passing place

We know. Money is tight. Very tight. But people are starving in San Francisco. Not just the homeless, but people you might even know. People close to you. Your friends and family and neighbors. Seriously.

Which is why, even though we stuck this plea in yesterday’s Day Around the Bay, we’re going to bring this up again today: SF Food Bank has a great dollar-for-dollar (up to $10,000!) deal going on right now. But you have to give today. Why? Because the dollar—for-dollar deal ends tomorrow.

Please visit SF Food Bank for more information, to send them a donation, or whatever. Can afford to give? No problem. You can share this link on your Facebook page, spam it to your pals with disposable incomes, or Retweet it. Just do it today, please.

SF Food Bank, for those of you who don’t know, provides nutritious food to low-income families in San Francisco “to ensure that no one goes hungry this holiday season or any time during the year.”And in this seemingly endless recession, they’re hurting. Bad. Help them out, won’t you? (Note: if you don’t give, you will make this cat commit suicide.)

All this aside, the true revelation in this article was the following quote:

“I don’t know what crystal meth is, sir,” said Henry A. Alvarez III, the agency’s executive director.

Come again? Wait a minute. Let’s get this straight. The Executive Director of the SFHA, the agency responsible for putting roofs over the heads of the San Francisco’s poors and downtroddens, has never heard of a drug that has been the scourge of the city for over a decade? Hasn’t he seen the public health campaigns against meth that feature bad neo-constructivist art/sexy cartoon characters/meth-addled porn stars who keep falling off the wagon? Didn’t he get an orientation pep talk on the city’s woes when he landed this gig? You know, something with a sassy, gum-smacking, street-smart social worker who talks the hep jive of today’s youth and says things like “Meth is (insert snappy negative rhyming word here),” like in an episode of “The White Shadow.”

For those of you generous enough of spirit to wonder whether this fella was misquoted, take note. The author of this piece, Scott James, wrote a follow up blog post, describing himself as stunned when Mr. Alvarez made the above pronouncement not just once, but three times during their interview!