See how they run: Aaron Peskin bar-crawls the Mission

Leer en español 閱讀中文版

Mission Local is publishing campaign dispatches 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’s a foggy Monday night in the Mission, and Aaron Peskin is describing property-management software to a man on a bar stool in the Lone Palm. Ostensibly, Peskin and his campaign events manager, Hana Haber, are out distributing fliers for a benefit concert on Wednesday night at El Rio with singer-songwriter Kelley Stolz, but where Peskin goes, policy talk is never far behind. 

“When I talk about it, people react like I’m some kind of a wacko conspiracy theorist, but it’s actually real,” says Peskin. “All these landlords, who control 19.7 million units in America, pool their data. And then the algorithm tells them how many units to keep vacant in order to artificially raise rents.”

“That’s fucked uppppp,” says the woman on the next bar stool over. 

“And, it turns out, we can ban it in San Francisco,” says Peskin. “So, that’s what we’re doing tomorrow.”

It’s been a busy few weeks for Peskin. He rehearsed, first with a Cantonese coach, and then by being locked in a karaoke booth for several hours, the George Lam classic “To be a Real Man,” for a duet with Jacky Huang at a campaign fundraiser at the Far East Cafe. “The lyrics are actually pretty good. It ends with ‘I’m a defender of justice’ and this and that. I belted out my two stanzas, and I didn’t fuck them up too bad.” He borrowed a leather vest from one of his former legislative aides and did some campaigning at Dore Alley (surprisingly productive, he reports; he ran into quite a few politicos that he had been trying to talk to about legislation that he had in the works).

And his former kindergarten classmate became the de-facto Democratic nominee for president of the United States. “I got called up by the New York Times,” says Peskin. “They were like, ‘Oh, you were in kindergarten with Kamala Harris?’ I said ‘Yeah.’ ‘Do you have pictures?’ ‘Yeah.’ Then they asked what she was like in kindergarten, and I said ‘Can I tell you the truth? I have no fucking memory of her.’ My mother says we were friends at the tadpole pond, but I don’t remember the tadpole pond.”

Meanwhile, one of his former legislative aides, Lee Hepner, now an antitrust lawyer and senior legal counsel for the American Economic Liberties Project, got in touch with him about RealPage. The company has advertised for years about its ability to pool massive amounts of real estate data, then use that data to help landlords keep rents high — the sort of activity that has, in the past, been considered price-fixing, and totally illegal.

For some time now, RealPage has been under investigation by the FBI and Department of Justice, and is the subject of multiple class-action lawsuits, but Hepner was thinking that maybe San Francisco didn’t need to wait around to see how those panned out. If the Board of Supervisors banned the use of RealPage by local property owners, tenants who thought that their landlords might be using RealPage could file a complaint with the city, or the Superior Court, or the San Francisco city attorney could just sue the landlord outright.

Peskin took the idea to the city attorney. Novel concept, said the city attorney. No other city has done this yet. But sure, go for it. “It passed out of committee 3-0 today,” says Peskin. “And tomorrow it’s going before the board.”

Next stop is the Latin American Club, where, as it turns out, the bartender, Doug Hilsinger, is playing at Wednesday’s benefit with his band, The Barneys. After that is a pot club where, as it turns out, the security guard working the front door is also running for mayor. “There are, like, eighteen of us on the ballot,” says Peskin. The guard pulls Peskin aside for some mayor/mayor confab and sternly instructs everyone not to take photos.

Outside the club, a guy on a bike recognizes Haber, and launches into a monologue about how he tried to write “Artists Live Here,” on the side of his live/work rental, then realized he’d misspelled part of it. “I was like, ‘I need a weed break,’” he tells Peskin and Haber. He’s been having problems with the building’s new owner, he says, who wants to evict everyone and turn it into an ashram. 

“Has there been 25 continuous years of artist presence in that building?” says Peskin. The guy isn’t sure. “Go to your supervisor, who I think is Ronen, and see if she will write you a legacy-business nomination,” says Peskin. “It’s usually for 30 years, but under extraordinary circumstances it can be 25.”

Peskin and Haber move on to Doc’s Clock, where one of the patrons leaps off his barstool, greets Peskin warmly, then announces to the bar that his daughter interned for Peskin when she was in high school. “He had her opening the mail — during the anthrax scare!” he shouts. Peskin nods cheerfully.

Peskin and Haber pass out a few more fliers to a few more people, then head back out onto Mission Street. “I made a beautiful batch of gazpacho,” Peskin says, with the air of someone who is remembering a particularly exquisite aria. “Three pounds of overripe tomatoes. Cucumbers. Enough for two nights. I went to the farmer’s market, I campaigned, I got produce.”

At Casements, Peskin announces that it’s time to take a break. He orders a non-alcoholic beer and takes out his phone. Someone has sent an unpublished page for the campaign website. As he scrolls through it, he starts finding typos. “Some people really pay attention to detail,” he says. “And some people don’t.”

“Okay,” he says abruptly, getting off the barstool. “Time for gazpacho.”