This week's new articles from the alternative weeklies...
- Go Fish: S.F.'s Coastal Foraging King Shows How to Fish (and Eat) Locally (SF Weekly)
In an age grown acutely aware of the ecological and health problems wrought by industrial food production, the conundrum of what to eat — what Berkeley-based author Michael Pollan famously dubbed the "Omnivore's Dilemma" — is one that various journalists and activists have been pondering when it comes to our land-based food supply. But the future of wild fish, and of the men and women who hunt them, has an immediacy in San Francisco, a city with culturally rich traditions of both seafood and fishing. The history of San Francisco's fisheries has been one of boom and bust, trending toward depletion. From the Chinese shrimpers of the late 19th century onward — San Francisco's herring fleet, which exists almost solely to supply consumers in Japan with herring roe, today represents the last commercial fishery based within a municipality in the U.S. — one fishery after another has witnessed its particular resource dwindle. Full article
- The Recycling Guru (East Bay Express)
Cans and bottles, paper and cardboard: What else is there to know? Plenty, and Arthur Boone has spent the last 28 years studying recycling's myriad complexities. For starters, there's food waste, electronics, and those troublesome plastics. Oakland resident Boone knows them all. He knows how to recycle the components of a mattress as well as anyone in the country. He knows about recycling clothing, furniture, Christmas trees, and scrap metal. He's got friends in high places, and is recognized by specialists across the country. "If there were professors of recycling, Boone might well be one," his web site attests, "but there aren't, so Boone labors on as a practicing scholar." The semi-retired 73-year-old seems to like it just fine that way. Full article
- Believing Broussard (East Bay Express)
To believe Devaughndre Broussard's testimony so far in an Oakland courtroom is to believe he is a pawn, manipulated and used by a man who held everything he could over Broussard's head: money, honor, loyalty, and even God. Broussard was a "soldier," who was ordered to kill two men, including Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey. But from the defense's perspective, Broussard was merely a loose cannon, acting on his own behalf. Although lawyers for Yusuf Bey IV, the alleged mastermind of Bailey's assassination, have yet to fully reveal their strategy in the trial, it appears so far that they intend to argue that Broussard simply heard about Bailey and another man, Odell Roberson, around the bakery and decided to kill both men, thinking it would earn him points with Bey IV. Full article
- Battling the banksters (SF Bay Guardian)
Late in the afternoon of April 15, in the quiet of the huge round Bank of America lobby on Montgomery Street, a young woman suddenly yelled "Bank of America made $4.4 billion in profits in 2009 but paid zero in taxes!" About two dozen bystanders converged in a synchronized dance routine, kicking, strutting, and shimmying to lively music from the Brass Liberation Orchestra while supporters held up signs reading "tax evader."The event was one of hundreds of "Tax Day" demonstrations around the country on April 15 and 18, sponsored by progressive organizations US Uncut, MoveOn, the AFL-CIO, and many more. Full article
- Endangered Eagle may still have hope (SF Bay Guardian)
An important community institution never truly dies. It remains in the hearts and minds of everyone it has touched — a fact that that patrons who have lived and loved (sometimes literally) in the Eagle Tavern understand. But that doesn't mean they're ready to loosen their talons and let go. With the help of San Francisco's supervisors, some seriously committed community energy — and maybe even a Dallas cowboy who likes his leather — they may not have to. Full article