Letters

Base Hit
I want to thank Amy Linn for her piece on the Presidio ("Off-Base," Jan. 10). Linn has comprehensively explained the controversies and the arguments about legislation affecting San Francisco's greatest treasure. With this article, San Franciscans have a basis to help to decide the Presidio's future. In sum, a first-rate job.

Jeff Brown
San Francisco

Spared Change
While privatization is probably a bad idea and a downtown tax is probably a good idea, your article on Muni ("Willie's Wild Ride," Dec. 27) reinforced what Muni riders have known all along: that the work rules for Muni drivers must change.

Anyone who rides Muni on a daily basis knows that Muni drivers are a group largely made up of sullen, rude, and uncommunicative people who show nothing but contempt for their riders. Admittedly, being a Muni driver can be a thankless job, but so is being a cop, and in my 34 years of living in San Francisco, I've been treated better by the cops than the Muni drivers.

Larry Martin is a bully who leads a spoiled, pampered, and (in some instances) overpaid gang. This must change. Muni drivers must be accountable to their public! And no Larry, I'm not a bigot.

This letter was drafted after waiting 40 minutes for a 27 Bryant during business commute hours.

Mark Jerome
San Francisco

Union Buster
Larry Martin, the international vice president of the TWU states in "Willie's Wild Ride," "From this day forward anyone come to us and talk to us about work rules is nothing but a prejudiced son of a bitch." Well, I hope I'm not the last in line because I have some comments about Mr. Martin and those work rules.

Mr. Martin, you are a wonderful representative of the sickness that infects unionism today. Your tone is disturbingly vicious, ignorant, and abusive. You threaten indiscriminately, with the taint of racism, anyone who objects to your point of view. You are not content to throw out the racial epitaph but also seek to trample on the collective issues of civil rights and freedom of speech. I for one will not tolerate the vile, racist, and abusive tone of your tirade.

As a longtime Muni rider, and a former Teamster, I am disgusted beyond belief not only at what you said but how and why you said it. Work rules were, and are still, to protect the workers from management abuses. They are not to protect workers from their own abuses or shortcomings. Work rules that protect, aid, or condone worker abuses need to be changed. They need to be changed now, and your insistence otherwise is asinine. The fact you have to use the racist threat to protect your position is, simply, evidence that you lack any other rational or moral defense to the objections.

Mr. Martin, tomorrow I will go to my safe deposit box. I will get, tear up, and mail to you my Teamster card (Local 665, S.F. Bay Area). I will write the membership of my disgust with you and the system that allows you to pervert its ideals. Then, Mr. Martin, I will support every effort to destroy your union.

I pity the majority of drivers that their efforts are corrupted by the likes of you.

John S. Guthrie
San Francisco

Kisses for Cuddles
I greatly enjoyed "Downtown and Dirty" (Slap Shots, Dec. 27). As someone who uses the public transportation system I have had several opportunities to stop in at Cuddles bar while waiting for the SamTrans bus home to Redwood City. It is a funky, down-home bar and a great "people watching" place. Even though the clientele is predominantly black, I, a middle-class, middle-aged, white woman, have never felt uncomfortable or unwelcome. Cuddles bar and the friendly bartenders have made my wait for the bus a pleasant experience. Oh, they also have a great jukebox of soul music classics. I would recommend Cuddles bar over any number of the tragically hip hellholes that populate the San Francisco bar scene.

Ruby Blackstock
Redwood City

This Broken World
I read with great interest John Burnett's letter ("Crucified Again," Dec. 27) regarding Frank Kozik's art ("The Stick-Up Artist," Music, Dec. 13) and his response to it as a Christian. While I too have problems with Kozik's art (more on that later), I think Burnett needs to take a long, hard look at many of the less savory aspects of his faith to understand why so many people abhor it.

Let's start at the very beginning. For the Messianic Jesus cult to fully break away from the parent religions of paganism and Judaism, women had to be cursed with silence and submission to men, and the lie of all Jews as enemies of the Christ had to be fabricated. Do a little research Mr. Burnett and you will find that the Gospel of John was hardly an eyewitness account, written a good 165 years later. LŽon Poliakov's The History of Anti-Semitism, a seminal four-volume work, details this fact and the horrors it has generated over the centuries up to the present day. Weren't most Nazis -- original and present-day -- raised Christian?