Cantara’s (Social) Notebook

I knew Spain Rodriguez about 17 years ago back when the Mission District of San Francisco was a vibrant arts scene. He was teaching comic book drawing at the Mission Cultural Center and my son and I were in his class. By then this was long past his wild man underground days—he’d settled down with a wife and young daughter by this time—but there was still the fire of the rebel motorcyclist in him then, especially in his clashes with the Center’s dunderhead administrators. And that fire is still there. Spain’s latest book, Che: A Graphic Biography , is about another rebel on a motorcycle, the Argentinian-born revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and may be the most thrilling story in author-editor-radical historian Paul Buhle’s People's History Series. Here’s Spain, looking very much like he did back in the early 90s, talking about why the legacy of Che is more important than ever. SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____

We watched the pilot of Glee last night. Michael walked out of the room, but I loved it. My first boyfriend got me to love Bob Dylan. Michael taught me to love classic rock. I always loved show tunes on my own. Here’s the anthem of my generation , “Don’t Stop Believing”, which I’m proud to claim sprang from the great classic rock tradition of San Francisco, the City That Is No More. Oh baby, you don’t know what it was like here in the 70s. It was INCREDIBLE. I’ll tell you all about it later. I'm going to get damned elegaic about it.

Consider this a companion photo to “ A Doisneau Moment ”.

[Legenary columnist Herb Caen (1916-1997)] As I write this, an earthquake just shook the Bay Area. While we could feel our third-floor Ocean Beach apartment shaking, tweeters on my Twitter page were checking in: “We just had an earthquake in Half Moon Bay. I estimate about 5.0”—“Lasted a couple seconds here in Russian Hill”—“Just felt a short 4.4 earthquake in our Mill Valley office”—“at my place in lower haight. didn’t feel the quake”. If Herb Caen , God rest his soul, were still around and writing, we wouldn’t have had a chance to read his thoughts on the quake until the following morning, his boss the Chronicle being a morning paper. Yet here we all are on Twitter and Blogger, getting the scoop and filing our stories for our handfuls (or more?) of readers.

God, I love this picture. Young love in springtime, San Francisco style. SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____

Sean Penn as Harvey Milk After we were refused seats with an unobstructed view at the so-called “People’s Premiere” at the Castro Theater, a couple we know who are Academy members were kind enough to let Michael and me watch a screener of Milk in their very comfortable home screening room. What is there more to say about a film that has as much relevance as ever? In 1978 there was the fight against Proposition 6—the infamous Briggs Initiative —Harvey Milk’s shining moment in his too-short political career. Now there’s Proposition 8, only no Harvey to show us how to fight. Four bullets took Harvey from us and three decades of AIDS took away the leaders we might have had. SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____

On the Monday after Thanksgiving, the 27th of November, 1978, a good-looking weenie named Dan White changed the face of San Francisco politics forever. Stupid, short-sighted, self-centered little creep. Never use family duty as an excuse to act out unjustly or destructively. Never . This clip is the NBC news from City Hall. The assassinations of Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Milk were heartbreaking, but the non-stop demonstration of rage (The White Night Riots) after the verdict came in (seven years!? for two murders!!? Twinkies !!!?) was like a revitalizing tonic. The ancient philosophers taught us that if we must rage, that we rage correctly. Put that in your box when you’re packing up your office, Richard Raddon . SUBSCRIBE TO MY OCCASIONAL NEWSLETTER. CLICK HERE. _____

Barbary Coast Prostitutes Ah, San Francisco, the erotic playground of America. Home to proud, dynamic sex workers like Margo St James, Sally Stanford, Scarlet Harlot. And, in the last few decades, home to a host of sex-positive movements with a political bent. The latest, a drive to introduce a ballot measure in the city’s upcoming election, is being championed by the three year-old Erotic Service Providers Union (ESPU). Its success in November will mean millions of dollars in savings to the city—and the end of a cash cow for one local non-profit agency. If voters approve the measure, the SFPD would be prohibited—in the absence of any other crime they might be perpetrating, and regardless of whether they are indoors (in a club or massage parlor, for example) or outdoors (on the street, in a park)—from arresting people simply for asking for, or offering, sex in exchange for money. It's somewhat akin to the “blind eye” attitude city police have been directed to take, since the ...

Vivian and Marian Brown, San Francisco There are only two cities in the world where women are allowed to grow old beautifully. One is Paris, the other is San Francisco. There is a misconception that you need a lot of cash to look good—the older you get, the more cash you need. Nothing of the sort. You need know-how and a sense of self. The women of Paris know how to tie a scarf seventeen ways. They start their style from their cheekbones. They know when to wear and when not to wear their grandmother’s brooch. They know how to wring Hollywood art out of a drugstore lipstick. Artistry, then, is the operative word for the women of Paris—artistry that accentuates depth. Here in the city by the Bay, along with knowhow and sense of self—those two most important rewards of maturity—another important element is added: a sense of fun. Conformity like a dank fog may be settling here like everywhere else in the country, but San Francisco is still a city of eccentrics. There’s no dressin...