September 2005 | Dock of the Bay
Hang Out to Dry
At San Francisco’s celebrated Brain Wash Café and Laundromat at 1122 Folsom (www.brainwash.com), you can scarf buffalo wings, play pinball, surf the Web, and enjoy one of eight beers on tap while your clothes rumble and spin. Dinner costs less than $8 with a load of clothes — it’s one of those cheaper-gas-with-a-carwash deals. But Brainwash isn’t the Bay Area’s only outstanding washatorium.
In San Rafael, when the kids hear you’re going to the laundromat, they’re the first ones in the car. Harry Potter may have Hogwarts, but Marin County’s kids have Hogwash — a funky hangout with abundant ambiance.
A sign reading: “Grow Your Own Dope. Plant a Politician” hangs over a comfy brown sofa at the entrance. Instead of the traditional drycleaners’ bell, there’s a bicycle horn to “Honk for Service.” Neatly stacked recycling bins are tucked beneath a counter holding a terrarium, a fish tank, and a consortium of self-serve teas. Poster boys Albert Einstein and John Belushi ponder the meaning of each other over Maytags. Awash in books, Hogwash offers a library where Meher Baba leans against Joseph Wambaugh, and Shakespeare makes a play for Bridget Jones’ Diary.
Other not-so-fatal distractions: a gym-sized treadmill; a CD player with several hundred disks watched over by George, a finger-nipping African Gray parrot; an antique Hokus Pokus pinball machine; and a Hansen’s soda vending machine covered with Grateful Dead stickers. Every countertop is a colorful collage, courtesy of artist/owner Jessica. And lest we forget, the wild turkey feathers stuck into the back of the Hogwash computer monitor come courtesy of her ten-year-old son. Eco-friendly dry cleaning and laundering with biodegradable detergents, of course. Location: 77 Broadway Blvd., Fairfax, CA 94930.
If you have a 350-word story of your favorite (or weirdest) suds-for-duds encounter, email us a copyfor consideration in Dock of the Bay. You can also mail a double-spaced printed copy to: The Editor, Common Ground, 305 San Anselmo Avenue, Suite 313, San Anselmo, California. No starch and a self-addressed stamped envelope please. — Gar Smith
Green but Partially Zero
“Anyone here know what a Pezev is?”
That’s what E Magazine Editor Jim Motavalli asked on recent book tour that brought him to a brown bag lunch in the shaded backyard of Oakland’s Center for Environmental Health. Motavalli, author of Green Living, The E Magazine Handbook for Living Lightly on Earth only found one person in this eco-friendly crowd who knew.
“A Pezev is a Partially Zero Emission Vehicle!” said a woman cradling a bowl of tasty local, organic fruits and veggies supplied to the greens seated in stuffed chairs and hanging over the back porch rails. She happened to be writing a book about the psychological history of the automobile. Motavalli smiled and gave her a local spin. Thanks to PZEVs, California’s air quality laws “are better than Sweden’s,” he said. The state’s original clean-air regs would have mandated the sale of thousands of electric cars, but Detroit automakers raised a stink (nothing new there, say long-suffering ozone-phobes). PZEV’s were introduced as a compromise.
(Anyone care to enter “partially zero” in Orwell’s lexicon of doublespeak? )
Motavalli notes that the growing demand for foreign hybrids has moved a number of states towards tougher, California-style performance standards. “If just one more state comes on board,” Motavali predicts, “this could force Detroit to go to more efficient designs.” And if they did, he adds, the improvements would only cost $200 per car and eliminate 90% or tailpipe gases.
The good news in his new book goes far beyond the redesign of climate-changing greenhouse-gas-buggies. There’s info on clean food (40% of Americans are now buying organic food), chemical-free products, and healthy homes.
Motalvi ended with this cavil: “At a recent event somebody offered me some bottled water that came from Fiji! Imagine the oil it took to move that bottle from Fiji!” Mid-pour, the DOCK noticed that the mineral water being served to hydrate us brown Green baggers came from a mountain spring in Italy.
Let’s hope the book has a chapter on digging your own backyard water well. — GS
Reclaiming the Commons
Each fall, Bioneers, invites a group of activists and visionaries to the Marin Center in San Rafael for a three-day conference on how to protect the Earth’s natural bounty and find socially responsible models for sustaining and protecting the Commons.
“The next...10 years will be a make-it or break-it time,” say co-founders Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simon. Citing Jared Diamond’s recent book, Collapse, Ausubel and Simon observe: “Humanity has pushed the natural world to the point of collapse many times before. But this is the first time in history, we have the capability to blow it on a global scale.”
The Bioneers conference, now in its 16th year, is an inspiring, solutions-driven gathering that explores sustainability and the interdependence of diverse issues: environmental health and social justice, socially responsible business, media and democracy, children’s health and earth medicine. There is a youth tent wonderful exhibits, workshops, and plenary speakers.
At the 2004 gathering, author Paul Hawken called the rising tide of grassroots citizens’ activist groups devoted to global sustainability (of which Bioneers is a part) “the biggest movement in the history of the world.” To prove his point, he began screening a list of organizations devoted to creating a renewable world order. To see the complete list scroll by, you’d have to watch the screen 24 hours-a-day for five full days.
Bioneers has avoided the fate of many socially progressive nonprofits — poor dissemination. Headquartered in Lamy, New Mexico, Bioneers will be beaming its October conference to 17 other cities through simultaneous satellite broadcasts to 17 other cities. Bioneers also offers an award-winning radio show that reaches 150 stations; an interactive website and a publishing wing that has produced such books as Nature’s Operating Instructions, and E cological Medicine.
This year’s offerings include presentations and workshops by Fritjof Capra, Van Jones, Bill McKibben, Rhea Goddess, Frances Moore Lappe, as well as some luminaries featured in Common Ground: Charlotte Brody, Marc Ian Barasch, Deborah Koons Garcia, Kevin Danaher, and Ritu Primlane. Common Ground is co-sponsoring the event for the second year in a row.
The event sells out quickly. Register online at www.bioneers.org or call toll-free 877 BIONEERS (246-6337). $85/day (non-member); three-day pass with theatre access ($405). Tickets for lunch ($11) and dinner ($16) are also available. — The Editors
The Green Team
Last June, SF Mayor Gavin Newsom signed a new procurement ordinance that mandates the use of green and health conscious products in city and county government buildings. The legislation phases out toxic products including certain types of paint, cleaning solutions and plant fertilizers and parks. It also bans compounds known to cause global warming.
“The need to move to safer alternatives from toxic products is essential if we are committed to having a healthy environment,” said Newsom at the June signing.
“The city spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year buying goods and services,” said Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, the ordinance’s author. “By exercising our economic power, San Francisco can encourage market development of new products which are healthier and more environmentally friendly.”
The new SF ordinance is the most detailed of any in the country, although Massachusetts, Seattle and vicinity, and Santa Monica have initiated similar procurement reforms.
“It’s common sense, really,” says Chris Geiger, a Senior Environmental Specialist in charge of implementation. “If you know something is safer, it works, and it’s cost-competitive, you should buy it instead.”
As an example of its new direction, the City now purchases peroxide, citrus oil, and soy-based cleaning products. Geiger recommends greenseal.org and newdream.org as sources for safer products. — Jason Victor Serinus
No Balm in Gilead?
Brazil — backed by a nationwide coalition of AIDS activists and health care advocates — has a big nut to crack: they’re in a battle royal with Abbott Laboratories, Merck & Co. and the Bay Area firm Gilead Sciences over manufacture of a generic AIDS drug. Brazil wants the pharmaceutical triad to relinquish their patent rights so that Brazil can produce cheap generic AIDS treatments. Failing that, Brazil has repeatedly threatened to break the patents and manufacture the drugs anyway.
AIDS activists have targeted Abbott, Merck and Gilead Sciences in an effort to persuade the companies to voluntarily license three critical AIDS treatments to Brazil: Gilead’s Viread (tenofovir), Merck’s Sustiva (efavirenz) and Abbott’s Kaletra (lopinavir/ritonavir).
Led by ACT UP/East Bay’s John Iversen, AIDS activists, assert that Brazil spends some $393 million—about 2/3 of its AIDS budget—on those three drugs alone. The nation has a highly effective universal access program for HIV/AIDS treatments: “It is a model for prevention and is the first developing country to provide free anti-HIV drugs,” said Iversen. “Remote villages in rain forests receive high-end, triple-drug-combinations therapy.”
The campaign has been a roller coaster. Much attention has focused on the negotiations, (more akin to five-card stud) between Brazil and Abbott over the past two months, while Merck and Gilead have quietly parleyed in the background. Once again, Big Pharma seems more concerned with the Bottom Line than the Heart Line.
In mid-July, after a deal between Abbott and the Brazilian government seemed close at hand, Brazil backed out — either because of mounting AIDS activist pressure or to deflect a local political scandal. It threatened to break Abbott’s patent and manufacture generic Kaletra. As of late July, no agreement had been reached.
Iversen, ACT UP, Health Gap, and Doctors Without Borders have been doing their bit to shove Gilead, generally regarded as a reasonable drug company, in the right direction. Here’s how to lend a hand:
DON’T JUST GET MAD… Take Action
ACT UP/East Bay is asking Bay Area residents to call Gilead and/or major stockholders such as former Secretary of State George Shultz and his wife Charlotte Swig (together, they own $8.7 worth of Gilead shares) and request that the company come to a swift agreement with Brazil. Schultz can be contacted at (650) 725-3493 and (415) 554-6143. People can also call Gilead Director Amy Flood at (650) 522-5643 or send her an email. Call Merck at (800) 522-9114 and request that they issue a voluntary license to allow Brazil to manufacture an affordable version of their AIDS drug. For more information, call (510) 841-4339. — Tim Kingston
Dharma for Dummies
If you don’t know Dharma from a duhkha and you can’t tell tantra from tantrum — take a deep breath. Help is at hand. Get yourself a copy of Bay Area author Gary Gach’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Buddhism (Alpha Books). You’ll learn that Buddhism is not only the world’s fourth largest religion but also, as Gach reveals, “there are now more Buddhists in the West than Episcopalians.” As the world’s first universal religion, Buddhism gave us the first printed book, martial arts, psychotherapy, flower arranging, as well as poetry’s shortest form (the haiku).
It’s all here in a delightful prose digest that covers the Life and Teachings of the Awakened One, meditation techniques, the Four Noble Truths, the Eight-fold Path, and the ups and downs of karma. The virtue of Gach’s book is that it offers multiple entry points for diverse readers; it covers the arts (a list of Buddhist films), science (Fractal Buddhism), work (Zentrepreneurs), food (Mindful Meals), Parenting (Baby Dharma) and redemption (Buddhism in Prison). And like many good teachers in the Buddhist tradition, Gach is both wise and whimsical. At one point in the text he promises “to describe Tibetan Buddhism in 500 words or less”— and succeeds (Warning: one of those words is: “Thwonk!”).
As Zen Master Thich Nhat Hahn has written: “This book will bring a smile to us all.” — Gar Smith
Nonprofit News
“The air district finally made a decision to protect people not polluters,” exclaimed a pleased Carla Perez, an organizer with California Communities for a Better Environment (CBE), describing a new Flare Minimization Plan (FMP) adopted by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. That plan will reduce gas burn-offs at five major Contra Costa County refineries.
Non Profit News first reported CBE’s (www.cbecal.org) campaign in May and can now report a victory. CBE has been working for four years to nudge, persuade and strong-arm local refineries to stop flaring (venting and burning) huge quantities of pollutants with scant regard to the health of the refineries’ mostly minority neighbors.
“This flare control rule is… the first of its kind in the nation and possibly the world,” says Perez. Refineries will now have to do a “root” analyses whenever they release more than 100,000 cubic feet of gas (The old limit of 500,000 cubic feet). The refineries also must determine why the flare occurred and change procedures to ensure that it does not happen again. The new rule commits refineries to minimize non-emergency flaring and to increase public participation in the rule-making process.
“This is an organizing victory. This did not get handed to us on a silver platter,” recounted Perez. CBE worked in coalition with two local unions to get the new flare plan adopted. “We had a lot of resistance from the industry and from the air district about how strong and enforceable this would be.” Perez says the FMP could prevent up to half the flaring-related health problems, including deadly asthma attacks, stinging eyes, skin rashes and respiratory irritations that have sent many residents to the emergency room. During a recent level-three alert — i.e. when the sirens go off warning Richmond and north Contra Costa residents to stay indoors — one CBE youth organizer suffered an asthma attack that sent her to hospital. Hopefully that will no longer happen. Now, Perez happily notes, the community has “a concrete, enforceable tool to hold industry accountable and not let them flare at their own discretion at the cost of people’s health.” — Tim Kingston
CDs for Change
On Hiroshima Day, August 6, hundreds of committed spiritual activitsts made the hot, dusty pilgrimage to the gates of the Livermore Lab. They brought with them a simple demand: that America’s bombmakers stop making nuclear weapons — the ultimate WMDs. Since the US obliterated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in cauldrons of nuclear fire, no other nation has dared use a nuclear weapon. But today, George W. Bush has given the Lab marching orders to start building a new generation of smaller (and supposedly more “useable”) tactical nukes.
As in previous years, pacifists commit acts of Civil Disobedience (CD) outside the Lab’s gates. But this year, the local watchdog organization, Tri-Valley CARES (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment), decided to commit a new kind of CD. “Seeds of Change” No Nukes! No Wars!” is a compilation of songs commemorating 60 years of resistance to nuclear weapons. This unique CD features 16 artists who use folk, hip-hop, rock, and rap to offer passionate perspectives on the need to abolish nuclear weapons. The CD is narrated by Keiniro Matsushima, an atomic bomb survivor from Hiroshima.
Featured artists include Clan Dyken, Utah Phillips, Emma’s Revolution, Universal Language, Aztlan Underground, the Oakland hip-hop combo, Company of Prophets, and Tatsumaki, a rock band from Nagasaki. Spearhead’s Michael Franti hopes the CD will remind people that “no life is worth more than any other, no sister worth less than any brother.” A message on the CD reads simply: “March, sing, write, dance, listen, and speak. When we don’t take action, it is complicity.” For more information, contact Tri-ValleyCARES at (925) 433-7148. www.trivalleycares.org.
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