San Francisco Chronicle Bay Area - Spoken Edition

Bernie Ward, the “Lion of the Left,” as he was known for years on KGO radio before his 2008 conviction for possession and distribution of child pornography, popped up in a Washington Post story this week on embattled Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Ward recounted his years as a marriage and sex education teacher at Washington’s Georgetown Prep, where his students included both Kavanaugh and sitting Justice Neil Gorsuch.

The discovery of a major crack in a support beam forced the shutdown of San Francisco’s brand new Transbay Transit Center during peak commute hours Tuesday — and Twitter users took the news with typical cool-headed aplomb. “This building is doomed!” “The city is falling apart in more ways than one.” “That whole area feels like a death trap,” wrote a woman named Nette, who said in her profile that she’s a San Francisco native. Indeed, the $2.

Deanna Hodgin vividly remembers the first time she saw him. She was eating hamburgers with her husband and their daughter, Claire, just 12 at the time, in a window seat at Kezar Bar & Restaurant. Suddenly, a man’s face appeared in the plate glass window, his eyes trained on Claire. “He was snarling and angry,” Hodgin recalled of that encounter six years ago. “Then he started masturbating.

One victim of the Brett Kavanaugh controversy is Joe Biden, whose possible 2020 presidential run may have gone up in smoke. Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president, and he developed a lot of goodwill in those years. But well before that, he was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee during Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1991. It was his worst moment as a senator, and now it’s haunting him.

The big $41 million overhaul of San Francisco’s Twin Peaks Tunnel appears to have been hit with the Muni curse. The project drew the ire of Mayor London Breed when Muni underestimated the number of buses needed to ferry commuters around the tunnel and track rebuild. Then a private contractor was struck and killed by a steel beam in early August as work wrapped up inside the tunnel.

It’s hard to believe San Francisco was once known as the City That Knows How, a nickname bestowed by President William Howard Taft in 1911. Just five years after weathering a devastating earthquake and fire, San Francisco agreed to host a World’s Fair in 1915. And it did so with aplomb. All of that know-how seems to have vanished. Our Millennium Tower is sinking, leaning and spontaneously cracking — one window, at least. Our new $2.

The Global Climate Action Summit may or may not save the planet, but it did serve as a great platform for launching former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s run for president in 2020. Not a word was said publicly, but I firmly believe the former maverick Republican is eyeing a run for the White House as a Democrat. In the past few years, Bloomberg has donated tens of millions of dollars to such causes as countering climate change, helping inner-city programs and fighting sugary-soda makers.

The attempt to clean up San Francisco’s U.N. Plaza has almost become an annual event. It usually starts with the closing down of the plaza’s fountain for cleaning, coupled with an increase in police patrols. The fountain is being cleaned again, but this time the police have upped the ante by bringing in one of the department’s bus-size mobile command centers and parking it at the Market Street end of the plaza — where it will stay 24/7 for the foreseeable future.

California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris both had big roles in the confirmation hearing for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Feinstein was her solid, studious self. Harris scored big on day one, but day two wasn’t so hot.

For once I find myself in agreement with President Trump. The anonymous “senior official” who wrote the New York Times opinion piece depicting a secret resistance within the White House should be hunted down and fired. It’s common for senior staffers in any administration, including my own as mayor, to try to smooth out some of the boss’ rough edges and counter bad impulses. I’ll tell you a story.

Brian Egg was eccentric and kind, and the kind of generous spirit who gave cashmere coats and planted palm trees to his neighbors. Tuesday night, two dozen of those neighbors — plus family and friends, many of whom had known him for four decades — clustered in front of Egg’s South of Market home on what would have been his 66th birthday. His death has not been confirmed, but two weeks ago, a body, missing its head and hands, was found in Egg’s home.

When it comes to street-cleaning costs, San Francisco is in a league of its own. The 47-square-mile city spends more than four times as much as Chicago does to keep streets clean, according to a recent budget and legislative analyst’s report. And Chicago, at 227 square miles, is almost five times larger than San Francisco. San Francisco also spends three times as much as Los Angeles — whose population is more than four times greater.

We didn’t make opening night of the San Francisco Symphony on Wednesday, but we were there on the opening of the Opera on Friday. Attending one or the other is one of the great tribal rituals of the city. The swells parade across Van Ness Avenue from City Hall to the Symphony or the opera house, or across Franklin Street from the restaurants in Hayes Valley. It’s a night for putting on the ritz.

The last chunks of the old Bay Bridge eastern span will get a new life next year, when Caltrans transforms them into boardwalks — one jutting out from the Oakland shoreline near the toll plaza, the other at Yerba Buena Island. Three of the bridge’s original concrete piers will serve as foundations for those platforms. Caltrans will demolish the other two remaining piers on Saturday, Sept. 8, in a blast that will send bits of concrete and rebar to the bay floor.

Jacqueline Heller finishes her exercise session running through a human tunnel in the November Project fitness workout at the Presidio in San Francisco, Calif. on Friday, Aug. 31, 2018. Ryan Buesser (left) and Patrick Canfield run up a steep trail in the November Project fitness workout at the Presidio in San Francisco, Calif. on Friday, Aug. 31, 2018. Participants sprint up a staircase during the November Project fitness workout at the Presidio in San Francisco, Calif. on Friday, Aug. 31, 2018.