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Powerless to Stop Chinatown Blackouts

For business owners, rolling power outages are not the worst of it

By Joseph Hong

Ernie Visaya, head barber at Ken’s Barbershop.

At Ken’s Barbershop on Waverly Place in Chinatown, Ernie Visaya and two other barbers charge only $8.50 for a haircut — the price went up $1 at the start of the new year. Like the other barbers, Visaya takes his time cutting and buzzing, giving each customer the old-fashioned treatment, which includes a neck shave with a straight edge and a firm shoulder massage.

On Jan. 17, though, PG&E shut off electricity at Ken’s Barbershop for a couple of hours as part of California’s rotating blackouts, clipping Visaya’s daily earnings. And when Chinatown’s electricity unexpectedly went out for a few hours again about two weeks later, it really cut into his income for that month.

But these weren’t the only times Chinatown merchants and workers were left in the dark.

Many said they have experienced a number of power outages beyond the obligatory rotating blackouts that have occurred recently when California’s energy reserves dipped below 1.5 percent, and they contend these additional blackouts seem to affect Chinatown more often than any other area.

“Since last year we’ve already been experiencing blackouts in Chinatown and they lasted much longer than the rolling one,” said Sut Chi Hui, owner of Dynamic Travel on Sacramento Street near Grant Avenue.

He added: “At least with the rolling blackout it lasted only a couple of hours, but last year we had blackouts for a lot longer.”

Much of Chinatown experienced blackouts on Jan. 17, which was part of the rotating outage that affected 385,000 PG&E customers — 53,000 in San Francisco and the Peninsula, according to PG&E spokesperson Staci Homrig.

However, on Jan. 30 Chinatown was again left without electricity, though the financial district and Union Square had power. Some Chinatown merchants said they felt they were being unfairly hit by another rotating outage. But PG&E officials said rotating blackouts have thus far effected customers at most only once this year — on either Jan. 17 or Jan. 18.

Spokespersons for PG&E were unable to give a cause or even confirm the Jan. 30 outage in Chinatown.

PG&E’s Homrig said she doesn’t believe additional blackouts happen more often in Chinatown on average than other parts of the city.

Chinatown merchants remember other blackouts affecting Chinatown last year but could not recall the specific dates. Homrig said it was difficult to confirm these additional blackouts or the reasons for them unless there were specific dates. She added that it would take “an enormous” effort to print out records of all the blackouts in San Francisco last year and extract those that affected Chinatown.

“It is just the luck of the draw,” said Timothy P. Duane, senior policy consultant to the California Public Utilities Commission on electricity restructuring issues and associate professor of energy and resources at U.C. Berkeley. “Last June 16 in the Bay Area, those outages had to do with a specific set of transmission problems. And another reason might be because of storms. So it may be instances where Chinatown had been hit three times or more but it wasn’t because of more rotating outages.”

Though PG&E did not confirm the validity of these additional blackouts, many Chinatown merchants say the costs of these blackouts are very real.

“Every time there is a blackout, not counting the money we take in, but just the cost of throwing away all the cakes and buns is a few thousand dollars because everything spoils,” said Tilly Hung owner of Washington Café near Portsmouth Square.

Many Chinatown businesses say because of intense competition, they rely on low prices and high sales volumes to make a profit; therefore, it is very costly when their businesses close for even just a few hours.

According to Arnold Chin, media spokesperson for the San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce, there were four to six power failures in Chinatown last year and at least one this year attributable to system failures and not because of rotating blackouts. He believes PG&E’s electrical system in Chinatown has been neglected and is now at the end of its life; it needs to be upgraded as the gas pipes were in 1997.

“The blackouts really ruined the business for those days. I cannot cut their hair; you know, we need the electricity for the buzzers. Even if we cut their hair with just scissors, we still need light to see what we’re cutting or you probably wouldn’t like your haircut,” said Fernando Garma, a barber at Ken’s Barbershop.