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by\u00a0H.R. SMITH<\/a><\/strong> AUGUST 4, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Four](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/newspack-missionlocal.s3.amazonaws.com\/mission\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/Aaron-Peskin-Phil-Ting-Laundromat2.jpg?fit=1200%2C752&ssl=1\")
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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nSign up below to get Mission Local\u2019s free newsletter<\/strong>, a daily digest of news you won\u2019t find elsewhere.Sign up<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCan I ask you a question?\u201d shouts the woman in athleisure, walking a dog on the other side of Clement Street.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOf course you can,\u201d Aaron Peskin shouts back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The woman runs across the street to join Peskin and the small amoeba of campaign staff volunteers that are walking down Clement with him, carrying big stacks of campaign signs in English and Chinese. Her voice drops to a low, confidential murmur. \u201cWhat about the Great Highway<\/a>?\u201d she says. \u201cKeeping it open?\u201d \u201cWhat do you<\/em> think?\u201d responds Peskin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A person who spends some time on the campaign trail with Peskin will notice that there are a few things that are non-negotiable. Peskin is unequivocally for rent control \u2014 and for expanding it to more buildings<\/a>, if Costa Hawkins ever gets overturned at the state level. He\u2019s extremely in favor of low-income housing, whether it\u2019s constructing more of it, or keeping the existing kind from being knocked down. When a would-be voter challenges him on issues like these, his response in the past has been to smile pleasantly and say that they are always free to vote for someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Stay informed on local elections \u2014 sign up for Mission Local’s free daily newsletter<\/strong> today!Sign up<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other areas of city governance where passions run high, though, Peskin can be harder to pin down, possibly because there often is no pin until there is a specific decision that needs to be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI want to keep it open,\u201d the woman says quietly, of the highway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m hearing that from more and more people as I\u2019m walking around,\u201d says Peskin. \u201cI was at El Rio in the Mission last night<\/a>, and people were telling me that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI mean, there are plenty<\/em> of places to walk,\u201d says the woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The situation with the Great Highway is that back in June, a group of supervisors \u2014 Joel Engardio, Myrna Melgar, Matt Dorsey, Rafael Mandelman, and Dean Preston \u2014 submitted a ballot measure to close the section of the Great Highway<\/a> between the San Francisco Zoo and the southwest corner of Golden Gate Park and turn it into a park. That section had begun closing to car traffic on the weekends, during the pandemic, the measure argued<\/a>, and closing it permanently would be in keeping with the city\u2019s transit-first policy, the Rec and Park Strategic Plan, and the Climate Action Plan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHere\u2019s where I started at,\u201d says Peskin. \u201cIt\u2019s not really cool to put that on the ballot, when you can think about it at City Hall and bring people in and try to reach some compromise. We reached some compromise, which was the weekend closure. There was a lot of back and forth and it seemed like it was more divisive than it was helpful but I\u2019m still on my listening tour.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPutting it on the ballot was stupid,\u201d says the woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSome people last night told me that they\u2019re starting a recall drive on Supervisor Engardio,\u201d says Peskin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOh yeah,\u201d says the woman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou do know that the piece of the Great Highway between Skyline and Sloat is going to close right?\u201d adds Peskin. \u201cMother Nature bats last. I\u2019m not gonna keep spending your tax money on fixing something that is falling into the ocean.\u201d Yes, the woman agrees \u2014 if the ocean swallows the highway that\u2019s different. Peskin hands her a business card and tells her to call his office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier that day on Clement Street, before Peskin arrives, a group of volunteers and campaign staff wait for Peskin and Assemblymember Phil Ting to arrive for the election ritual known as the merchant walk \u2014 walking along a business corridor, schmoozing with shopkeepers, asking if they\u2019ll put a sign in their window.<\/p>\n\n\n\n News is out that San Francisco Public Works is clearing out homeless encampments on Division<\/a> today, at the behest of Mayor London Breed<\/a>. \u201cI don\u2019t want to sound cruel,\u201d says one volunteer, about the rousted homeless people, \u201cbut I\u2019m kind of selfish. Every time they start sweeping Division Street, they just come out here. It\u2019s not like they disappear.\u201d It\u2019s also, he adds, a transparent play to lock down conservative votes. \u201cEven the Nazis \u2014 I mean, all the conservative people on Nextdoor<\/a> \u2014 are saying \u2018Oh gee it\u2019s an election year.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anthony Ching-Ho Leung, Peskin\u2019s Chinese Community Campaign Director, is still riding high off of the success of Peskin\u2019s duet, in Cantonese, with Jacky Huang, of the George Lam Canto-pop classic \u201cTo be a Real Man.<\/a>\u201d It\u2019s all over WeChat, says Leung. The song turned out to be eerily perfect \u2014 the lyrics, which are about how a real man has to give something his all even if he\u2019s not sure he\u2019ll succeed, echo the slogan that the team chose for Peskin\u2019s Chinese-language signs (\u201cA Person Who Can Get Things Done\u201d). Also: Lam\u2019s nickname in Hong Kong is \u201cThe Bearded Man\u201d \u2014 the same thing that many Cantonese speakers call Peskin, on the grounds that the Chinese romanization of his name is a lot harder for people to remember. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Another teenage volunteer has taken the bus up alone from Daly City. \u201c\u2019I\u2019m here to get a feel of what kind of a candidate you are,\u201d he tells Peskin when he arrives. It\u2019s not uncommon for Daly City kids to get involved in San Francisco politics, since their parents often send them to Chinese school in Chinatown, where they run into groups like the Chinese Progressive Association<\/a>, which runs programs that train teenagers in grassroots organizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ting and Peskin arrive, and begin going from door to door. There are signs that at least one other candidate (or their representatives) have been through here. A store that sells roast duck and lottery tickets has a Daniel Lurie sign in the window, and several issues of Wind<\/em>,<\/a> a bilingual Chinese\/English newspaper. Each issue has a large ad for Lurie\u2019s campaign on A1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ting and Peskin met in the early 2000s \u2014 Peskin was serving his first term at the Board of Supervisors, and Ting was at the Asian Law Caucus, working on the case of Wen Ho Lee, a Chinese American scientist who had been falsely accused of espionage<\/a>. Peskin was unusual at the time, Ting says, for understanding how important Lee\u2019s case was \u2014 that it was about larger issues of racism and civil rights, rather than one bad FBI investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Working at the state level has turned out to be a whole new toolkit for tackling local issues, says Ting. Locally, he says, the most powerful tool you often have is zoning. At the state level a lot more is possible. For years, Ting had been part of an effort to lower speed limits in certain parts of San Francisco as a public safety measure<\/a>. It took being elected to state government to actually make headway<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A block later, Ting and Peskin spot Eric and Gordon Mar, twin brothers and both former supervisors, eating lunch at Tenglong Chinese Restaurant. The group catches up on mutual friends and reminisces about memorable lawsuits the city has filed \u2014 the one that kept City College from getting shut down<\/a>, the one against the developers behind the Millennium Tower<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s one of my secret tools,\u201d Peskin says, adding that his lawsuit ideas still get turned down all the time. Everyone wants to get the City Attorney to sue someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peskin\u2019s District 3 \u2014 North Beach and Chinatown \u2014 is one of the most densely populated in the city. The western end of the city, where we are now, is one the least dense \u2014 part of the 40 percent of the city that consists almost entirely of single-family detached homes<\/a> and one-story commercial buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s unlikely to be that way for much longer. For the last several years, Peskin has been involved in a plan to re-zone the entire western side of the city<\/a> in order to comply with a state-mandated housing element<\/a> that requires the construction of 82,000 new housing units in the city by 2031.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The zoning changes are already extremely unpopular with some residents<\/a>, but to Peskin, having six to eight story buildings along an existing transit corridor like Clement sounds like a pretty good way to meet the city\u2019s housing goals. It also sounds a lot like North Beach, where Peskin lives\u2014or most parts of San Francisco that were built out in the early 1900s. \u201cThe world I live in Is RH-3 or denser,\u201d he says. This,\u201d he says, gesturing down the street, \u201cbut with three floors on it.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLet\u2019s go to Toy Boat!\u201d he says, enthusiastically.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Toy Boat, Peskin chats with the teenagers working behind the counter. He recognizes a couple of burly men sitting at a cafe table and tries to persuade them to go swimming with him in the Bay. People who swim in the Bay embody a particular type of San Francisco \u2014 the kind where a disparate band of individuals are drawn together by an obsession with something very few other people even want to try once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Earlier that morning he swam out with an intern, an educator named Elizabeth Boyarsky who applied for an internship in Peskin\u2019s office because she wanted to learn about local politics during summer break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the two of them compared feet on the balcony of the South End Rowing Club \u2014 a volunteer-run athletic club that dates back to 1873 \u2014 Peskin determined that Boyarsky would fit into his swim fins, and walked off to the locker room to grab them. On the sliver of beach below the balcony, swimmers walked into and out of the water, hailing each other casually like patrons at a coffee shop. The general look was muscles upon muscles upon muscles. One swimmer kept going back and forth between the bay and a plastic tub filled with ice water \u2014 training for the D\u00e1l Riada, a swim from Scotland to Ireland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis shows when the high and low tides are out,\u201d said Peskin, opening a booklet and flipping past the entry on high and low tides. \u201cWe only look at this<\/em> page: The velocity. Today at 6:36 at the Golden Gate it was slack tide. And 9:24 is the maximum flood tide of 2.8 knots. Which is pretty smoking.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you stay within the boundary of the Aquatic Park Pier, you don\u2019t have to worry too much about velocity, he added. But if you\u2019re headed farther, to someplace like Alcatraz, it\u2019s important to time it around a slack period, so that you don\u2019t wind up getting swept out to the Golden Gate Bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He showed Boyarsky a few more highlights of the clubhouse (framed photo of the group of women who successfully sued to join in the club in the 1970s, framed photo of Peskin in a Speedo<\/a>) and then the two of them disappeared into the gray water<\/p>\n\n\n\n smithzilla@gmail.com<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Heather Smith covers a beat that spans health, food, and the environment, as well as shootings, stabbings, various small fires, and shouting matches at public meetings. She is a 2007 Middlebury Fellow in Environmental Journalism and a contributor to the book Infinite City<\/a>.More by H.R. Smith<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Memorable lawsuits and other small talk on a Richmond District merchant walk by\u00a0H.R. SMITH AUGUST 4, 2024 Sign up below to get Mission Local\u2019s free newsletter, a daily digest of news you won\u2019t find elsewhere.Sign up \u201cCan I ask you a question?\u201d shouts the woman in athleisure, walking a dog on… Continue reading <\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Dance](\"https:\/\/cdn.broadstreetads.com\/assets\/9ad0275b-6166-4368-baf7-cdaddc4ac141.jpeg\")
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H.R. SMITH<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n