See how they run: Aaron Peskin, three years sober, gets carded

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Mission Local is publishing a daily campaign dispatch for each of the major contenders in the mayor’s race, alternating among candidates weekly until November. This week: Aaron Peskin. Read earlier dispatches here.

It was a beautiful Saturday morning, perfect for the election ritual known as the merchants walk. Mayoral candidate and Board President Aaron Peskin arrived in the Castro, accompanied by a crew of staffers and volunteers carrying campaign signs. As they walked up one side of Castro Street and down the other, hands would be shaken and, hopefully, new alliances would be born, and “We Need Aaron” signs would bloom in storefront windows along Castro Street.

But first, a rally at 2275 Market St. Queer LifeSpace, a nonprofit that provides low-cost mental-health and substance-abuse services to the LGBTQIA+ community (and training for the clinicians who aspire to work with them) was having landlord troubles. Their rent couldn’t be raised until 2027, when their lease is up for renewal, but the owner of the building had recently begun charging retroactive fees to cover “maintenance” and “improvements.”

And yet, the building did not appear to be improved, or even particularly maintained. It was already the last day in the building for another long-term tenant, Frank Reyes, who was giving his second-to-last haircut in the soon-to-be-vacant offices of Long Overdue hair salon downstairs.

“We cannot have, by virtue of state law, commercial rent control in the state of California,” said Peskin, never one to pass over an opportunity to share a little civics education. But, he added, the city now has a vacancy tax on commercial space, and when a landlord acquires a reputation for gouging tenants, their property can stay vacant for a while. “So I say to my friends in the Castro, ‘The more organized you are, the harder it becomes to get away with these bogus common area maintenance fees.’”

At the intersection of Castro and Market, Peskin and crew converged with former State Senator Mark Leno who, in the early 2000s, was Peskin’s mentor in navigating the legendarily nightmarish San Francisco budget process. Back then, Peskin had just been elected to the Board of Supervisors, and Leno was supervisor for District 8. “He was my vice chair on the budget committee,” said Leno. “He kept me on my toes. I had to do a lot of preparation for each weekly meeting. I wasn’t going to be shown up. It was a very friendly competition.”

To those who are fully aware of the looming crisis of the city’s budget, said Leno, Peskin is the only candidate who is qualified for the actual job of mayoring — which, in San Francisco at least, goes well beyond ribbon-cutting and charming visiting dignitaries, to wielding near-supreme authority over staggering sums of money. San Francisco, Leno said, has a budget of $15 billion, 35,000 employees and, currently, a smorgasbord of overlapping programs and departments that are trying to tackle the same problems without necessarily communicating with each other. “A competent mayor has regular meetings with departmental heads,” said Leno. “Minimally.” 

The crew had stopped in the Twin Peaks Tavern, and Leno paused to look around. “Do you know that this was one of the first gay bars to have windows?” he asked.

Next stop was the Castro Coffee Company, then Fabulosa Books. “Do you have any books by Alice Munro?” asked Peskin. The clerk behind the counter shook her head. Whenever a famous author dies, as Munro just did, there’s a run on their books that can last months for small bookstores. “No! Wait!” said another clerk, running to the back and returning triumphantly with a used copy of “Dance of the Happy Shades.”

Back on the street, Peskin disclosed that he hasn’t read any Alice Munro. If he had to pick a favorite book, it would probably be “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss, which he reads to school groups on the regular.

The crew kept moving along Castro Street, dispensing signs as it went. Lee Hepner, a former legislative aide and current volunteer, had designed the itinerary around which businesses actually had the owners working in them; an owner would have the authority to put up a sign. Many of the shopkeepers took signs, though most didn’t put them up right then and there.

Peskin and Leno stopped in at Aegean Delights, a majestically flamboyant coffee shop with a statue of Neptune in the window, and Queer Arts Featured, which turned out to be the kind of gallery that sells artisanally crocheted penis sculptures. He stopped to greet friends who just happened to be walking through the neighborhood, and to talk earnestly with people who just seemed interesting. As he walked down the street, he began to twirl a little, like a character in a musical on the verge of bursting into song.

Hepner and Kaitlyn Conway, Peskin’s director of communications, had high hopes of getting Peskin into a chair at Louie’s Barber Shop (“He needs a trim,” said Conway, firmly), but the crew was already running late for its rendezvous at the Lookout, where the bouncer insisted on carding Peskin before letting him inside.

The last stop of the day was at the Academy, a members-only LGBTQ+ social club, “We do have a policy of rejecting anyone who says they’re trying to get away from the riff-raff,” said one of the owners, Paul Miller, who started the Academy after closing down Truck, a bar he owned in the Mission. “I wanted something that was a little more like, ‘I know your life is better because you’re coming here,’” said Miller. “It’s different than sitting at a bar for hours.”

Miller showed Peskin an exhibit of queer artifacts on loan from various collections, like a neon sign reading “Loads of Love” that Juanita More used to sleep under every night.

But then Miller mentioned the bond. He may not even have known he was mentioning the multi-million dollar bond that will also be on the ballot during the November election. All he said, really, was that he had just been to a Board of Supervisors meeting and seen a lot of Asian senior citizens who were mad about public health cuts. “Here’s how it works,” said Peskin, pivoting into budget talk like an ice skater gliding out onto the ice. “That $360 million was supposed to be a public health bond. And then, at the last minute, the mayor came along and said, ‘I’m the mayor. Instead of public health getting $220 million, it’ll get $167 million and I’m gonna do all these great, fun things that are getting me votes. Like Harvey Milk Plaza.”

There is no doubt that there are voters in the Castro who really want Harvey Milk Plaza to happen. Brian Springfield, executive director of Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza, has accompanied the group for much of the merchant walk, clipboard of renderings in hand, politely ready to explain the design of the new plaza and the flaws of the current one to anyone who might be interested.

Peskin paused, but just for a second. “I went ‘whoa, time out everybody. You’re not cutting City Clinic.’ If I have to choose between something that is nice and lovely and something that is public health, I am going to choose public health.”

The current plan is to add $30 million to the bond — enough money to fund both a transit plaza honoring the memory of the Castro’s first district supervisor and a public clinic focused on preventing sexually transmitted infections. “Except for there is still $9 million missing for the expansion of psych emergency services which was in the original plan,” Peskin continued. “So, I need that $9 million, Madam Mayor.”

If Peskin were mayor, he would also be able to reshape the next bond, as long as he could get the Board of Supervisors to approve it. But he wouldn’t. “I would stick to the city’s 10-year Capital Plan that we all created together that actually said, we’re going to do public health in 2024, and we’re going to do Rec and Park in 2026. I mean, we have a plan.”

“We have to go,” said Hepner. It’s true. Peskin is due at a gala in the Tenderloin.