San Francisco Chronicle Bay Area - Spoken Edition

Striking Marriott workers have reached an agreement in Oakland — but they will still be banging the drums in San Francisco as the strike moves into its second month. “There was some significant progress in talks on the national level on key items like job security this week, and since then we have arrived at a settlement in Oakland, but there is still more to be worked out,” on this side of the bay, said Unite Here Local 2 President Anand Singh.

Forget the wall. President Trump has found a way to make the border armed and dangerous without having to build his monument to ignorance. Trump has been talking about building a wall on the Mexican border ever since he got into the presidential race, but he has yet to make any real progress. He stopped pretending he’d make Mexico pay for it and demanded that Congress pony up $25 billion in U.S. taxpayer money for the job. His followers didn’t seem to notice the switcheroo.

Kelly Thompson slowly hobbled down the rusted metal steps of his camper, the clacking tips of crutches measuring each labored step. “I’m a mess, but I’m still ticking,” the retired Vietnam veteran said as we stood in the grassy field off Wood Street in West Oakland where an RV camp has sprouted. A camper on the field near Interstate 880 is where Thompson, 70, now lives. Last month, he lived in his camper a few blocks away, near 20th and Campbell streets.

There’s so much hate in this country. In just the past week, 11 Jewish congregants at a Pittsburgh synagogue were gunned down, allegedly by a man who authorities say was driven by hate. And this happened days after someone mailed pipe bombs to critics of the U.S. president. That suspect, authorities say, was fired up by the fear-mongering and hate-spewing rhetoric of our leader.

Tamara Terichow was leading a quiet life in San Rafael when she got a call last year that would give her one of the biggest shocks of her life. It was the Red Cross. They had found her sister, Lidia, lost a lifetime ago when they were children and the world was at war. Next would come phone calls back and forth and, finally, a reunion. Over the summer, Terichow flew to Finland, where the sisters met for the first time in 74 years. “We talked, we were happy,” Tamara said. “We cried.

It’s a sad day when the president of the United States has to be dragged kicking and screaming to oppose an act of political terror.

One of the people most surprised by San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White’s announcement that she was retiring on May 5 was Mayor London Breed. For weeks, Room 200 and Hayes-White had been holding talks on the date of the long-standing chief’s exit. And the two sides were far from a deal. The chief initially wanted to stay on until January 2020 to coincide with the end of her good friend, the late Mayor Ed Lee’s, second term.

Oakland’s plan to file a mega-million-dollar lawsuit against both the Raiders and the National Football League over the team’s impending move to Las Vegas has blown a tire. Sources tell us that two of the three law firms that had lined up to handle the case — and cover the upfront legal costs — have pulled out, leaving only New York attorney Jim Quinn of Berg & Androphy in the game. But there is another problem.

It’s been a tough year for San Francisco. A homeless crisis, a drug crisis. The new Millennium Tower is leaning, the newer Transbay Center has structural problems and closed down right after it opened up, the traffic is terrible, and Van Ness is a mess. And this used to be the City That Knows How. There’s a lot of gloom and doom out there. An email from an old friend is typical of this view. She hates the new skyline: “giant, congested piles of glass and metal,” she called it.

Where is Desley Brooks? That’s the question I began asking last week because the Oakland city councilwoman, who is trying to retain the District Six seat she’s held since 2002, has missed consecutive council meetings and candidate forums over the past month. Brooks was absent from council meetings on Sept. 17, Oct. 2 and Oct. 16. She’s the chairwoman of the Public Safety Committee, but the last two public safety meetings — Sept. 25 and Oct. 9 — were canceled.

5 to 10 mph. Gusts up to 20 mph late this evening. .MONDAY...Mostly sunny. Highs in the lower 50s. West winds 5 to 10 mph. Gusts up to 20 mph in the afternoon. .MONDAY NIGHT...Partly cloudy in the evening, then becoming mostly cloudy. Lows in the mid 40s. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph. .TUESDAY...Partly sunny. A slight chance of showers in the afternoon. Highs around 60. Southwest winds 5 to 10 mph. Gusts up to 20 mph in the afternoon. Chance of rain 20 percent. .TUESDAY NIGHT...Partly cloudy.

Say what you will about architects, the good ones tend to be optimists. For instance, they believe that they can use design to create cozy nooks for everyday people in brash big cities. Such faith is heartening — and often no match for how cities really work. I was reminded of this blunt truth while lounging in the publicly accessible ground floor of 505 Brannan St. near Mission Bay, the new headquarters for Pinterest.

With its members’ unceasing joy, artistic flair and proud-to-be-me mentality, it’s hard to imagine anything more quintessentially San Francisco than the Gay Men’s Chorus. But 37 years ago, the still-new singing group wasn’t welcome in all corners of the city. In a devastating blow that made headlines around the Bay Area, the chorus’ April 25, 1981, concert at St. Ignatius Church was canceled weeks beforehand by Archbishop John Quinn.

Where is Desley Brooks? That’s the question I began asking last week because the Oakland City councilwoman, who is trying to retain the District Six seat she’s held since 2002, has missed consecutive council meetings and candidate forums over the past month. Brooks was absent from council meetings on Sept. 17, Oct. 2 and Oct. 16. She’s the chairwoman of the Public Safety Committee, but the last two public safety meetings — Sept. 25 and Oct. 9 — were canceled.

The Catholic Diocese of San Jose on Thursday released the names of 15 clergy members who were known by the church to be credible child sex abusers. All of the priests on the list are either dead or permanently banned from the ministry. Don Flickinger, who was sued for sexual abuse years ago, was described as currently being with the Fresno diocese, though his status there could not be immediately confirmed. The list said he was permanently banned from from the ministry in 2006.