#sfgate

[pruesgaultier]

DOVESSO + UPDATED SOCIALS

in honor of my 1 year anniversary of the og post

[soapdispensersalesman]

[nerdsworld]

What did you sacrifice to go see Barbie? 👛🍧

This writer apparently sacrificed the comfort of his behind,went and saw BOTH the Barbie and Oppenheimer movie.

Thank you,Drew 💋

Saturday

07.22.2023

Update:

🍧👛🍧👛🍧👛🍧👛🍧👛🍧👛🍧👛🍧👛💋

[california-slow-take]

“I would speculate that he saw it as a city that symbolized the kind of tensions and optimistic future that he wanted to depict in ‘Star Trek,’” Bernardi says. “... Different people — different aliens, in other words — coming together, struggling together, on a ship, i.e., San Francisco.”

Over the decades, “Star Trek” has returned to and expanded upon its version of San Francisco. Helmsman Hikaru Sulu, played by George Takei, was born in the city. The original starship Enterprise was canonically built at the Mare Island shipyard. In 2161, the Charter of the United Federation of Planets was signed in San Francisco, just as the Charter of the United Nations was signed here in 1945, another San Francisco fact that may have endeared Roddenberry to the city. 

The Golden Gate Bridge has been destroyed and rebuilt in the series. When the crew of the Discovery visits 32nd century Earth, it makes a point of visiting Starfleet Academy in what looks like the Marin Headlands to hug a tree. And, in what I would argue is the absolute best “Star Trek” movie, the cast of the original series lands a Klingon ship in Golden Gate Park and spends 122 minutes gallivanting around 1980s San Francisco in order to bring a pair of whales to the future. (Though you, like me, might scream at the screen when Kirk and Spock walk through a “Sausalito” that is clearly the Presidio as they discuss how they’re going to get back to San Francisco.)

[transpondster]

[posttexasstressdisorder]

Welp, the first big “arm” of rain is pretty much past us now.  Wind is absolutely crazy.  Gusts of 85mph!  Was sitting at the kitchen table with roomie and his son, eating some lentil soup I’d made, and the first gust just whipped the building so bad it flapped all the screens on the windows/screendoors, and felt almost like an earthquake up here on the 3rd floor, it hit with such force the whole building shook!  I’m charging up phone/flashlight batts in case we lose power.  So far, no problems.  I went out to run an errand at 3pm and there was nobody out.  Hadn’t really started raining yet, at that point. 

[angrybell]

So this is from today’s SFGate. Why? They’re really asking “why?” like it’s truly unknown.

Because downtown is a shithole of homeless encampments, drug dealing, and other assorted crime. The SFPD is ineffective. The SFDA, despite the change at the top with recall of Boudin, is pale shadow of what prosecution office should be.

Add to that the ridiculous cost of the condos, the restrictions on driving downtown, and combine that with Muni which is never approaching it’s on time goals despite ever increasing salaries and benefits to its employees .

What they should be asking is why the condos are still priced like it’s 2007 or 2019, before people realized what a dump and bad deal living downtown is. All the people who had the liquidity and ability to have moved out of those condos because they realize those little boxes they paid so much for are only fun as long as you can leave them. They’re nicely appointed jail cells when the city and state decides to shut everything down - except for the politically connected - because of a virus that people usually survive, even without a vaccine.

[conexaoamerica]

Glimmers of gold amidst the gray ➢ Credit 👉🏆📸 @68cherokeeflyer . . . ➢ Follow 👉 🇺🇸@conexao.america for more photos and movies about United States 🇺🇸 . . . ➢ Alliance @america_states @enjoy_la_ @latinbrazil . . . ➢ ✈ Mark your photo with tag #conexaoamerica or @conexao.america and we'll post it! . . . . #sanfrancisco #california #goldengate #sfgate #bridge #goldengatebridge #bayarea #baybridge #lombardstreet #miami #usa #washington #newyork #boston #la #losangeles #streetsofsf #sfstreets #visitcalifornia #sfbayarea #onlyinsf #lombard (em San Francisco, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpqYpXUPI_b/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[pruesgaultier]

DOVESSO + VALENTINE’S DAY POSTS

[cormancatacombs]

Photo taken in 1905 of a person wearing a ghost costume in a rural schoolhouse.

[california-slow-take]

Cee told me that they believe that people go to Burning Man because they experience “something transformative” — the same thing that “deep meditators” and “people on mushrooms” experience. They call it “pure consciousness experience.” 

“You can have that anywhere,” they told me. People think they have to purchase a $700 ticket and travel hundreds of miles, they said, “but that's an illusion.” 

It’s hard not to wonder if “Burning a Man,” in its DIY, trademark-dodging glory, channels the original spirit of Burning Man. The event started out as a beach gathering in the 1980s — only a few miles away from the site of “Burning a Man,” at Baker Beach. Like the original Burns, “Burning a Man” is unofficial, unauthorized, and unregulated. 

In the future, “these regional burns will take over,” said Marshall Smith, 77, a retired city employee living in Russian Hill. “I think the whole thing in Nevada’s getting unsustainable, so you’ll see more of this going on all over the place.”

[msclaritea]

"Movie lovers were supposed to breathe a sigh of relief last week when Warner Bros. Discovery announced the un-firing of Turner Classic Movies head programmer, Charles Tabesh. This move was in response to a deafening howl of outrage from a passionate community that, increasingly devoid of quality options at the multiplexes, cherishes the long-running cable channel as a vital outlet for intelligent, well-crafted adult fare from a time when cinema ruled the entertainment roost. It kinda did the trick. Knowing Tabesh, one of the most respected film programmers in the world, would still be around to complement beloved classics with the deepest of cinema cuts meant TCM wouldn't become the "Casablanca"-every-other-day channel.

WB Discovery also continued to hype the programming/curation input of Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson — which is a terrific PR win for embattled CEO David Zaslav but does little to move the needle outside of the industry. It's actually more heartening to know that creative oversight of TCM has shifted from Discovery veteran Kathleen Finch to Warner Bros. Pictures honchos Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. You'd much rather have the genuine film buff who greenlit "Seven," "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" co-leading TCM than a reality-show-driven exec who lists "90 Day Fiancé" as one of her proudest artistic achievements.

But De Luca and Abdy are movie people tasked with restoring Warner Bros. Pictures to its former glory by making movies. They don't have time to manage TCM, nor does the Spielberg/Scorsese/PTA triumvirate. So if this group is genuinely committed to the survival of the cable network, and venerating the studio's vast, varied library, they've got one screamingly obvious option that'll allow cinephiles the world over to exhale.

A wolf in a movie buff's clothing

Warner Bros

If Zaslav is the classic film fan he repeatedly claims to be, he should be familiar with the observation, "It's no trick to make a lot of money, if all you want to do is make a lot of money." This saying applies to saving money as well.

Zaslav, who inherited a debt-ridden WarnerMedia when the company merged with his thriving Discovery, is currently in slash-and-burn mode to please shareholders and, perhaps, make the studio flippable somewhere in the near-ish future. Per his company's own PR, he's personally due nine-figure compensation if he more than doubles the company's stock price. So he's doing the easy part first: firing as many people as possible, and selling off assets (like half of its music, film and television catalogue).

It's filthy business, but Zaslav has his Hamptons reputation to worry about. Still, as ruthless as he promised to be when he seized control of WarnerMedia, he assured movie lovers that he was one of us. He valued WB's history. He fell in love with movies as a regular, middle-class kid growing up in Brooklyn, and dreamed of running a studio. He works from Jack Warner's desk in his office, where TCM is always playing in the background. He spoke at last April's TCM Classic Film Festival (alongside Spielberg and PTA), and assured the audience the channel's future was secure.

Prioritizing vanity projects

Warner Bros.

His first greenlight after the merger was to blow the dust off of Hamptons lunch-buddy Nicholas Pileggi's "Wise Guys," a gangster project that had been kicking around the studios since the early 1970s; attaching Barry Levinson as director (who hasn't made a commercially successful film since 1997's "Wag the Dog") puzzled several industry insiders with whom I've spoken. It was old Hollywood chumminess that reeked of rich white-guy back-slapping, and this was before Zaslav erased Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah's already finished "Batgirl" movie. Shot on an apparent $50 million budget, the film is in post-production, and has a slated release date of February 2, 2024, although that could always change.

So when Zaslav cleaned house in June by firing five of TCM's top execs, while slashing the staff from somewhere around 90 to around 20, cinephiles were furious. You don't need an MBA to know that a personnel cut that deep is meant to hobble, not sustain. Zaslav didn't care; however, his Hamptons buddy, Steven Spielberg, didn't appreciate being used as a rubber stamp at the TCM Fest. A Zoom call was arranged, which resulted in an empty press release assuring viewers that the three aforementioned filmmakers would mind the short-staffed store. When absolutely no one bought this, Tabesh was reinstalled as head programmer.

Zaslav must make TCM whole again

Warner Bros

Though I'm amused that Zaslav has turned Tabesh into a rock star amongst movie lovers, he is but one man. Tabesh can't do what he's done so brilliantly alone. He needs a team steeped in every facet of film history to help him track down and license those obscure titles that nourish our desire for, ironically, discovery. Basically, he needs everyone Finch and Zaslav axed.

On a practical, strictly corporate level, this should not happen. TCM is currently only available on cable (streaming-wise, no one associated with the channel has anything to do with that embarrassingly shallow hub on Max), and cable is speeding toward total obsolescence. Its 70% profit margin is evidently meaningless to Warner Bros Discovery. If Zaslav hadn't so shamelessly dampened Spielberg's backside over the years, TCM could've easily been shuttered last year.

According to a recent Hollywood Reporter article by Kim Masters, Zaslav underestimated the widespread industry love for TCM (even Ryan Reynolds leaped into the fray). But what jumped out to me in that piece is that he was most miffed that outsiders "were telling him how to run his business," which is not the sentiment of a chastened man. Indeed, that he's still holding firm on the decimation of TCM's staff — which, to give you a sense of the petty scope of this brouhaha, was hastened by a $3 million cut in the channel's budget — suggests that he's still determined to win this battle. And if that's all he wants, TCM is living on borrowed time.

You bought it, you honor it

Warner Bros

What's his endgame? My most charitable read is that he'd like to have a boutique outlet that flaunts his prestigious industry connections, e.g. Scorsese presents "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre." This is where the directors he supposedly worships need, as gently as possible, to remind him that in acquiring WB, he became a steward of Hollywood history. Name-dropping a handful of black-and-white movies as evidence of his love for classic cinema won't get it done. Sitting at Jack Warner's desk is the emptiest of gestures if you're disinterested in sharing his studio's output with the public.

TCM is small potatoes financially, but, as a reflection of the company's dedication to the art that made it what it is today, it's invaluable. You re-staff, eat that $3 million, and declare the channel off-limits. You run it at a (presumably minuscule) loss if need be. If Zaslav does this one, culturally good thing, and once he pays his writers what they're worth, his legacy might not be a disaster in the long term (though I know the short term is where his CEO ilk lives). He also might actually earn the love he seeks from the directors he purports to adore (which will make it so much easier for De Luca and Abdy to lure Christopher Nolan back into the fold, not to mention build out the studio's stable of top-tier filmmakers).

This isn't easy in our fiercely risk-averse age. Because while it's no trick to make a lot of money, it takes vision and fearlessness to make a lot of good movies. It is, however, financially feasible to show a lot of great movies 24/7 on TCM. 

Probably costs less than a summer of fine dining in the Hamptons — and, uh, which card are we using out there, David? Because that's an easy snip..."

Zaslav & Crew are deliberately killing 1000s of Hollywood jobs to hurt the economy and Zaslav gets rewarded with an Academy of Motion Pictures membership.

Academy officers[69]

President – Janet Yang

Vice president – Teri E. Dorman

Vice president / Secretary – Donna Gigliotti

Vice president – Lynette Howell Taylor

Vice president – Larry Karaszewski

Vice president / Treasurer – David Linde

Vice president – Isis Mussenden

Vice president – Kim Taylor-Coleman

Vice president – Wynn P. Thomas

Chief executive officer – Bill Kramer

Governors[69]

Actors Branch – Whoopi Goldberg, Marlee Matlin, Rita Wilson

Casting Directors Branch – Richard Hicks, Kim Taylor-Coleman, Debra Zane

Cinematographers Branch – Dion Beebe, Paul Cameron, Mandy Walker

Costume Designers Branch – Ruth E. Carter, Eduardo Castro, Isis Mussenden

Directors Branch – Susanne Bier, Ava DuVernay, Jason Reitman

Documentary Branch – Kate Amend, Chris Hegedus, Jean Tsien

Executives Branch – Pam Abdy, Donna Gigliotti, David Linde

Film Editors Branch – Nancy Richardson, Stephen E. Rivkin, Terilyn A. Shropshire

Makeup Artists and Hairstylists Branch – Howard Berger, Bill Corso, Linda Flowers

Marketing and Public Relations Branch – Megan Colligan, Laura Kim, Christina Kounelias

Music Branch – Lesley Barber, Charles Bernstein, Charles Fox

Producers Branch – Jason Blum, Lynette Howell Taylor, Jennifer Todd

Production Design Branch – Tom Duffield, Missy Parker, Wynn P. Thomas

Short Films and Feature Animation Branch – Bonnie Arnold, Jon Bloom, Marlon West

Sound Branch – Gary C. Bourgeois, Peter J. Devlin, Teri E. Dorman

Visual Effects Branch – Rob Bredow, Brooke Breton, Paul Debevec

Writers Branch – Larry Karaszewski, Howard A. Rodman, Eric Roth

Governors-at-large[29] (nominated by the President and elected by the board) – DeVon Franklin, Rodrigo García, Janet Yang

[questioningespecialy]

Fact Check!~ 🥳

Got curious about the numbers, so here's a fact check from SFGate. Here's Business Insider's article if you'd prefer it, and here's Burning Man's tickets site for those interested.

Everything below is a direct quote.

Partially overlapping with Labor Day weekend, Burning Man 2023 will take place Aug. 27 to Sept. 4.

Burning Man tickets: $575 to $2,750

Burners paid a premium to get their hands on the first-release FOMO sale tickets in February, when they sold for as much as $2,750 apiece. At that price, you can think of Burning Man tickets as costing about $305 per day, because all tickets cover the entire nine days of festivities, regardless of how many days you plan to be there.

One more ticket release, the OMG Sale, is currently scheduled for Burning Man 2023. Registration closed on July 28 and the sale starts at 12 p.m. on Aug. 2. Those tickets cost $575 (about $64 per day).

There is no difference in the pricing tiers, in terms of what you get. All tickets grant the same level of access.

Parking: $150

In addition to buying tickets, you’ll need a $150 vehicle pass displayed on your dashboard to get into Black Rock City. Motorcycles and towed vehicles don’t need a pass. (...)

You can't drive your regular car around Black Rock City, and new restrictions are in place this year for electric bikes.

Camp fees: $0 to $5,000 and up

Most attendees attend Burning Man as part of a "camp," a collective of people who band together for the duration of the event. (...)

Those who are volunteering or doing work for the camp may pay a lower rate, for instance. Other factors that can drive up the costs include an accessible bathroom or shower at the camp or contributions to the camp's art.

Supplies: Varying costs

Online you can find comprehensive packing lists, like Burner List, which recommends bringing things like water, hydration backpacks, lip balm with SPF, moist towelettes for cleaning the grit off your face, goggles for sandstorms and a backup set of keys in case your original set gets lost in the sand.

Daniela Pauli, of New York City, attended Burning Man in 2018, splitting RV expenses with a group, and she estimates she spent $4,000 — which would have the same buying power as $4,840 today, when adjusted for inflation.

Bike rental: From $100 

Burning Man is a BYOB (bring your own bike) event and you’ll probably want a set of wheels to get around because the playa is a vast place. 

Transportation: $100 to $710

About 120 miles from Black Rock City, Reno is the last major metro for many en route to Burning Man. 

Car cleaning: From $100

PSA: You need to do a good deep clean of your car as soon as you leave the playa. The alkaline dust can corrode your electronics and damage your upholstery, according to post-playa tips from the Burning Man Project, the nonprofit organization that runs the festival.

Total cost: Anywhere from roughly $1,000 to $10,000

Depending on which tickets you snag, how you get to the playa, who you camp with, whether you park or use a bike and what type of supplies you need, you can expect to spend, at minimum, about $1,000 to attend Burning Man 2023.

Seeing the notes on posts about the Burning Man Debacle™ and for fucks sake I am taking the phrase 'eat the rich' away from y'all until you can CORRECTLY IDENTIFY the rich

Rich is 'arrived by way of their private jet', is 'dropped $500k on a submarine ticket', is '$500 is a rounding error'.

'$500 dollars for a nine day event they must all be rich white people' no you reactionary rotten potato that is actually an entirely reasonable price for an entirely normal person to pay for an annual event! $500 over the course of a year is approximately equivalent to one big takeout a month! Being able to afford that doesn't make you rich it makes you probably not poor! The 'rich or poor' narrative is a false dichotomy that completely excludes the fact that 'richness' or 'poorness' is a SCALE! It's not fucking categorical! You don't one day magically flip a switch and go from 'poor' to 'rich' or vice versa you see incremental changes over time! Wealth distribution is a (these days, admittedly, rather wonky) motherfucking BELL CURVE! . The fact that capitalism is driving more and more people to either extreme of said curve is just evidence of a broken system, but it doesn't change the fact that most people should have a decent amount of disposable income!

The fact that many people don't have said disposable income doesn't magically make the ones that do 'rich' it makes everyone else poor. And the people at fault for the massive and growing percentage of people living below the poverty line are not the ones managing to stay above it, it's the fault of the actually rich, the ones stealing our time and our health and our wages and our future in pursuit of a number on a screen. And the rich are the only people you're helping by hating the people struggling slightly less than you.

When it comes time to 'eat the rich' you're going to be murdering dentists and librarians and scientists while the actually rich point and laugh from a safe distance as you solve their problems for them.

[sanfrnacisconow]

Amazing Sunrise, San Francisco. … Great photo by @jmisterjayphotography … #jmisterjayphotography #streetsofsf #wildbayarea #sfgate #sanfrancisco #sanfran #mysanfrancisco #sanfrancisco_now #sanfranciscobay #sanfranciscocity #sfbayarea #justshoot #chasingsunrise #sunrisephotography #pier39 #bluehour #urbanandstreet #streetsvision #baybridge #thinkverylittle #7x7bayarea #dothebay #urbanromantix (at San Francisco, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CoU4RSAID28/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[sanfranciscoblog]

We're not through this yet.

A parade of storms is expected to bring more rain and wind to Northern California and the San Francisco Bay Area into early next week and likely even leading into the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. Flooding, fallen trees, power lines, mud slides and rock slides will continue to be a concern.

"We’re going to stay wet," Cindy Palmer, a forecaster with the weather service told SFGATE. "The storms are lined up right now. The Wednesday storm was one in a series. It’s a series of storms, one right after another, at least through the next seven days if not more than that."