Weirdest classes you can take in San Fran

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Weirdest classes you can take in SF

If you want to learn a new skill and “basic” is a swear word in your vocabulary, San Francisco has you covered in classes you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else. Why bother with a simple yoga class when you can practice it with kittens? Why take a ho-hum ballroom dancing class when you can join a six-week course geared around a single Rihanna video, then perform it live? Check out the gallery above for some of the weirdest, most unusual, and quirkiest classes you’ll find in and around SF.

Big drops in urban water use, state finds

Californians are saving an extraordinary amount of water, new records show, even after winter rains prompted state regulators to begin easing drought-driven restrictions on cities and towns. The State Water Resources Control Board reported Wednesday that urban water use dropped 28.2 percent in May compared with the same period in 2013 — the second-biggest monthly reduction since the state’s water rationing program began last year. […] many water agencies have passed the state’s new “stress test” and are no longer required to save water under a policy being praised by suppliers and criticized by conservationists. The state water board loosened its conservation policy this spring in response to complaints from local water providers who said near-normal rain and snow last winter gave a sufficient boost to supplies. Nine of the state’s 10 largest water suppliers, including the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and East Bay Municipal Utility District, said they met the state’s supply requirement and consequently do not have to commit to any savings. The change has prompted many local water agencies to ease conservation rules for homes and businesses, from allowing outdoor watering more days of the week to eliminating caps on total water use. “Our water supply is in good shape,” said Andrea Pook, spokeswoman for EBMUD, noting that El Niño-fueled storms filled the agency’s reservoirs to average levels for the first time in years. The East Bay water agency, like many other suppliers, has encouraged customers to make physical changes to their homes, such as installing turf lawns and water-efficient toilets, that will result in a lifetime of conservation. “When we looked overall at how the state was doing in getting through the drought, the urban and suburban sector was by far doing the best and was really the most drought-resilient,” said Ellen Hanak, director of the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California.

City supervisors tussle at committee meeting and on Twitter
A routine Board of Supervisors committee meeting turned into a very public fight that later continued on Twitter Wednesday between Malia Cohen and David Campos. The friction arose over Campos’ ballot measure to create an Office of Public Advocate. The idea is to create greater accountability in city government and — Campos isn’t shy about acknowledging — check Mayor Ed Lee’s power. The public advocate would appoint directors to the Office of Citizen Complaints and the Office of Labor Standards and Enforcements, a responsibility Lee now holds. “I have some real concerns,” Cohen said at the Rules Committee meeting, listing amendments that would put a two-term limit on the position, eliminate appointment powers and require elected officials to sit out one term — four years — before running for the office. The salary would also be decided by the Civil Service Commission, and the city’s whistle-blower program would remain in the controller’s office. Supervisor Eric Mar moved to create two versions of the measure, one with Campos’ amendments and a second with Cohen’s amendments added. After the meeting, the brawl continued on Twitter, with Campos accusing Cohen of wanting to stick to the status quo. Legislation legalizing accessory dwelling units — in-law or secondary apartments — is also leading to battle lines at City Hall. In a letter to board President London Breed and his fellow supervisors, Aaron Peskin called out moderate supervisors Scott Wiener and Mark Farrell for introducing a ballot measure that would increase the number of those units citywide. In the letter, Peskin encouraged Wiener and Farrell to pull the measure, calling it a “spurious misuse of the ballot.” […] Wiener countered that Peskin’s legislation had flaws, including restrictions that would limit the number of units that could be built. […] there are issues with Supervisor Peskin’s legislation, including that it wipes away my seismic in-law measure, which has been very successful in building new units. Hundreds of people who called 911 and 311 on the Fourth of July never even made it into the city’s call queue — all they got was a busy signal. The call volume was “actually really high,” said Francis Zamora, a spokesman for the Department of Emergency Management. Another 2,506 reports were called into 311, of which 89 percent were answered before 60 seconds, said Bill Barnes, a spokesman for the city administrator.

Tweets and reaction: SFPD respond to reports of man with weapon in SF

San Francisco police asked that people avoid the area of Market and Jones streets as they responded to a call of an potentially armed man, according to a tweet from the department’s Twitter account.

Oakland sells land near Lake Merritt to developers for $8 million
The Oakland City Council has sealed the fate of a hotly contested piece of city-owned land near Lake Merritt that last year sparked a fierce battle over how public space should be used in a rapidly gentrifying area. Despite their protests, the council voted 6-1 to sell the parcel for $8 million to real estate firm UrbanCore and the East Bay Asian Local Development Corp., which plan to build a 27-story apartment tower and nine-story mid-rise with 361 apartments, 108 of which would be affordable. […] the plan drew sharp criticism from Councilman Noel Gallo — who cast the lone dissenting vote — and from residents who accused the city of using a public asset to indulge a for-profit developer. The council abruptly scrapped that plan after a memo leaked from the city attorney’s office saying it violated a state law governing the sale of surplus land.

Driver dies when car smashes into house, sparks fire

Fire crews controlled a blaze that broke out after a car crashed into a home in San Francisco Wednesday afternoon, leaving one person dead, officials said. The incident occurred at around 1:30 p.m. when an SUV smashed into the garage of a home on the 100 block of 32nd Avenue, said Jonathan Baxter, a spokesman for the San Francisco Fire Department. The car caught on fire after it crashed into the building, which then lit up one full side of the the house and caused extensive damage.

East Bay public defenders to review cases by cops in sex scandal
The public defenders of Alameda and Contra Costa counties are reviewing cases handled by police officers and sheriff’s deputies accused of having relations with a sexually exploited teenager to see if their alleged actions impacted their work on the clock. The East Bay defense attorneys said the credibility of the officers implicated in the widening sex scandal has been called into question, and the integrity of their investigative work is on the line. In a Facebook post over the weekend, the city’s mayor, Tom Butt, said two of the officers being reviewed by the Police Department’s Office of Professional Accountability were removed from posts that involved interacting with young people. Lt. Andre Hill, a police spokesman, was taken off his role as manager of the Youth Services Division, and Officer Jerrod Tong stepped down from his position in the Police Explorer Program that exposes youth to law enforcement. The Alameda County public defender’s office sent letters to District Attorney Nancy O’Malley, Oakland police and the sheriff’s office asking for the names of the officers and deputies being investigated for misconduct in order to track down their past cases, Chorney said. Lipetzky, of Contra Costa County, said the officers’ behavior amounted to a double standard being applied in law enforcement and “seems to fly in the face of what the county is trying to do” to prevent sex trafficking of minors.

Iraq vet’s service dog vanishes; reward offered

An Antioch Craigslist ad is offering a reward for information leading to the return of the service dog of a Iraq War combat veteran.

Judge orders Hayward to repay body cam film editing charge

An Alameda County judge has ordered Hayward to pay back more than $3,000 it charged for police body camera footage of a 2014 Black Lives Matter protest in Berkeley, saying the public interest in disclosing records outweighed the expenses and staff time it took to redact portions of the videos. The ruling against Hayward, its Police Department and chief came amid a flurry of legal actions by the National Lawyers Guild accusing officers of using excessive force against demonstrators who were denouncing police killings of unarmed black men. Protesters were tear gassed, shot with nonlethal bullets and struck by batons in the December protest as police from agencies throughout the East Bay tried to disperse the crowd south of the UC Berkeley campus. The guild had filed lawsuits against Hayward and Berkeley over the excessive-force allegations, and made a state Public Records Act request for various documents about Hayward police involvement in the protest, along with footage from body-worn cameras of several officers. A city employee spent 170 hours reviewing and redacting parts of the three-plus-hours of footage, and the Police Department charged attorneys requesting the records $3,246.47 for staff time and $1 for the CD of videos, according to court records. The guild and the American Civil Liberties Union called Grillo’s ruling the first of its kind in the realm of public access to electronic records from law enforcement agencies.

Hundreds bid tearful farewell to UC Berkeley student killed in Bangladesh terror attack
Hundreds bid tearful farewell to UC Berkeley student killed in Bangladesh terror attack White flowers adorned the steps of UC Berkeley’s Sproul Hall as hundreds stood silent in the summer gloom on Tuesday to honor the life of Tarishi Jain, a UC Berkeley student slain in last week’s terrorist attack in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Jain, 18, was just starting an internship for the summer, working on e-commerce growth at Eastern Bank Limited in Dhaka, when armed militants stormed a popular restaurant on Friday and killed her and 19 other people who were inside. Waves of resolve and anguish settled over the friends, faculty and community members while they spoke of how Jain, a native of India, had left a deep impression on many in her short time on campus. Mackenzie Monroe, who lived on the same freshman-year dormitory floor as Jain, remembered teaching her how to do laundry for the first time in their building’s shared laundry room. Aaliyah Parker, also Jain’s friend from the dorms, recalled her positive attitude even while recovering from ACL surgery. Tina Jabeen, a representative from the Bangladeshi community, urged Bangladesh to act against terrorism and called for the Berkeley community to move forward without fear. UC Berkeley student and Jain’s friend Shivani Narang expressed horror at the sheer number of recent extremist attacks around the world in recent weeks. Jay Sananvatananot, a UC Berkeley student and friend of Jain’s, urged the crowd to remember the words of Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer who spoke to Berkeley’s graduating class of 2016 this May.

Bay Area’s noxious accolade: roadkill capital
Interstate 280 between San Francisco and San Jose leads the pack, with deer commonly ending up on truck hoods and car grilles near Crystal Springs Reservoir and Stanford University, according to the report released last week. Shilling said it’s not logical, however, that the California Department of Transportation and local road crews don’t do more to prevent crashes with wildlife, using his analysis — now in its third year — as a framework to better safeguard animals as well as motorists. Tunnels beneath roads to allow safe passage for mountain lions and rope bridges to accommodate tree squirrels are just a few of Shilling’s recommendations. In the past, Caltrans officials have said they’re aware of roadkill hotspots and are working, within their budget, to address the issue. Of the 700,000 reported auto collisions in California last year, the study’s authors estimate that about 6,000 involved wildlife, whether a vehicle hit an animal directly or swerved into something else while trying to avoid a critter. According to the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, human consumption of roadkill is illegal.

Gig work isn’t changing job landscape, SF economist finds
Drawing from a mix of census numbers and government labor and economic statistics, it concludes that 29 percent of employees are part of the gig economy — roughly the same percentage as in 2000. […] wage employment in San Francisco has grown faster than self-employment. Most part-time workers in San Francisco — 53 percent — are concentrated in low-wage industries such as food service and retail, as well as education and health care. Among self-employed workers, 29 percent work in business and professional services, a category that includes software developers, lawyers and architects. The report does include data from the JPMorgan Chase Institute, which studied income sent from online platforms to its checking customers. “For this reason, we may conclude that, to this point, online platforms have had relatively little role in shifting people from full- or part-time work into self-employment, and are not enabling a wholesale shift from wage work to a ‘1099 economy’” — a reference to the Internal Revenue Service form businesses have to fill out when they pay a nonemployee more than $600 a year. Lawrence Mishel, an economist at the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., who studies labor markets, said the study’s “big takeaway is that San Francisco doesn’t stand out as being all that much of a special home for self employment or so-called gig work, and that digital platform work is just a small part of a broader set of employment practices.” Supervisor Mark Farrell, who requested the report, emphasized that while the percentage of San Francisco workers in the gig economy has remained constant over the past decade, the sheer number of people in that sector has grown as the city’s population has increased.

At Fremont’s July 4 parade, everyone is an American
Scores of flag-waving families from Fremont’s ethnically diverse community lined Paseo Padre Parkway Monday to cheer on a small, yet enthusiastic groups in the city’s annual Fourth of July parade. Firefighters, police officers and tough-looking bikers cruised along the three-block route as local marching bands, charity groups and teams towing massive balloons hooted and hollered as they celebrated the holiday. The Muslim group, wearing Old Glory-colored top hats, were there with their wives and children to carry signs and wave flags supporting their kids’ Boy Scout troop. Up at the front of the parade were the women from the Candle Lighters, a volunteer organization that raises money for different nonprofit groups around Fremont, Newark and Union City. “This is a time to remember the people who have given their lives for us to be here,” said Poe, holding a handful of small flags and dressed in full USA regalia. The Candle Lighters recently approved funding to buy new glockenspiels for the Tri-City Band Corps, which also marched in the parade. Not marching were several Fremont police officers and Alameda County sheriff’s deputies. […] the day’s only drama came when a 20-foot-tall inflatable Uncle Sam bonked his head on a traffic light along the route, prompting some gasps from the crowd.

Don Jelinek, leftist lawyer and former Berkeley councilman, dies

Services will be held this month for Don Jelinek, a former Berkeley city councilman and civil rights attorney whose clients ranged from black sharecroppers in the Deep South to the Attica prison rioters and the Indian occupiers of Alcatraz. “He was the most deeply moral person I’ve ever met,” said Scherr, herself a co-founder of the famed Berkeley Barb underground newspaper. Mr. Jelinek lived in a tenement and worked as a janitor to pay his way through law school, and thereafter identified with the working class. In August 1965, Mr. Jelinek answered a call for lawyers by the American Civil Liberties Union and flew to Jackson, Miss., for a three-week vacation to work pro bono. From there he came west, arriving in Berkeley in 1968. Because he had been arrested in the South, his application to the California Bar was held up, so he got a job with the state, advising various Indian groups. […] a 35-year-old attorney, Mr. Jelinek first went out to the former federal penitentiary on Thanksgiving Day, 1969, to advise the Indian activists who had taken control of the island and faced federal charges. “It was incredibly exciting to be part of building a new society — not that anybody thought this was a utopia,” Jelinek recalled of the 19 months he spent defending the occupiers. While representing a Marine Corps deserter, Mr. Jelinek once flew to Washington state and hiked overnight into remote mountains to track down U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. In the aftermath of the 1971 riot at the Attica Correctional Facility, near Buffalo, N.Y., Mr. Jelinek was named lead defense attorney for 61 inmates charged with a total of 1,400 felonies. In 1973, he founded the law firm Jelinek & Associates, and took on the case of of flea market vendors who were ousted from the BART Ashby Station parking lot. Mr. Jelinek was the author of three books: “White Lawyer, Black Power,” about his time in the SNCC, “Attica Justice,” about the uprising and his defense of the prisoners, and “Survivor of the Alamo,” a story about the one Texan who did not die in the famous battle. Donations may be made to Bay Area Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement, c/o Eugene Turitz, 2124 Derby St. Berkeley, CA, 94705.

Animal rights protesters tie up traffic along Embarcadero
Animal rights activists tied up traffic and baffled tourists Monday in San Francisco as they marched in pursuit of a “pig independence day.” The group of about two dozen protesters and two dogs walked north on the Embarcadero from the Ferry Building to Pier 39, prompting some angry motorists to drive dangerously close to the banner-wielding crowd and a police squad car following the marchers. Samer Masterson, who led some of the group’s chants over a megaphone, said they wanted to bring attention to their investigation of a Hormel Foods farm. Many sightseers whipped out cameras and phones to record the ruckus, which was organized by Direct Action Everywhere, a group that puts on theatrical protests around the Bay Area and campaigns for a halt to all animal eating. Security guards inside Pier 39 linked arms in an attempt to stop the activists, who managed to snake around them and disrupt a children’s show on the pier as spectators shouted at them to leave.

140 years ago, the lights were turned on in San Francisco for the first time

July 4, 1876 was the grandest day San Francisco had ever seen.

Get ready for evening fog on the Fourth of July
If you remember the dreaded fog that turned last year’s San Francisco fireworks show into a flash of orange mush, get ready for more of the same. “I’m pretty confident it will be overcast,” said Duane Dykema, forecaster with the National Weather Service in Monterey. Dykema said Saturday’s maddening weather pattern, with summer fog advancing and retreating throughout the day before advancing for good when the sun goes down, will hold true for Sunday and Monday and maybe throughout the week. The culprit is a weak low-pressure trough stuck along the coastline from Marin to Monterey. Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.

Reflecting on the SF Homeless Project
Five months ago, The San Francisco Chronicle’s newsroom proposed an experiment in local news reporting. Could San Francisco’s varied media outlets join together for a single day of reporting about homelessness, its causes and solutions? The founding members of the SF Homeless Project agreed that we, the journalists of the Bay Area, would ensure that you, the residents of this beautiful yet imperfect metropolis, were given a fully informed perspective on one of the biggest humanitarian crises of our time. Over the past several days, including the day of mass coverage June 29, more than 70 news organizations produced in excess of 300 videos, articles, radio shows and television reports. Today, The Chronicle caps our weeklong coverage with something we haven’t done in more than two decades: a front-page editorial. For those who wish to lend financial support, consider The Chronicle’s Season of Sharing Fund, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Every dollar given to the fund goes directly to people on the brink of homelessness because administrative costs are covered by The Chronicle and the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. In the past week, we’ve reported on what can be done to increase our region’s supply of supportive housing, what can be done for the untreated mentally ill people who live on the streets, how we can improve our emergency shelter system and what role law enforcement can play.

Holiday transit schedules and closures
Independence Day Holiday transit and services Monday: Banks and other financial institutions Closed Post offices Closed, no mail delivery BART Sunday schedule Muni Sunday schedule Golden Gate Transit Holiday schedule for buses and ferries SamTrans Sunday schedule Caltrain Sunday schedule, with extra trains from San Francisco after fireworks show AC Transit Sunday schedule San Francisco parking Meters enforced. Commuter tow-away zones, residential parking and Monday-Friday street sweeping not enforced.

4 killed in Oakland in 2 weekend shootings
Paramedics attempted to save the victims, but both died at the scene from their injuries, according to police officials. Just after 9 p.m., Oakland police officers responded to reports of a shooting and found a man suffering from an apparent gunshot wound. A police helicopter identified a vehicle leaving the scene, and when officers stopped the car, they found a second man who had been shot. The Oakland Police Department has not identified any of the slaying victims nor released the names of any suspects.

Homeless soccer players will shoot for their goal in downtown SF

Homeless soccer players will shoot for their goal in downtown SF The program runs soccer programs all over the country for homeless and other underprivileged children and adults, helping them learn life skills through teamwork and camaraderie. Many will be fielded by companies, community groups and even the city Recreation and Park Department, which helps sponsor the program locally. Since being founded in 2007, Street Soccer USA has helped more than 4,000 people into housing and services such as substance-abuse rehabilitation and medical care. Five years ago he was living in a homeless shelter in San Francisco and getting sober, and saw a flyer for street soccer. Today, Flebotte is clean and sober and works with the Recreation and Park Department, teaching soccer to small children. Rec and Park Director Phil Ginsburg called Flebotte “an amazing success story” and said he exemplifies what his department has been aiming for since teaming up with Street Soccer USA five years ago to supply playing fields, marketing and other support. Rob Cann was a former college soccer player and counselor in a soup kitchen in North Carolina when he co-founded the program with his brother. San Jose Earthquakes star Chris Wondolowski is a spokesman for Street Soccer USA, and he will be at the Union Square tournament with players from the Los Angeles Galaxy — and even a couple of players from the San Jose Sharks hockey team.

Homeless soccer players will shoot for their goal in downtown SF

Two women make baseball history in debut with Sonoma Stompers

The first pitch of Friday night’s Sonoma Stompers baseball game was a breaking ball that went over the plate and into professional baseball history. Piagno and Whitmore received by far the biggest ovations in the sold-out ball park, which was bustling with more than 700 people, not including the jostling reporters and photographers. “I played Little League with the boys growing up and my first year I got hit by a pitch every single game, but I kept on playing,” said Amber Williams, 36, a 5th-grade teacher in Sonoma, who said she came to the game with her 4-year-old daughter, her sister-in-law and two nieces just to see the women play. The two women may have made a statement for their sex, but their performances probably won’t have many big-league scouts knocking on their doors. Whitmore walked and struck out in two plate appearances. The bright idea to recruit women was first floated by none other than film director Francis Ford Coppola, who said in a news release that he always wondered why there weren’t co-ed teams in professional baseball, given that the game doesn’t rely as much on size and strength as other sports. “My family would play co-ed baseball games and inevitably the star player would always be an aunt,” said Coppola, whose Virginia Dare Winery in Geyserville has been a primary sponsor of the team over the past three years. […] when my Sonoma winery became involved with the Stompers, I had the opportunity to turn this thought into a reality and recruit these amazing women capable of playing alongside men. Team officials scouted Piagno and Whitmore at the tryouts for Team USA, which is scheduled to play in the Women’s Baseball World Cup in South Korea this fall. Whitmore, who recently graduated from Temecula Valley High School, will attend Cal State Fullerton on a softball scholarship this coming year, even though she has only played softball once before, in a tournament. Both women played baseball against boys in high school and both said it is an honor to play with them again professionally. Top Stompers brass denied the new signings were a publicity stunt, but they nevertheless took full advantage of the jostling cameras, which couldn’t help but notice the crowd-pleasing antics of Rawhide, the team’s bull-like mascot. The most famous battle of the sexes occurred in the mid-1990s when famous knuckleball pitcher Phil Niekro recruited the best female ballplayers in the country to play for the Colorado Silver Bullets. Silver Bullets stars Lee Anne Ketcham and Julie Croteau became the first women to sign with the Class A and AA men’s Hawaii Winter Baseball league. In 1996, another player, Pam Davis pitched a scoreless inning of relief against the Australian Olympic men’s team in a guest appearance with the Double A Jacksonville Suns. Stompers pitcher Sean Conroy became the first openly gay professional baseball player in 2015.

BART trains not running for holiday weekend in part of East Bay