Frisco Vista » events

2009 Goldman Environmental Awards

xensen — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:00:01 +0000

Last night the ceremony announcing this year’s winners of the Goldman prize for environmental activism was held in San Francisco’s Opera House. The award is the brainchild of Richard and Rhoda Goldman. Rhoda passed away in 1996. This year it appeared Richard’s health had taken a turn for the worse, although he still spoke cogently.

Because it is the award’s 20th anniversary, they brought out the big guns. Al Gore gave an excellent keynote speech emphasizing individual responsibility.

Robert Redford lent some star power.

Tracy Chapman performed well at intermission.

But of course the main attention is supposed to be on the award recipients, one from each of the inhabited continents. This year’s winners (from left to right) included:

ISLAND NATIONS: Yuyun Ismawati, who brought modern waste management systems to poor neighborhoods in Bali.
EUROPE: Olga Speranskaya of Moscow, who created a network of organizations aimed at correcting the Soviet legacy of abandoned toxic chemicals.
CENTRAL AND SOUTH AMERICA: Hugo Jabin (3rd from left) and Wanze Eduards (second from right ) who waged a campaign against Chinese logging in Suriname.
AFRICA: Marc Ona, who fought a Chinese mining development threatening Gabon’s rain forests.
ASIA: Rizwana Hasan, who worked to reduce environmental damage from the ship breaking industry in Bangladesh.
NORTH AMERICA: Maria Gunnoe, who stood up to mountaintop mining in West Virginia.

This is a worthy award that has done much good. Yet there is something a little odd in flying barefoot peasant activists in to mingle with Pacific Heights matrons, while workers from environmental activists battle each other to reach the City Hall hors d’oeuvres tables. (This year the Pacific Heights contingent seemed somewhat reduced in number.)

The award recipients truly accomplished great things. But, afterward, life outside city hall seemed unchanged.

Thirteenth annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair

xensen — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 13:00:28 +0000

Frisco Vista received the following e-mail from Ken Knabb of the Bureau of Public Secrets.

The 13th annual Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair is happening this coming weekend at the San Francisco County Fair Building (Golden Gate Park near Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way).

Due to popular demand and continually increasing turnout (last year there were over 5000 people), the bookfair now runs for two days:

–Saturday (March 22), 10:00 am to 6:00 pm
–Sunday (March 23), 11:00 am to 5:00 pm

Admission is free.

Ken Knabb (Bureau of Public Secrets) will have a table there, as will approximately 60 other booksellers, distributors, independent presses and radical groups from around the country. There will also be speakers, panel discussions, films, exhibits, kids/family space, and cafe lunches. For more information see http://sfbookfair.wordpress.com/

It’s always lots of fun — hope to see you there!

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass

xensen — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 13:00:58 +0000

San Francisco’s long-standing tradition of free music in the park continues this weekend with the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival. Some of the artists who will appear include Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Boz Scaggs and the Blue Velvet Band, Earl Scruggs, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Jorma Kaukonen, Los Lobos (?!), Michelle Shocked, T Bone Burnett, and many more. Dowloadable programs and more information here.

Capitola Kite Classic

xensen — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 13:00:44 +0000

Okay, the event takes place in May. Plenty of advance notice for next year.

Capitola, near Santa Cruz, is about an hour and a half south of San Francisco.

Spring Garden Party at Annie’s Annuals

xensen — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 01:34:25 +0000

Annie’s Annuals in Richmond (at 740 Market Avenue) is holding their spring party this weekend, April 14-15. They will have free “supermarket sweep” raffles every hour — winners get 15 minutes of free shopping. There’s also a “gardening olympics” (“no athletic ability necessary”). Plus Calypso music, complimentary snacks and drinks, and gardening talks, as well as an Easter egg hunt, face painting, a bunny petting corner, coloring table, and sandbox for kids.

Annie’s specializes in unusual annuals and perennials, including cottage garden heirlooms and hard-to-find California native wildflowers. Annie’s plants are grown outdoors, not in greenhouses, so they tend to be tough. And they’re not sprayed with hormones as is the case with most commercial growers.

It’s a great place to pick up plants that you won’t find in retail box stores. But beware, at $5 or so per 4-inch pot, you can spend a lot in a short time.

The full schedule of events is here.

Summer 2007 Art Exhibitions in the San Francisco Bay Area

xensen — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 02:56:36 +0000

I’ve moved this post to a static html page because it wasn’t formatting properly here.Â The new location for the summary of 2007 art exhibitions in the San Francisco Bay Area is here.

QM2 Arrives in San Francisco

xensen — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:18:04 +0000

While most of the U.S. was watching the Superbowl, a sizable contingent of San Franciscans congregated at the Golden Gate to welcome the Queen Mary II to the city, a stop on her 81-day world cruise. San Francisco sits aside a giant bay, and it has seen a lot of vessels come and go — several Gold Rush vessels, abandoned by their avaricious crews, make up a portion of the landfill under the Financial District — but the QM2 is the biggest ever to visit the city. In fact, it barely squeezed under the Golden Gate Bridge (with 12 feet to spare). The vessel is four times the height of Telegraph Hill and some 280 feet longer than the Transamerica Pyramid is tall.

Piece and Bits was among the throng of spectators, and she has provided Frisco Vista with some photos. The photo above shows the armada of sailboats that accompanied the ocean liner in its journey into the bay. My favorite picture, however, is the one below. It captures the festive spirit of the San Franciscans who made the visit a cheerful event (and an excuse to enjoy a nice February day by the bay). Thanks, Sista Annie.