All you need to know about last night’s all-district candidates forum at Yoshi’s San Francisco is right here, courtesy of Ian S. Port.
Rebecca Prozan responding to a query from Jane Kim:
Click to expand
1. This was a “fun” event, in that the candidates’ names were pulled out of a snare drum and then they got time signals from a dinging triangle. A bit twee if you ask me, but it seemed apropropriate given the crowd and the nature of the event.
2. Speaking of which, there was a good turnout, with the lower level of Yoshi’s biggest room almost filled to capacity.
3. I understand how there needs to be a viability cutoff – I mean Big Entertainment would like all the candidates to swear fealty of course, but you can’t have 50 people on stage, right? (In a couple of years, we’ll have six races and who-knows-how-many candidates, right?) However, it’s not clear to me what the cutoff standards were. There were no candidates on stage from District Two, for instance. Presumably, leading viers Janet Reilly and Mark Farrell blew off the questionnaire, leaving that to Kat Anderson and Abraham Simmons. Now, both of them applied to The Recording Academy but neither wound up gracing the stage last night. Additionally, bona fide D6 candidate Anna Conda was left wondering what the deal is, man.
4. I left just after the intra-district candidate-on-candidate queries began. (Not sure what the point is of having a D6 candidate question one from D8 at last night’s love-fest, but whatever.) But as far as the intros (complete with musical accompaniment) were concerned, Malia Cohen was the standout. (She finished up way before the triangle had a chance to ding. Bonus.) Rafael Mandelman (Mandelman! Mandelman!) also did well, speaking naturally and name-checking The Death of Fun,* but, OTOH, Debra Walker seemed to be reading notes, as if at a high school debate. JMO.
Energy, energy, energy from Malia Cohen:
This is a new kind of deal for me, to see Big Entertainment take this approach. I’m thinking that this event will, as designed, affect how our Board of Supes deals with nightclubs and similar whatnots in 2011 and 2012.
*Copyright SFBG? Don’t know who coined this term. It’s a good one…
