Dog Bites

If You Are Obsessed With Race, Press 1
Last week, there arose one of those horribly frustrating and all-too-frequent situations in which it was impossible to get a cab in the city. Whereupon Dog Bites began dialing taxi companies out of the Yellow Pages at random. That's when our walking fingers stumbled across Diamond Cab, whose elaborate voice-mail menu introduces the outfit as "a small dispatch company with 11 cabs that serve San Francisco."

The voice-mail system was, in fact, so elaborate that we accidentally pressed the wrong number and found ourselves listening to the following announcement: "Diamond Cab has sedan vehicles only. No station wagon or vans. Our color is pink on the bottom and smoke gray on the top. We have 96 percent Asians and the other is Russian and Panamanian. We have no blonds, no African-Americans, Iranians, or Indians."

Stunned, we listened to the message several times more and finally returned ourselves to the main menu, where sheer curiosity drove us to try another selection: employment opportunities. We probably should have guessed we wouldn't get anywhere over the phone. "Thank you for considering Diamond Cab. We are not accepting any application at this time," said the message. "Good luck to you."

Or not, as the case may dictate.
-- Laurel Wellman

Oh, Danny Boy
Most of us past grade-school age don't have to worry about giving public performances at which our parents are part of the audience. That's why Dog Bites feels such sympathy for Dan Brugmann, news rack program manager for the city's Department of Public Works. Brugmann was called upon last week to explain to the Finance Committee of the Board of Supervisors just how bad, bad, bad newsracks have been to San Francisco.

Apparently, Brugmann's presentation was meant to smoothly introduce a public hearing on legislation (sponsored by Supervisor Barbara Kaufman, acting in the role of hand puppet for Mayor Willie Brown) that would replace all individual newsracks in the city with large centralized newsracks that would distribute many newspapers at once. The centerpiece of Brugmann's presentation was an easel that held a large display board, upon which a series of photographs showed newsracks violating city law in bad, bad, bad ways.

On their own, the "violations" on the display board -- a photo of a newsrack that protruded almost an entire foot into the approach to a street crosswalk was one of the more horrifying examples -- were something less than impressive. (Especially to this audience, composed of newspaper editors, publishers, and lawyers who were overwhelmingly, vehemently, and even violently opposed to the Kaufman-Brown newsrack law.) Brugmann's struggles with the easel and display board, on the other hand, were not just impressive; they were absolutely heart-rending.

As he attempted to move the easel so newsrack "violations" could be picked up by cable television cameras, Brugmann dropped things, and stumbled, and mumbled, and repositioned the easel, and took advice from various supervisors and clerks on repositioning the easel, and dropped more things, and re-repositioned the easel, and apologized for doing what he was doing -- to the point that, after three or four minutes, much of the presumably hostile audience was trapped exactly halfway between gentle laughter and utter pity.

One member of the audience, however, seemed absolutely unmoved. Seated in immobile glowering bearded glory -- seated in the second row of the audience, in fact, and just a few feet from the most difficult easel in San Francisco -- was Dan Brugmann's father. Yes, that father -- Bruce B. Brugmann, the blustery, overbearing opponent of the Brown-Kaufman newsrack law, the blustery, overbearing former employer of now-city bureaucrat Dan Brugmann, and the extraordinarily blustery and overbearing publisher and editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

-- J.M.

Brown Out
It's not easy being a mere weekly in this town. Quite apart from random hate mail, ad hominem attacks focused on certain staffers' north-of-the-49th-parallel national origins, and an unstoppable stream of parody Bay Guardian ads, we have to contend with an ongoing personal pain.

Our very own mayor doesn't like us.
Well, at least, that's how we interpret His Worship's apparent indifference. The man simply will not return our phone calls. Instead, we must content ourselves with talking to his assistant, Kandace Bender, who, while perfectly pleasant, is just not, well, as glamorous as our Willie.

But even though we still lie awake at 3 a.m. worrying -- Why? Was it something we said? -- lately we have been feeling a little better. Sunday's New York Times made all the difference.

That's because the nation's paper of record ran an article on the controversy over development plans for the Presidio, an article in which one could quite reasonably have expected to see a comment from the mayor of San Francisco. Instead, we read that while Willie supports mixed-income housing in the park, "his spokeswoman, Kandace Bender, said he was disappointed that the [Presidio] trust unveiled its plan without first giving voters a chance to weigh in on the initiative."

If even the Times can't get a quote from Mayor Brown, maybe we're not in as poor company as we had thought.

-- Laurel Wellman

Dog Bites welcomes tips, especially those pertaining to disgruntlement. Write to Dog Bites, c/o SF Weekly, 185 Berry, Suite 3800, San Francisco, CA 94107, or e-mail dogbites@sfweekly.com.