Skateboard Mom Debates the Lorax
September 24, 2008
Chinese Historical Society of America Director Sue Lee calls herself a “skateboard mom” because “I know every skateboard park in San Francisco and the Bay Area,” according to her remarks at last Monday’s supervisors debate in District 1’s (Richmond) police station sponsored by the Neighborhood Parks Council and Friends of the Urban Forest …The “common sense” candidate spoke out for small business folks by noting that graffiti could damage a $2,000 plate window on her coin laundry. Lee said that the city has created a “system that penalizes the victim” by citing businesses for not cleaning up graffiti … GREEN MAR AND HAM: He’s not sitting in trees like those Cal protesters, but school board member Eric Mar played his most important parks and recreation endorsement-daughter Jade. “My daughter thinks of me as a lorax. We read the Dr. Seuss books all the time. [She says] I don’t speak for the trees all the time, but at times I try to speak for the parks and every one,” said Mar, describing himself as a “tree-friendlier” and “parks-friendlier” candidate (he is endorsed by the S.F. Democratic Party and Sierra Club). No word on who whether the Grinch and the Cat in the Hat will endorse the lorax…. Eric’s frequent bits about life with his daughter during the debate was a pitch to make the stoic, unemotional candidate more warm and fuzzy… BRT, BLT, WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE? If Richmond residents know bacon, lettuce and tomato, then they know the Bus Rapid Transit proposal to speed up public transit in the Richmond. Teacher-mom Alicia Wang, who has been campaigning at bus stops, said “I haven’t had anyone come up to me and say ‘I really want the BRT.’ What people tell me typically is, ‘I want the buses to be on time, I want to get to work on time, I want to know when the buses are coming…there should be more buses. That’s what I hear again and again. The BRT is a means not the end”…THE ‘WRITE’ TO REMAIN SILENT: “Obviously if we catch the people, we want to prosecute them. Every time I report graffiti, [police dispatchers] ask, ‘Are they in progress?’ I’ve never found any graffiti in progress” said Sherman D’Silva, a District 1 candidate who advocates removing graffiti from property within 24 to 48 hours…
HORSEY DRY: You can bring the horse to alcohol, but you can’t make her drink. California Assembly Majority Whip Fiona Ma-surnamed “horse” in Chinese-pledged at the S.F. Hep B Free gala dinner last week to stay dry. Ma, who is a chronic carrier of the virus and a poster child for the campaign to eradicate the disease in San Francisco, was thinking about her liver during comments inside the Chinese Culture Center …. HERE KITTY, KITTY: She and beau Patrick Koch were picking over items after the closing of the silent auction, including Sanrio Hello Kitty and toys donated by veteran Airport Commissioner Caryl Ito….
PAYING $90 PER COLUMN ITEM: Mary Jung, a PG&E manager, predicted there’d be a political junkie for her donations at last week’s “B a Hero” silent auction to fight hepatitis B last Thursday…Next to former Assembly Speaker/Mayor Willie Brown’s autographed Basic Brown (which I already have), a $50 bid got me an autographed copy of Know Your Power by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was represented that evening by long-time aide Harriett Ishimoto. Forty bucks snagged an autographed copy of A Tale of Two Cities-eloquently delivered in 1984 by then-Governor of New York Mario Cuomo at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center… A framed floral sketch at the silent auction by U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein had a retail value of $300 but could be priceless according to auction specs if she becomes governor in 2010. I already have one sketch from the senator through a National Women’s Political Caucus event from several years back…. Minutes before the auction closed, Rudy Asercion swooped in with more than the $150 bid after I backed off for the limited edition litho of a Carlos Santana artistic album cover. “It’s going for a gift,” said the West-Bay Multi-Services Center director…
PACKING CREW: Whatever Fi and Patrick didn’t pick up at the Hep B silent auction was stuffed into Small Business Commish and PG&E’s communications manager Darlene Chiu’s teeny-weenie Honda jeep by Jason Chan and Francis Tsang of Mayor Newsom’s office. Chiu and Jung-besides passing out hundreds of light bulbs-stayed hours afterward anteing up the take from the silent auction…. STILL THE SMILING ROSE: Winding down eight years at City Hall working for Board of Supervisor President Aaron Peskin, Rose Chung said she still has a job at S.F. General Hospital from where she’s been on “temporary” leave as an X-Ray Techie…This columnist has heard catty remarks about the former Miss Chinatown, but those remarks are wrong given her many off-work hours dedicated to the community. Despite it all, the ever civil Miss Congeniality still smiles…
A SENIOR MOMENT: Political family scion and Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier brain locking over her name at the Hep B event…She’ll have two years to figure it before she runs for re-election…
TEE AND DASH BY OBAMA: The Obama online shop has a “Vera Wang Vote Obama ‘08” ladies tee, $60…. Southeast Asian Community Center Director Richard Wada, was sporting an “Asian-Americans for Obama” button, which hyphenates “Asian American”-which Yellowvisions collector and Asian American Media Watch-er Christina Fa convinced the Obama campaign to refrain from using the derogatory hyphens in press releases. Why? Think of “Asian-Americans” like a xenophobic mathematical formula-Asian minus Americans, which insultingly equals we’re foreigners….
LAST GETS LEAST: Founder/President/CEO Andrew Ly of Sugar Bowl Bakery gave a nearly half-hour award acceptance speech (compared to the brief one by former Cupertino Councilwoman Kris Wang) at the Intercontinental Hotel. After Ly finished, half the audience packed up and left the 37th anniversary ASIAN Inc. fete on Sept. 14 before Supervisor Carmen Chu could deliver her keynote. Not even the non-profit housing and small business developer tradition of an open bar held attendees after the dinner when it drew a crowd well before the 6 p.m. registration… ASIAN Inc. broke its desert room tradition, which had small business, affordable housing and non-profit crowd networking well after the dinner hour in past years inside Japantown’s Miyako Hotel… IN AND OUT: Former media personality Cammy Blackstone has joined the staff of Supervisor Carmen Chu with veteran aide Colleen Crowley leaving for professionally greener pastures…
NOT SIGNED IN BLOOD: I still have my O.J. Simpson autograph from a 49er pre-season scrimmage at Kezar Stadium in 1978… Simpson went to trial last week in Las Vegas and is attracting the national spotlight again in a presidential year. That could help Republican John McCain and hurt Democrat Barack Obama with a Simpson incarnation of the infamous Willie Horton 1988 attack ad by GOP White House nominee George H.W. Bush against Democrat Mike Dukakis. Horton, serving a life sentence for murder, was furloughed under Massachusetts Governor Dukakis. Released, Horton raped and committed armed robbery while on release. Instead of Horton this fall, it’s Simpson, acquitted in 1995 for slaying ex-wife Nicole Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman. Simpson later lost a 1997 civil suit over the slayings, which divided races over the justice system’s treatment of black males and genders over domestic violence….
Reach Samson Wong at (415) 321-5886 or swong@asianweek.com.
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