else. It was ground cocoa beans mixed with chili peppers, water, vanilla, and annatto. Spiced chocolate? You could call it that. The frothy brew was often served to him in golden goblets, each of which he used once and then hurled from his royal balcony into the lake below. He regarded this elixir as an aphrodisiac, and liked to quaff a few flagons before heading off to his harem. I bring this up, Aquarius, because the coming weeks will be one of those exceptional times when you have a poetic license to be almost Montezuma-like. What’s your personal equivalent of his primal chocolate, golden goblets, and harem?

Pisces (Feb. 19–March 20): “Unfortunately, I’m pretty lucky,” my friend Rico said to me recently. He meant that his relentless good fortune constantly threatens to undermine his ambition. How can he be motivated to try harder and grow smarter and get stronger if life is always showering him with blessings? He almost wishes he could suffer more so that he would have more angst to push against. I hope you won’t fall under the spell of that twisted logic in the coming weeks, Pisces. This is a phase of your cycle when you’re likely to be the beneficiary of an extra-strong flow of help and serendipity. Please say this affirmation as often as necessary: “Fortunately, I’m pretty lucky.”

Ghost & the City: Off-the-Cuff Instrumentation and Astral Neo-Soul

Oakland neo-soul group Ghost & the City is given to unbridled improvisation, but its tracks often find their way back from off-the-cuff instrumentation to cohesive grooves. Throughout its recent releases, the band generously shows off its virtuosic abilities: Astral keys twinkle and rollicking drums thunder; trombones, trumpets, and saxophones frolic throughout. Singer Kia Fay anchors Ghost & the City’s compositions with her buttery vocals, and the group’s hooky lyrics lend a familiar pop structure to its unabashedly playful tracks.

Ash Maynor, a multi-instrumentalist and Ghost & the City’s chief songwriter, said in an interview that the project began as a loose collaboration with various musicians rather than a band with a clearly defined lineup. He started Ghost & the City after his indie pop group, Push to Talk, broke up in the late Aughts. Around that time, Maynor found himself with several unfinished song ideas and no ensemble. He originally envisioned Ghost & the City as a studio project. Well versed in guitar, bass, keyboards, and synth, he played many of the instruments himself on its first tracks and invited other musicians to record what he couldn’t accomplish alone.

“The first things we did — which were significantly different from what we do now — were done without us ever playing live or rehearsing or anything,” he explained. “It was literally built in the studio.”

Ghost & the City became a way for Maynor to channel his various musical inclinations into one body of work. While previously he had played guitar in several rock bands, he also has long been immersed in the local jazz scene and is currently the marketing director at Yoshi’s jazz club in Oakland. (“I’m around that world all day long so it kind of just comes out when we’re playing.”) He is also a longtime trip-hop fan who models his approach to making music after that of the British producer Tricky, an auteur who positions himself as a behind-the-scenes architect rather than the face of his sound.

As Ghost & the City’s music grew in popularity, Maynor recruited a more permanent cast of collaborators who now make up his live band — though, depending on the context, Ghost & the City might perform as anything from a duo to a sextet. He, Fay, and drummer Justin Silva are the core members of the group, although they frequently collaborate with keyboardist Molly Smart, trombone and trumpet player Liam Staskawicz, and tenor sax player Jesse Boley. The band’s dynamic live ensemble has helped it gain notoriety in the local music scene, and as a result, Ghost & the City has opened for well-known, touring-jazz-soul-hip-hop crossover acts such as The Internet (an off shoot of the hip-hop collective Odd Future) and Shabazz Palaces.

Fay became visibly flustered when she recalled opening for The Internet’s recent, sold-out show at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz. “If I can rap in front of members of Odd Future, I’m okay,” she giggled, describing how nervous she felt debuting Ghost & the City’s unreleased track, “Mosaic,” on stage.

Maynor and Fay met serendipitously several years ago when Fay’s previous band, Parentz, rehearsed across the hall from Ghost & the City’s practice space in Oakland’s Jack London district. Fay and Maynor became fast friends, and Maynor asked Fay to join the band after she volunteered to sing a cover of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” with him at a Halloween show.

“The confidence with which this girl said, ‘Yeah, I can sing Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller,”” Maynor reminisced, trailing off.

Fay quipped, “I used to have the Making of ‘Thriller’ tape on VHS that I used to watch a lot as a kid, so maybe that was where the confidence came from.”

Maynor had collaborated with other vocalists for Ghost & the City, but hadn’t found one that stuck around before Fay. While its previous EP, (Tet) Sessions, reflects the band’s jazz and Motown beginnings, its forthcoming release, Patchwork Soul — which drops January 15, 2016 — reins in the elaborate instrumentation in favor of more structured pop compositions.

“Steady Trippin,” the first single Ghost & the City released off of Patchwork Soul, is rhythmic and percussive, with Fay’s rich voice pirouetting over a staccato drum beat. As atmospheric keyboard phrases flesh out the prominent percussion, Staskawicz’ guttural trombone deviates from the smooth brass section, launching into several solos that sometimes coincide with Fay’s singing without ever overpowering her voice.

It might come as a surprise to listeners that Maynor pens the majority of Ghost & the City’s lyrics even though Fay is the lead vocalist. He admitted that although his lyrics are deeply personal, he prefers Fay’s delivery. “A lot of the time I’m thinking about how this girl is gonna sing it and how she’s gonna sell it,” he said of his songwriting process. “And a lot of the time she can sell it better than my little voice can do.” Still, Patchwork Soul has several tracks that feature Maynor’s singing, and his tense, suspenseful cadence adds a dark quality that’s sometimes missing in Fay’s jazzier style.

Most of the time, Maynor explained, he and Fay have an ongoing text message exchange while he pens her verses in which they send each other music and life updates. They agreed that, as a result, the lyrics Maynor comes up with often reflect both of their experiences. In the studio, Fay adjusts the verses to different vocal arrangements and makes them stylistically her own.

“Sometimes I’ll be writing stuff and I don’t need to explain to Kia where I’m coming from because she knows,” said Maynor.

“It’s my brother writing for me to so it makes sense, I guess,” Fay elaborated. “Now, it feels like I have a sense of agency and I’ve been part of it for long enough that, even if he’s written it, he’s been talking to me or texting me the entire time he’s writing about it. … Our brains are on the mind-fi.”

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that Ghost & the City opened for The Internet at the New Parish in Oakland when it was actually at The Catalyst in Santa Cruz.

The Sister Act

I’m a straight female in my mid-twenties. I’ve been dating a wonderful guy for two years — but I recently found something that has put me on edge. Before we met, he was in a relationship with a terrible, alcoholic, and mentally unstable woman. They got pregnant early in the relationship and stayed together for about five years. We met a year after they broke up. I felt like I’d come to terms with the ugliness of his past, with his trying to stay in a bad relationship for the sake of his child, and the rest of it. But recently, thanks to the vastness of the internet, I came across a suggestive photo of my boyfriend with his ex’s sister. I asked him about it, and he admitted to sleeping with her while he was with his ex. He says it was during a particularly bad period, he was very drunk, she made the first move, etc., but I’m just so grossed out. Cheating is one thing, but fucking your girlfriend’s sister? And it’s not like this was a 19-year-old’s mistake; he was near thirty and the father of a child. He also fudged a little about whether it was just one time or a few times. I feel like now I’m questioning his integrity. This is something that I wouldn’t have thought him capable of doing. What do I do?

All Twisted Up

What do you do? You ask yourself if you believe your boyfriend when he says fucking his then-girlfriend’s sister was a mistake, ATU, one he deeply regrets, and one he never intends to repeat. If you can’t be romantically involved with someone capable of doing such a terrible sister-fucking thing, the question is a rhetorical one. You’ll have to end the relationship regardless of the answer. But if you could stay with someone capable of doing such a terrible sister-fucking thing, and if you believe your boyfriend when he says it was a mistake, one he regrets, and won’t happen again, then you stay in the relationship.

And when you find yourself feeling squicked out by the knowledge that your boyfriend fucked around on his previous girlfriend with her own sister, you remind yourself that good and decent people sometimes do shitty, indecent, sister-fucking-ish things — and then you pause to consider all the shitty and/or indecent things you’ve done in your life, ATU, some, most, or all of which your boyfriend presumably remains blissfully unaware.

It’s too bad that suggestive/incriminating photo is rattling around out there in the vastness of the internet, ATU, but I’m curious about how exactly you “came across” it in the first place. If you went looking for dirt — if you were snooping — you found it. Congrats. I’m not against snooping in all instances. People often find out shit they had both a right and an urgent need to know: the BF/GF/NBF*/fiancé/spouse is cheating in a way that puts you at risk, they’re running up ruinous debts, they’re hiding a secret second family, they’re attending Donald Trump rallies, etc. But just as often, we find out shit we didn’t need to know — something in the BF/GF/NBF’s past, something they regret, something they’ll never do again (do you even have a sister?) — and can never unknow.

You learned that your boyfriend did something pretty fucked up. Whether you decide to stay or go, ATU, remember that you snoop at your own risk — sorry, remember that you explore “the vastness of the internet” at your own risk.

I’m a 37-year-old straight male in a relationship with a slightly older woman. I have a GGG girlfriend, and I am completely GGG — until we talk about having a MMF threesome. We have great sex and have experimented together. We tried playing with a couple to give her the “two-dick experience” she wanted, but the other man was of “average” size and she was not into it. I’m of average stature, and she made such a fuss of having someone extra large join in that it threw my hang-up about my size into overdrive. It’s paralyzed me sexually. I’m afraid she’ll leave me or run off looking to fulfill her need on her own.

Average Nerdy Guy Shunning Threesomes

If leaving you is the only way this woman can ever experience an above-average cock again, ANGST, then she might leave you. Depending on how important sitting on an above-average cock now and then is to her, your insecurities may create an incentive for her to leave you or cheat on you. But if she can have you and all the good times and the great GGG sex you two have together — if she can continue to enjoy your cock and the things it and you can do for her along with the occasional ride on an above-average cock — then you’ve created a massive incentive for her to stay.

How bad is chlamydia? My gynecologist left me a voice mail, and I am absolutely terrified. A quick Google search told me that it can cause infertility if left untreated — what it didn’t tell me is how long when left untreated before it causes infertility? I told my boyfriend of 10 months, and he seems very sane about it. But I am terrified that he’ll leave me. HELP!

Seriously Terrified Damsel

Some time has passed between your letter arriving and my response appearing in print — so here’s hoping you called your gynecologist back, STD, and got the download and the treatment you needed.

Quickly: Chlamydia is a common sexually transmitted infection (STI), men and women are equally at risk, it can be contracted through vaginal, anal, or oral intercourse. Your Google search was accurate: Left untreated, chlamydia can cause infertility in women. But you’re not going to leave it untreated, right? Fortunately, chlamydia is easily cured. Unfortunately, most people who have chlamydia aren’t aware they’re infected, as most infected people have no symptoms. That’s why it’s extremely important for all sexually active people — adults and adolescents — to get regular STI screenings.

Is your reproductive system already harmed? You’ll have to discuss that with your gynecologist, STD, who is in a far better position than I am to have a look inside you. As for your boyfriend: He needs to get tested and treated too, and if his last STI screening was more than a year ago, it’s possible he infected you and not the other way around. If your boyfriend leaves you over this — if he blames you for something he may be responsible for — then he’s not someone you want in your life or in your twat.

My younger brother outed me to our parents, our siblings, and our only living grandparent. I’m a straight woman and into bondage, SM, and kinky swinging — nothing outrageous — and I tried to keep this aspect of my sexuality (and my marriage) hidden. Things are fine now: Mom and Dad are mad at my brother, not me, and my siblings (save the fundamentalist) are over it. But I wanted to share my grandmother’s reaction: She called to tell me that my late grandfather liked to be tied up and spanked too and that their marriage (47 years!) was more fun for it.

Kink Isn’t New, Kiddo

That’s wonderful — and so true! Thanks for sharing.

* Nonbinary friend.

Company Behind Proposed Oakland Coal Terminal Is Growing Rapidly

Bowie Resource Partners, the Kentucky mining company behind plans to turn the Oakland waterfront into the largest coal export hub on the West Coast is rapidly expanding the number of mines it controls and the amount of coal it produces. On November 20, Bowie announced that it purchased three coal mines from Peabody Energy, the largest privately owned coal company in the world, for $358 million. The three new mines taken over by Bowie, which are located in New Mexico and Colorado, makes Bowie “the largest bituminous coal producer in the western United States,” according to a company press release, and will double Bowie’s coal production to 25 million tons a year.

Bowie already owns three coal mines in Central Utah and one in Colorado. In April, four Utah counties obtained tentative approval for a $53 million loan of Utah state funds to help finance construction of a bulk marine terminal at the Oakland Army Base redevelopment project. The money would ensure that Bowie has access to the Oakland marine terminal to ship its coal to overseas markets.

See also: Banking on Coal in Oakland
See also: Coal Attorneys Investigate Oakland City Council

[jump] But in Oakland there is significant opposition to the planned dedication of the marine terminal for coal exports. Environmental, labor, and community groups are asking the Oakland City Council to block the coal export plan because of health and safety concerns. The proposed terminal would be built on city property, giving the city significant say in the future of the project.

Bowie already exports about 5.7 million tons of coal each year from the ports of Stockton and Richmond, but capacity is limited at these locations, and for several years Bowie has sought a new location to grow its coal exports to Asia. In 2014, the Port of Oakland rejected a proposal from Bowie to build a massive coal export terminal at the Howard Terminal site in the Jack London district. Port commissioners cited the project’s environmental harms as the main reason for denying the request.

Bowie is a privately owned company formed specifically to buy out and grow coal mining operations in the western United States. Several major banks and private equity firms have been financing Bowie’s rapid growth, betting that the company will be able mine and sell increasing amounts of coal to both domestic and overseas customers. In 2013, Bowie bought its central Utah coal and Colorado mines using borrowed money from Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank. Last month’s purchase of three more coal mines in New Mexico and Colorado was funded in part by an infusion of cash from an unnamed private equity firm.

Bowie’s new, unnamed private equity owner replaces its existing private equity owner, a fund called the Galena Private Equity Resource Fund. Galena is owned by the multinational commodities trading corporation Trafigura, which is headquartered in the Netherlands. Under the deal announced last month, Bowie is no longer owned by Trafigura’s private equity fund Galena, but Trafigura remains in control of marketing Bowie’s coal exported from the US West Coast.

Advising Bowie on this complicated deal were lawyers from the Holland & Hart law firm. As I reported in October, the Holland & Hart law firm is investigating Oakland’s elected officials due to their opposition to coal exports.

Two Longtime Pizza Drivers Launch Delivery Service for Half-Baked Pizzas

Chris Horvath and Chris Ferreira would like to think they know a little something about delivering pizza. For more than sixteen years, the two worked as delivery drivers for Pizza Rustica, a popular pizzeria in Oakland’s Montclair neighborhood, both of them moonlighting to pay the bills while they pursued careers in the arts during their off hours — Horvath as a filmmaker, Ferreira as a musician.

It made sense that when Horvath and Ferreira decided to go into business on their own, they would start a pizza delivery service, albeit one with a few twists that they developed based on their years of experience.

[jump] The latest in a growing list of Bay Area-based food-delivery startups, Pizza Matador has built its entire business model around the premise that a partially baked pizza finished in the customer’s oven at home will always result in a hotter, fresher final product than a pizza that has been sitting inside an insulated hot box for twenty or thirty minutes. So that’s what Horvath and Ferreira sell, exclusively: eight or nine options that can be pre-ordered prior to 2 p.m. each day to be delivered in time for dinner, at the time of your choosing, as well as a single pizza of the day that can be delivered on demand each evening. The limited, Oakland-only delivery area currently goes from Montclair to the Temescal district.

In an interview, Horvath explained that the company aims to take advantage of a niche market — in this case, customers who want higher-quality pizza delivered to their home. While the East Bay has a wealth of excellent pizza, many of the restaurants that make it lack the means, or the interest, to offer delivery. Of course, there’s no shortage of pizzerias that do deliver, but most of these tend to be larger chains. With its use of organic ingredients and promise of on-demand delivery within fifteen minutes, Pizza Matador aims to fill that gap.

But in contrast to the bulk of today’s food startups, Pizza Matador is refreshingly low-tech. Although customers place orders online, there isn’t a fancy, GPS-powered app, and for now, the entire company is a two-man operation: During the day, Horvath and Ferreira assemble and partially bake the pizzas, wrapping them up in parchment paper, and in the evening, they drive around Oakland like madmen. If you’ve ordered from Pizza Matador, one of the chef-owners is the person who arrived at your doorstep.

Perhaps more than anything, this is what sets Pizza Matador apart. It is a pizza company that was started by, and has at its center, the people who at most restaurants are the most disposable, lowest-tier employees: the delivery drivers. Horvath said that even back when he was just the pizza driver, and not the owner of the pizzeria as well, he loved the challenge of figuring out how to sequence the ten deliveries he might have on a single run — to navigate complex hills and to always, always arrive on time. “It’s like playing a competitive sport,” Horvath said.

As the San Francisco Chronicle recently reported, several ongoing class-action lawsuits have brought the plight of on-demand delivery drivers — who don’t get the benefit of employee status and are often paid deceptively low wages — into sharper focus. In contrast, Horvath said that even when Pizza Matador’s business scales up to the point that he and Ferreira no longer do all the deliveries, he always wants it to be a company that treats its drivers well. After all, they are the literal face of the business.

As for the pizza, Horvath described it as being somewhat reminiscent of the California thin-crust style you’ll find at places like The Cheese Board and Arizmendi — though, unlike those two East Bay pizza icons, Pizza Matador’s three-day-fermented dough doesn’t have a sourdough base. If you pre-order from the full menu, you’ll always find at least a couple of “California-style” pizzas, topped with an abundance of seasonal organic produce and a slather of garlic-infused olive oil. Meanwhile, the company also offers traditional New York-style pies and, most uniquely, “Matador”-style pies that feature a nut- and red pepper-based romesco sauce, manchego cheese, and other Spanish ingredients.

But Horvath explained that the matador theme wasn’t the result of any particular affinity that he and Ferreira have for Spanish cooking per se. Instead, the name is equal parts inside joke and divine inspiration of sorts. One night, soon after he started his job at Pizza Rustica, Ferreira had a dream in which he and Horvath were real-life matadors dressed in full regalia. The two chain-smoked Gitanes while waiting to take their turn in the bullring — which, for some reason, was located next to the 7-Eleven on Piedmont Avenue.

According to Horvath, after that dream the two friends formed a romanticized connection between pizza drivers and matadors: “In our irony-warped minds, they were both equally cool, skilled, and dangerous.”

So, when it came time for Horvath and Ferreira to name their new delivery business, Pizza Matador was the obvious choice. The name had a kind of “Old World” connotation that was appealing, and perhaps more importantly, it pointed to the deftness and agility that a truly masterful delivery driver needs to possess. If the two have their way, and their driver-centric pizza business continues to thrive, perhaps we’ll all start looking at our delivery drivers with newfound respect. 

Efforts to End the Drug War Will Multiply in December

The holiday season is picking up steam, but efforts to dismantle the US Drug War and end the mass-incarceration epidemic aren’t slowing down.

Activists led by the group Marijuana Majority delivered 100,000 signatures calling for the resignation of the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration last week. The petition started after DEA head Chuck Rosenberg called medical marijuana a “joke”.

“There is no doubt in my mind that my son Jagger is still alive today because of medical cannabis,” stated Sebastien Cotte, whose son uses marijuana extracts to reduce severe pain and seizures, said at a press conference in front of DEA. “For our family, that’s no joke.”



[jump]
Congressmember Barbara Lee joined in, stating: “The Acting Administrator’s comments are simply inappropriate. California, Washington, DC, Guam, and 22 other states have medical marijuana laws and these laws must be respected. The federal government should not trivialize medicine nor should it be in the business of creating barriers between patients and their medicine.”

Rosenberg’s comments are especially galling in light of the government’s role in “worst drug overdose epidemic in [US] history” — the opioid overdose epidemic. About 2 million Americans are addicted, and the gateway drug was FDA-approved pills

The Change.org petition to fire Rosenberg has swollen to 125,000 signatures.

###

Also in Washington DC — the politics of the purse continues from last year.

Los Angeles Congressmember Ted Lieu has moved to de-fund the DEA’s grossly ineffective marijuana eradication program.

The United States has spent hundreds of millions of dollars over decades pulling millions of pot plants out of the ground, which only encouraged high-potency indoor pot production, as well as the development of far more dangerous “synthetic” marijuana street drugs.


The Washington Post reports: “Last week a group of 12 House members led by Ted Lieu of California wrote to House leadership to push for a provision in the upcoming spending bill that would strip half of the funds away from the DEA’s Cannabis Eradication Program, and put that money toward programs that “play a far more useful role in promoting the safety and economic prosperity of the American people” (ie domestic violence prevention and overall spending reduction efforts).”

The DEA’s weeding operations cost $18 million per year, and it’s complete drug war theater. It does nothing to change the game for cannabis prohibition.

“More recently, overzealous marijuana eradicators have launched heavily-armed raids on okra plants, and warned the Utah legislature of the threat posed by rabbits who had “cultivated a taste for the marijuana.” Last year the DEA spent an average of roughly $4.20 (yes, really) for each marijuana plant it successfully uprooted. In some states, the cost to taxpayers approached $60 per uprooted plant.”
The same de-funding provision passed on voice vote earlier this year without opposition from either party. Next year, Rep. Lieu will work to eradicate the program completely.

###

Also in DC, Barbara Lee and Congressmembers Sam Farr and Dana Rohrabacher again are urging Department of Justice Attorney General Loretta Lynch to back off of Harborside Health Center.

Congress not only de-funded the DOJ’s war on medical cannabis last year, but a federal judge upheld the Congressional law in a precedent-setting case against Lynnette Shaw, then California fully regulated medical cannabis. 

“The will of both voters at the ballot box and in state legislatures across the country should be respected,” the Congressmembers wrote. “It is counterproductive and economically prohibitive to continue a path of hostility toward dispensaries.”

###

And in one more front: the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol in Massachusetts will submit final petition signatures today at 1 p.m. Massachusetts will be among a half-dozen states attempting to legalize adult-use cannabis in 2016. Medical marijuana laws are also likely to spread to Florida, Pennsylvania, and other states.

Tuesday Must Reads: Gov. Brown’s Top Oil and Gas Official Quits; Boxer and Feinstein Call for an End to Toxic Rhetoric About Planned Parenthood

Stories you shouldn’t miss:

1. Steve Bohlen, the top oil and gas regulator in Jerry Brown’s administration who was under fire for allegedly giving special treatment to the governor, announced his resignation, the AP reports (via the Trib$). Brown had ordered Bohlen to provide detailed information about the potential for oil drilling on the governor’s private ranch in the Sacramento Valley — a move that raised questions as to whether Brown was illegally using state resources for personal gain. Bohlen also had admitted that Brown was furious with him for putting the information in an email, because it could become public.

2. California Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein are calling for an end to “poisonous” rhetoric concerning Planned Parenthood, in the wake of the mass shooting on Friday by a white, right-wing terrorist in Colorado, the LA Times$ reports. Anti-abortion Republicans, however, have no plans to scuttle their efforts to defund Planned Parenthood.


[jump] 3. State Senator Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, plans to reintroduce a bill that would limit the use of solitary confinement for youth offenders to no more than four hours at a time, the Chron$ reports. Research shows that solitary confinement can be severely damaging to youth, but Leno’s bill died in the Assembly last year after facing fierce opposition from law enforcement groups.

4. The Port of Oakland is embarking on a $13.95 million project to raise the height of four cranes in order to accommodate large cargo ships, Bay City News reports (via the Trib$). The port will lengthen the legs on existing cranes.

5. And Californians failed to save sufficient amounts of water to meet the governor’s 25-percent cutback mandate in October, the AP reports (h/t Rough & Tumble). Officials say it was likely because of warmer-than-normal weather during the month.

ReEntry

In the Bay Area, the experience of serving in the military is not a topic that often makes its way into casual conversation. But the newest production by Gritty City Repertory (GCR), entitled ReEntry, aims to offer a nuanced characterization of the experience of returning to civilian life after having served. GCR is a youth theater company and nonprofit with a cast made up entirely of at-Oakland high school students. And it doesn’t skirt topics that are difficult to digest. Through a cast of varied characters, from the wounded soldier to the commanding officer, ReEntry bravely tackles experiences of trauma and post-trauma re-assimilation. And in doing so, it offers a thoughtful analog for wars happening in Oakland’s own neighborhoods. “Oakland is a beautiful, diverse, vibrant city with a high-crime rate,” said Lindsay Krumbein, GCR’s founder and executive director, in a statement about the show. “Young people of color are disproportionately impacted. All kinds of studies show that the rate of PTSD in inner-city residents is as high or higher than that of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan war veterans.” ReEntry opens at the Flight Deck (1540 Broadway, Oakland) on December 3 at 8 p.m. and will continue through December 12.

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Two Longtime Pizza Drivers Launch Delivery Service for Half-Baked Pizzas

Longtime pizza delivery drivers Chris Ferreira and Chris Horvath. Credits: Pizza Matador Chris Horvath and Chris Ferreira would like to think they know a little something about delivering pizza. For more than sixteen years, the two worked as delivery drivers for Pizza Rustica, a popular pizzeria in Oakland’s Montclair neighborhood, both of them moonlighting to pay the bills while they pursued...

Efforts to End the Drug War Will Multiply in December

The holiday season is picking up steam, but efforts to dismantle the US Drug War and end the mass-incarceration epidemic aren’t slowing down. Activists led by the group Marijuana Majority delivered 100,000 signatures calling for the resignation of the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration last week. The petition started after DEA head Chuck Rosenberg called medical marijuana...

Tuesday Must Reads: Gov. Brown’s Top Oil and Gas Official Quits; Boxer and Feinstein Call for an End to Toxic Rhetoric About Planned Parenthood

Stories you shouldn’t miss: 1. Steve Bohlen, the top oil and gas regulator in Jerry Brown’s administration who was under fire for allegedly giving special treatment to the governor, announced his resignation, the AP reports (via the Trib$). Brown had ordered Bohlen to provide detailed information about the potential for oil drilling on the governor’s private ranch in the Sacramento Valley...

ReEntry

In the Bay Area, the experience of serving in the military is not a topic that often makes its way into casual conversation. But the newest production by Gritty City Repertory (GCR), entitled ReEntry, aims to offer a nuanced characterization of the experience of returning to civilian life after having served. GCR is a youth theater company and nonprofit...
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