by Theo Dennert // May 18, 2023 // San Francisco

Small parties in California are in a constant struggle for political relevance, against the backdrop of the overwhelming dominance of the Democratic Party. But one man and one tiny party tried to shake things up.

Michael Loebs, Governor of California. The first governor out of the ranks of the California National Party. The first governor to seek Californian independence. Was this fantasy going to become reality?

On Jack London Square at the Oakland waterfront, Michael Loebs and his team were working on it. Sailing boats merrily swayed in the marina, seagulls glided through the pleasantly warm summer air, and a couple of Star-Spangled Banners waved in a gentle breeze lit by the afternoon sunshine. Underneath these flags, the group of activists was plotting Californian independence from the very nation they represent. It was July 10th, 2021 and the California National Party just launched the crucial phase of Loebs’ gubernatorial campaign.

Loebs and the party activists had assembled on the spacious patio of the event venue Plank. On that patio, next to the Plank’s two bocce fields, they were gathering signatures from supporters and passers-by to qualify Loebs as a candidate for the 2021 recall election to replace California Governor Newsom.

Loebs was flagging down pedestrians and talking to people about his political ideas. He is articulate and enjoys talking about California.

Loebs, a political science lecturer at San Francisco State University, had been the chair of the California National Party since 2019. His fight for Californian independence, policies tailored to Californian needs, and political pluralism culminated now in a run for governor.

The campaign team had a week left to collect the 100 required signatures and dig their way through a mountain of paperwork to qualify Loebs as a candidate. Doable, even for a tiny party like the CNP which had a grand total of 400 registered voters in 2021. But winning the election in two months looked like a Herculean task.

Replacing the Democratic Governor Newsom wasn’t going to be a cakewalk for anyone, neither for fellow Democrats nor for Republicans, and definitely not for third-party candidates. A comfortable majority of voters approved of Newsom in 2021, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

And for over a decade now, California has been in the tight grip of the Democratic Party, with virtually every Californian state-wide and national office occupied by a Democrat. Many voters don’t decide between Democrat and Republican but between Democrat and Democrat.

For smaller third parties, the perspective is dim. The Greens, the Libertarians, or the California National Party face menacing systemic hurdles in their fight for political significance. Winning elections is a fairytale to them, as many voters consider third-party votes “wasted”.

And that sparks frustration, among voters and activists alike. Frustration caused by the limited choice at the polls, frustration with the all-powerful Democrats and their policies, frustration with politics altogether. People like Loebs seek to break the one-party dominance and to shake things up, he ran for governor.

Back at the Plank in Oakland, the campaign event was coming to an end. The time to gather the qualifying signatures was unusually short: one single week. “That was deliberate,” says Loebs. “It was all planned by the Democratic Party to have this very narrow window to make sure that there was no possibility of viable competition.”

But: “We had a pretty good turnout,” he remembers. They gathered almost all the needed signatures at that event. Loebs made it on the ballot, as an official gubernatorial candidate.

As he eagerly recalls the start of his gubernatorial campaign for this story, Loebs sits outside a coffeehouse in San Francisco’s Lower Nob Hill neighborhood, near his home. It’s Friday afternoon and he sips a beer in the warm April sun, Leavenworth Street bustling with cars and pedestrians behind him. His checked light-brown three-piece suit, matching flat cap, long black hair bound in a ponytail, black beard, and tinted round sunglasses give him a distinct and recognizable look.

“I'm very 20th century,” Loebs says. He doesn’t own a smartphone and isn’t on social media. “I'm kind of a private person.”

Still, he felt giving up some of that privacy to run for governor was worth it. Loebs was born 41 years ago in Hayward, California, and says he has always lived in the state. He’s a Californian through and through. He went to colleges in the Bay Area — graduated from UC Berkeley — and now teaches political science in San Francisco.

Brought up in a Democratic family, he had been a registered Democrat until 2016, until the presidential election that so lastingly changed the U.S. also lastingly changed Loebs’ political life. He had already been interested in the idea of Californian independence, but “the ‘aha’ moment for me was actually election night.” Clinton and Trump both held campaign events in New York that day.

“And I was sitting here thinking: 'Why am I watching these people 3,000 miles away fighting over this election, which I actually don't have much of a part in?’ Because everybody knew California's 55 electoral votes were going to go to the Democrat. It doesn't mean anything.” He wanted to make politics about California — with the eventual goal of secession.

Aside from Californian independence, Loebs demands an increase in political pluralism in California. “It is a de facto one-party state now,” says the political scientist. “Everything can be passed with just the Democratic Party.”

“If you want to be a power player in California politics, you've got to join the Democratic Party, which functionally is no different than if you want to be a power player in China — you’ve got to join the Communist Party.” And his prescription is clear. “California needs a multi-party system.”

Loebs joined the California National Party a few months after the 2016 presidential election. By 2019, he had become the party chair.

The CNP is still a young party. Founded in 2015, it's so small that it hasn’t reached the status of a qualified party yet, forcing Loebs to run as a “No Party Preference” candidate. But for much longer than 2015, other, qualified third parties have tried to break the Democratic dominance in Californian politics.

One of them is the Green Party. Every month, the members of the San Francisco Green Party convene in the heart of the Mission to coordinate their party’s activity. In other countries like Germany, sister parties of the Greens have evolved from small, pacifist, environmentalist protest groups to powerful governing parties.

But already the elevator ride up to the San Francisco Greens’ meeting room foreshadowed the scope of their operation: this rickety elevator wobbled alarmingly when the party members entered it, its doors took forever to close, and one almost couldn’t tell it was moving upward at all. It looked like it was as old as the city itself and felt like it hadn’t seen an inspection since the earthquake of 1906.

The following party meeting felt like an underground organization's secret convention. Seated around an old wooden table in a room with leftist for-sale art on the walls were five men and one woman, two more men joined via Zoom — the Green Party member’s meeting in a progressive world city. They discussed possible endorsements of various policies and local voter outreach.

One of the older men at the table with a face that looks like Richard Attenborough’s in Jurassic Park has run for multiple offices as a Green candidate already, unsuccessfully. “It's difficult. Very, very difficult,” Barry Hermanson says about winning elections as a Green. “We Greens do win on lower levels.” But state or national offices are way out of reach.

Today, not even half a percent of the registered voters in California are Greens. The top score for third-party voter registration in California lies at a staggering 3.61%, held by the American Independent Party.

Charles Postel, a history professor at the San Francisco State University explains that one reason for third-party emergence can be that there is “no difference between the two [major] parties” regarding specific issues (for the Greens: environmentalism).

No third party has made it to power, neither in California nor on the national level. “Well, the last time there was a successful third-party challenge was in the 1850s. The Republicans emerged as a third party,” says Postel. Apparently, it is possible — but hard.

The California National Party tries to differentiate itself and convince voters by “forging and supporting California-focused solutions to the issues that face our home,” according to its website. The current party chair, Sean Forbes singles out three key positions.

“One of our biggest things is to put more democracy into California,” he says with a hint at the Democratic dominance. And with a universal basic income, the party wants to reduce California’s big and growing wealth gap.

“The other point I would say as well is that we really do have a potential climate catastrophe happening already in California,” says Forbes. The party wants to tackle problems like that on the state level, without interference from the “horribly corrupt” federal government.

In 2021, they were presented with a chance to act: the recall election of the governor of California, Gavin Newsom. For over a hundred years, Californians have had the right to end a governor’s term prematurely. 55 recall attempts have accumulated over the years.

The Terminator himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor in 2003 as the result of the successful recall of Governor Gray Davis. (Who would have thought that’s what he meant with “I’ll be back”?)

This particular time in the wake of the 2020 pandemic, the recall petitioners from the Rescue California movement felt that Newsom had “implemented laws which are detrimental to the citizens of the state and our way of life.”

They gathered over 1.7 million valid signatures in favor of the recall, and in early 2021 Newsom’s replacement candidates started preparing their campaigns. The California National Party and Loebs did, too, in response to the competing secessionist movement Yes California and its candidate Louis Marinelli.

By July, Loebs' campaign was on its way and had gathered the signatures needed to qualify (contrary to Marinelli).

One day in the middle of August, Loebs' campaign trail led him to Oceanside, a coastal city in North San Diego County. Oceanside calls itself O’Side and claims to be “the original SoCal beach town.” O’Side’s beach is lined with palm trees and a long, wooden pier protrudes into the sea.

But on this mild, sunny summer day, Loebs wasn’t lying on the beach or surfing the waves. Instead, he was at a tap house in town — not primarily to drink. 19Ten has 20 different beers on tap and burgers and hot dogs on the menu. The 20 taps are mounted on the wall behind a long bar, with TV screens above them. Two billiards tables fill up one side of the room, lit by string lights below the ceiling.

This was one of the most memorable campaign events, says Loebs. He was doing what he likes: talking to people about Californian politics, but not on a stage through a big speech. “Retail campaigning was really what my strategy was,” explains Loebs.

“You wanted to sell yourself to the person you were talking to at that moment. You were shaking hands. And then that person would go home and talk to their neighbors and say: ‘Hey, I met this really interesting candidate!’”

He chose an informal, personal approach to campaigning, instead of “wholesale campaigning, which is directed at nobody in particular like a radio ad or a commercial or social media,” he says.

Loebs, who grew up with the Beatles, listened to them during the campaign to “stay sane” and plays in a band himself, compares his retail campaigning approach to what the Beatles did. “Paul McCartney talked to that: … ‘Early on if we only played for twelve people, we didn't mind. We did the best show we could on the understanding that if those twelve people really liked the show, they'll tell their friends’,” Loebs says mimicking a British accent. 

A few supporters came to the event at 19Ten in Oceanside. One conversation with a man from a rural community got stuck in Loebs’ mind. “He was like: ‘Yeah, all right. I feel like you and I probably don't necessarily agree on a lot but you sound like a guy who's thought about it, and I feel like my governor should go to bars and talk to people and find out what they're up to.’”

Talking about his campaign, Loebs stresses the importance of addressing all Californians, in urban and rural areas. He thinks pragmatically — not ideologically — about issues that normally divide California into blue and red, like gun control. His campaign took him to places all over California.

But his retail campaigning approach needed to be supplemented by classic wholesale campaigning, mainly radio and newspaper interviews. “We didn't maybe get as much media as I hoped, but all the media we got was positive,” Loebs says.

It wasn’t a big, professionalized campaign, no way near what Newsom and the mighty Democratic Party were able to do. Loebs didn’t even appear in any pre-election polls, except on September 1, when YouGov polled him at 1%, catching up with reality TV star and fellow recall candidate Caitlyn Jenner.

Meanwhile, Governor Newsom’s polls kept rising steadily: right before the election on September 14, almost 60% of Californians wanted to keep him in office. And all replacement candidates polling over 1% were either Democrats or Republicans. Why did third parties have such a hard time gaining traction? 

“They typically are short-lived and don't win.” That’s how Kevin Croshal, another political science lecturer at SF State summarizes their fate. 

Overshadowing everything, there is one big structural reason for that: The design of the American political system is hostile to third parties. “The way we conduct our elections: it’s based on a winner-take-all system, which is all but a guarantee that we have two main parties,” says Croshal. “The candidate that wins the most votes wins everything.” If 51% of the people in an electoral district vote for the Democrat, the Democrat gets to represent 100% of the people in that district.

This system stands in contrast to proportional representation, where seats in the legislature are distributed according to the proportion of votes won by a party in an electoral district. If 10% of the people vote for the Greens, the Greens get 10% of the seats, and so on. Not just the winner gets into the legislature. That leads to multi-party systems with multiple major parties, like in France or Germany.

But the winner-take-all system in the U.S. prevents that, due to a mechanism in the voters’ minds. “We call this thing Duverger’s Law. … [Voters intuitively] know that if they don't vote for one of the parties that stand a chance to actually win, then they've wasted their vote,” explains Croshal. Even worse, they weakened their preferred major party by withholding their vote from them.

One example of this logic is Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential run for the Green Party. He won 2.7% of the vote — and the Greens were made responsible for the Democrat Al Gore’s defeat. Hadn’t the 2.7% of voters “wasted” their votes for Nader and voted for Gore instead, he would have beaten the Republican George W. Bush, the argument goes.

“It really discourages people because we have a system then ultimately that punishes you for voting your heart,” says Croshal. “A lot of people feel like their vote doesn't matter.”

Third parties also face difficulties receiving governmental campaign financing, oftentimes ballot qualification is restricted, they have less access to the media, and the major parties try to prevent competition. Disheartening.

Tuesday, September 14, 2021, was the day of the showdown: Election Day. Now, Loebs was going to find out if his campaign efforts paid off.

Loebs’ campaign team and supporters had assembled at Liquid Gold, a bar in San Francisco’s Lower Nob Hill neighborhood. The narrow taproom which claims to be the craft beer destination in San Francisco was crowded with a couple dozen people. From San Diego to Eureka, the polls were going to close at 8 pm.

Loebs, the candidate at the center of this event, couldn’t fully focus on this culmination of the last months’ work. His father had had a heart attack a few days earlier and even died briefly. Surgery was scheduled for the day after the election.

But 8 pm crept closer now. Someone did interviews for a podcast and Loebs told them he hoped he’d get 6,000 votes. The last voters were marking their ballots all over California. And just after the sun drowned in the Pacific, the polls closed. Almost 13 million Californians had made their decision.

“And then at 8:00, the bartender switched over to election coverage. And we all thought we all knew what it was, but it was good to have it on there,” says Loebs. The first projection came in.

At that moment, Loebs thought about his father. “I called him at his hospital room, let him know how it turned out.”

Loebs lost. Newsom stayed governor, with almost 62% voting not to remove him. But:

“We were all pretty surprised that it was a lot better than we were expecting,” Loebs recalls. He received 0.3% of the votes: precisely 25,468. He had outperformed all expectations and multiple competing candidates (but not Caitlyn Jenner). He received votes from every county but Alpine, and in San Francisco even a whole percent.

“I think it was a good night,” says Loebs. “The whole party felt pretty pleased that we had put forth the effort.” According to Loebs, they had spent less than $6,000 on the campaign — less than $0.25 per vote. “In terms of cost per vote, I probably beat Caitlyn Jenner.” His father’s surgery the next day went just as successful.

No one, Loebs included, ever thought he was going to be California’s next governor. And winning, replacing Newsom, was never the point of the campaign.

As the political scientist Croshal explains, third parties can influence the two major parties' policies even without winning elections. “Sometimes we see major parties sort of adopt an issue that is particularly popular,” says Croshal. “Some people actually look at that as success. You know, you don't really stand a chance of winning, but what you've done is: … the issue that you cared about now has a home.”

“Will … a third party [ever] win? I think it's pretty safe to say no,” says Croshal. “[But] you're changing that conversation.” Postel, the historian, agrees: Not winning elections “doesn't mean that third parties haven't played a significant role in, sort of, publicity and popularizing demands and slogans.”

For the California National Party, the gubernatorial recall was a way to gain attention for the party and its issues. “It was pretty much just a publicity stunt,” says Loebs. The party reached many Californians: through campaign events and media interviews.

“Our biggest media point was really just the booklet that went out to registered voters,” says the current party chair Forbes with reference to the widely distributed voter information handout.

“All things considered, I think we did pretty good,” summarizes Loebs. He reduced his political activities after the election, to care for his father and his family. But a future run for an office is not completely off the table.

by Theo Dennert // March 09, 2023 // SF State

Why I, a German living in San Francisco, go hunting for German bread and specialties.

It has a hard, brown crust. It’s not very soft or squishy. You can’t press it into a tiny ball with your hands. And most of all, you’ll have a hard time finding it in America. This bread is unlike the pre-packaged over-processed bread-ish loaves you’ll find in your local Target. To get it, you have to find a traditional German bakery. 

Then you take a special bread knife, cut through the stiff, floury crust and the structured, rather solid inside made of rye or wheat, spread butter on your slice, and put some German mountain cheese on top. As the smells of freshly cut, handmade bread and slightly stinky cheese let your mouth water, you dig your teeth into the slice.

You just experienced a ritual that millions of Germans practice every night: having Abendbrot, a  cold dinner based on bread topped with cheeses, sausages, or spreads. Traditional German bread in all varieties and the bakeries that make it are a staple in German food culture. But they’re not very common in the Bay Area.

I, a German living in San Francisco, miss German bread and bakery items more than any other food from home. Many German ex-pats feel the same. And even among non-German San Franciscans, German food enjoys popularity. The city is home to many German restaurants, a German specialty shop, and: a German bakery!

“German baked goods,” writes one Facebook user. “I miss a German bakery,” agrees another. “I miss bread rolls,” writes a third. When asked about what kind of food German ex-pats miss the most, bread and bakeries inevitably come up, alongside sausages, German pretzels, and traditional dishes.

Fortunately, there are places in San Francisco to get these treats from home. Hidden in Noe Valley, Lehr’s German Specialties sells everything from German candy to cooking ingredients to frozen bread (!), shipped from Hamburg, Germany. The shelves of the small, cozy store are filled with colorful gummy bears from Haribo, chocolate treats packaged in shiny foil, canned vegetables, and Spätzle egg noodles from Germany’s Swabia region. As I squeeze through the isles, the impressions from home are overwhelming.

Hannah Seyfert, a German emigrant who recently took over the store estimates that 30 to 40% of her customers are Germans, the rest belong to a great variety of cultures. She thinks that the food finds appreciation among non-Germans, too.

“German specialties oftentimes have better, high-quality ingredients and fewer additives. And for the bread, they use a kind of flour that you usually can’t find here,” Seyfert explains. But she also thinks that many customers buy her products for emotional reasons. “Basically, I sell more memories than food.” She says her German, American, and international customers are often reminded of their childhood in Germany, a trip to Germany, or German ancestors when they eat Seyfert’s imported food. 

I get that emotional aspect. Just seeing the range of German products at Lehr’s, I feel at home. And when I bite into any German bakery item, not only bread, and close my eyes, I’m teleported back to my German hometown Koblenz, standing on the cobblestone in front of the historical half-timbered town hall. The bakery items with that magical power are sold at San Francisco’s only German bakery in NoPa, Hahdough. 

Hahdough doesn’t sell bread. It’s a Konditorei, a bakery specializing in pastries and cakes. Ha Do, the owner and, coincidentally, a former resident of my hometown bakes some 22 different and unique cakes herself but also offers traditional pastries like Berliner, a doughnut without a whole, jam-filled and covered in powdered sugar. Biting into this fluffy, sugary ball of dough, the sweetness of the powdered sugar pairs with the fresh-tasting jam on the inside. Sticky hands and lips are a small price to pay for that taste. 

Of course, you can also get a Franzbrötchen, a sweet, flaky cinnamon croissant from the northern city of Hamburg, or your crispy Bavarian pretzel at Hahdough. “I’m proud of my pretzels,” says Do, who was born in Vietnam but grew up in Germany. She started the bakery because she liked baking and missed German cakes and pastries when she moved to the U.S. Do’s customers are both Germans and Americans, and business is going well — understandably, once you’ve tried her creations. 

San Francisco’s German food scene extends far beyond Lehr’s and Hahdough, signaling its popularity among non-Germans. Restaurants like Leopold’s, Suppenküche, Schroeder’s, or Radhaus offer traditional hearty German and Austrian dishes like the well-known Schnitzel, and imported German beer. But when I asked the German ex-pats on Facebook what they missed most, many mentioned simpler things — like bread. And when I ask myself, I have to agree.

My girlfriend, visiting from Germany, smuggled fresh German bread to San Francisco for me recently. I had to apply force to cut through the crust: a good sign. It wasn’t very squishy: great. The inside had substance: jackpot. With my nose hovering an inch above the cut slice, I took in the fresh smell of the bread. A spread of vegan butter was all the slice needed, to support its own taste. I took the first bite and a slightly salty, wholesome taste filled my mouth. It felt like I was sitting at the dinner table with my family in my hometown, eating Abendbrot.

by Theo Dennert // March 30, 2023 // San Francisco

About my attempt to cycle up the Bay Area’s highest peak.

I started to believe I wasn’t going to make it. The hills were challenging. I didn’t wear the right clothes. I wasn’t used to riding up mountains. My old second-hand race bike creaked under the pressure of the steep climbs. I was pedaling up Edgewood Avenue in Mill Valley, nestled in the foothills of Mount Tamalpais, already 18 miles away from my San Francisco home. The sun burned down on me as I passed by well-kept estates with stunning views of the Bay, the mountain looming behind them. I looked down at my front tire — and felt all hope of ever reaching the mountain’s peak rushing out of my body like the air out of my tire. A flat.

Cycling up 2,500 feet tall Mount Tamalpais on a race bike: that was the challenge I set myself. If my friend Magnus from Denmark can do it, I can, too. He always recounted how his bike tours led him through thick redwood forests and lush meadows, up to “Mt. Tam’s” top with incredible views, all verifiable through his Instagram posts. “Maybe you can do it, Theo. It’s challenging,” he said, looking skeptical.

Mt. Tam is the cycling destination in the Bay Area and its highest peak. Lorraine Trautwein from the Marin Cyclists Club called it a classic bucket list destination. “I think it's one of those iconic rides in the Bay Area that anybody who rides a bicycle wants to do,” she said. Trautwein and countless others fell in love with cycling Mt. Tam. "It's a challenge, but it's also a beautiful ride,” she said.

Aside from reigning as the Bay Area’s cycling heaven, the mountain is also a popular day-trip destination for hikers and visitors driving their cars up its winding roads. But before there even were roads, visitors accessed Mt. Tam via the “Crookedest Railroad in the World.” The mountain’s rich history also features fires, plane crashes, murders, and the birth of modern-day Mountain Biking. 

After my failed ascension attempt, I walked my injured bike back down to central Mill Valley where a bike shop proceeded to provide first aid to my two-wheeler. Here in Mill Valley, Joe Breeze built the first modern mountain bike some 46 years ago. On the slopes of Mt. Tam, the “Father of Mountain Biking” first rode a modified 1941 Schwinn bike with balloon tires through the dirt. “I went eight miles downhill into Mill Valley where I lived. And I was sold. I was like ‘oh this is so cool’,” Breeze recalled.

His first custom-built mountain bike from 1977 is now part of the Smithsonian’s collection in Washington, D.C. Since then, the word spread. “It's become a ubiquitous bike around the planet, the mountain bike,” Breeze said. Mt. Tam turned into the “Mecca of Mountain Biking.”

But my now-repaired bike was a race bike, and I had to stick to the roads. I started my second attempt to conquer Mt. Tam. Once again, I fought my way past expensive-looking houses tucked against the slope until I reached the Panoramic Highway on the first mountain ridge. The crest offered a pause from the constant climb, and stunning views of the hilly Marin Headlands, lying below me like a petrified rolling sea. The actual sea rested calm and blue in the background and the red tips of the Golden Gate Bridge peaked out from behind the hills. 

Then, I entered Mount Tamalpais State Park, the home of the mountain. The uphill road wound through dark green and brown forests with mighty redwood trees, past steep and rocky cliffs, and open light-green meadows higher up.

I was in a fight against my own body. My legs and lungs burned. I was tired, sweaty, and thirsty. My shoulders hurt under the straps of my backpack. But if I gave up I never could have looked Magnus from Denmark in the eye again. In that state, I was unable to appreciate Mt. Tam’s natural beauty.

Under the redwoods, manzanitas, and oak trees, between mushrooms and wildflowers, one could encounter Coyotes and a variety of birds, according to Hillary Colyer, an Interpretive Ranger at the State Park. “We have diverse habitats,” said Colyer. She loves how the vegetation changes throughout the year.

But the mountain's impressive nature was disturbed a few times in its history. Fred Runner, a historian from the volunteer group Friends of Mt. Tam explained how the scenic “Crookedest Railroad in the World” was built in 1896. Visitors could drive up the mountain and enjoy the scenery. “And you could spend the night there in relative luxury if you wanted. There was a hotel at the top of the mountain,” Runner said. The railroad peaked in popularity during the San Francisco World Fair in 1915 but eventually, as the newly built road up Mt. Tam reduced demand for the railway, it was shut down in 1929 after a fire devastated Mt. Tam. 

According to Runner, the darker sides of the mountain’s history include plane crashes, for example in 1944. A navy plane with engine problems tried to turn around on its way west, “and the whole thing slammed into the mountain and blew up in a million pieces,” described Runner. More deaths followed. In 1979 and 1980, the so-called “Trailside Killer” murdered two women in the mountain’s wilderness. The serial killer, David Carpenter was eventually convicted for many of the other murders he had committed.

I didn’t know all that when I pushed myself further and further up Mt. Tam, together with other cyclists and hikers. I was now high above the Pacific Ocean, a slight breeze cooling me down. The last hill before the peak was the hardest. Gradually, bushes replaced the trees, and the sun was burning mercilessly. I couldn’t make it. It was too hard. The last quarter mile, I pushed my bike.

And then I stood on the peak. The Bay stretched out below me, dotted with miniature sailboats. Across the water lay downtown San Francisco and Oakland’s harbor in the east. The Golden Gate Bridge marked the entrance to the Bay, and the picturesque Pacific coast fainted away in the haze somewhere toward Half Moon Bay.

I took a picture as proof for my friend Magnus from Denmark. I conquered Mount Tamalpais. Trautwein from the Marin Cyclists was right when she said: "It feels wonderful.” Then, I mounted my bike again and effortlessly rolled back down to Mill Valley.

by Theo Dennert // December 07, 2022 // San Francisco

The community-led renovation of the Fillmore’s Buchanan Mall park is entering its final design phase. The redesign initiative in the troubled neighborhood has been in the making for almost a decade, becoming a million-dollar prestige project but also facing some criticism.

What began as a local effort to engage the Fillmore’s community and revitalize a strip of park developed into a full-scale reconstruction project, according to Green Streets and Citizen Film, the organizations behind the project. The renovation follows decades of city-mandated redevelopment of the neighborhood, leading to thousands of displacements and economic decline, according to Prof. Dr. Clement Lai, who did research on the topic. The park itself became a place of conflict and violence, said Tyrone Mullins, co-founder of Green Streets. Now, different organizations worked together with the Fillmore’s residents to capture the people’s vision for Buchanan Mall on paper and film, and put them in charge, according to the project leaders. But with big plans, issues and frustrations came along, too.

The renovation project started in 2014 and is a collaboration between the nonprofit filmmaking organization Citizen Film, which documented the project on film, and the community-based business Green Streets, which normally employs local residents to separate garbage. They were joined by the city’s Recreation and Parks Department, the nonprofit Trust for Public Land (TPL), the Exploratorium’s Studio for Public Spaces, and most importantly the members of the community, said the project leaders.

“We’re actually getting close now!“ said Lauren Dietrich Chavez, the responsible Project Manager at San Francisco Recreation and Parks. She said the renovation of Buchanan Mall, a park stretching over five city blocks in the Fillmore, is in its final design stage, gathering the last community input and preparing for construction in the spring of 2024.

According to a concept plan co-developed by local residents, the renovated park will feature sports fields, lawns, playgrounds, art installations, seating areas, and a stage. Ariella Levitch, the Bay Area Community Outreach Associate at the project partner TPL pointed out one special design element: the Memory Walk. “The idea is that it will be this connector between the five blocks and that it will create a safe passage and that it will have an Afrocentric design,” said Levitch, explaining that the Memory Walk will feature the community’s history and stories. “It’s an opportunity for people to see themselves reflected in the public space.“

Local residents largely welcome the park renovation. One of them, Esayas Woldemstres, said in an earlier interview that he liked the park and praised the community engagement happening there nowadays.

The renovation is also supposed to create jobs during construction and in micro-enterprise kiosks on the Mall, said Levitch, adding that a park can transform a neighborhood. “Having that quality green space is important, especially in a community that has been so wronged by a lot of public policies.“

Green Streets co-founder and Fillmore resident Mullins, one of the community’s project leaders, still recalls the time before the whole effort started. Some 20 years ago, he experienced his neighborhood’s issues firsthand. “A very close friend of mine was murdered when I was 15. Right in the Buchanan Mall,” he said. 

According to him, Buchanan Mall, originally opened in 1975, went from being a community hub to a dangerous place, divided by turf conflicts. “Instead of people being in the mall, people started sitting in their developments because of the violence.“

The whole Fillmore once used to be a striving neighborhood, according to Civil Rights activist Rev. Dr. Amos Brown. In an interview for a different story, he described how the Black population blossomed in the neighborhood after World War II. “You had Black businesses there, hotels, grocery stores.“

City-led urban redevelopment changed that forever, according to Lai, the researcher. In one of his papers, he described how the city classified the Fillmore as “blighted“ and then displaced thousands of residents to build new streets and housing units. 

“That so-called ’Urban Renewal’ was about Black removal,“ said Brown. According to the nonprofit online portal BlackPast, the Fillmore’s Black population massively declined, businesses closed and the community was hurt by the decades-long redevelopment.

The subsequent increase in violence also impacted Mullins. “I got convicted of assault with a deadly weapon in 2006 and was sentenced to three years of state prison.“ But he said after turning his life around in prison and later finding a construction job in his neighborhood, he got the opportunity to co-found Green Streets, which then became a core initiator of the Buchanan Mall project.

Green Streets partnered up with the documentary filmmakers from Citizen Film, co-founded by Sophie Constantinou. She said the two groups had decided to do something about Buchanan Mall. “We said, well, look at this park, look at this place. It’s neglected, it’s unattractive.”

According to Constantinou, community engagement started in 2015 together with the Exploratorium and TPL. She said they initiated weekly community meetings and began to design art installations on Buchanan Mall. “Then, everybody loved it and we kept going. And I think after we did that we realized what was most effective was to have activities and events that are curated and thought about, to put people together,“ said Constantinou.

She and Mullins described how the project grew over the years, developing into a full-scale park renovation program, receiving great political support and $27 million in funds. Step by step, the community came up with a new design for the park. 

“You show the community that this space that has not been used very much, that has no clear purpose… We can do all of these things,” said Constantinou. Mullins pointed out the role of the community: “If we want to do something, if we want to change something, it’s about making a connection with the people.“

The community’s work on the mall has been documented on film by Citizen Film. “A community that feels invisible or feels unseen… By the simple fact of showing back that they have been seen, they have been heard, their voices have been recorded, and that it is important enough to spend time listening and turning these stories into films, that was very validating, I think,“ said Constantinou.

Nevertheless, over time some people got frustrated with the Buchanan Mall project. “I have given Citizen Film and Green Streets thousands of creative ideas for the Buchanan Change project that I haven't seen get implemented in the design,” wrote Fillmore resident Widya Batin in an email, declining an interview request. She wrote that she had been involved in the project since she was a teenager but had been naive to the park development process. Batin said she didn’t see the change in her community she had hoped for. 

“Building trust and hearing all voices takes time and intentionality. That’s the challenge to get right,” said Levitch from TPL. According to Recreation and Parks project leader Chavez, the project had run into engagement fatigue in a way.

Mullins, a community member himself, agreed that there is a dark side to the renovation, too. “I’m tired of being used,“ he said. According to Mullins, he then wasn’t always treated as an equal in the project by outside participants and hadn’t been educated about the development process, or receiving not all the information. 

Filmmaker Constantinou said that she had heard many people express concerns about the city coming in with a plan because of the past redevelopment disaster. Mullins shares this concern. “When you have the community show up and you have the people invested, then you got to be honest with them, you got to be informative with them, you got to be educational with them,” Mullins said. “It didn’t feel like the community had control. And then we had to get it back.”

Among the project leaders, there’s a consensus that community engagement is a way to heal some of the wounds of prior redevelopment and empower Fillmore residents. “We wanted to make the Buchanan Mall an unapologetically Black space,” said Mullins. 

According to Constantinou, the planning process alone brought change. “I think it doesn’t really matter what happens to the park as long as the community feels like they have been heard, they have been part of something that has interested them, and they’ve been able to enjoy each other’s company.”

by Theo Dennert // October 26, 2022 // San Francisco

San Francisco’s Human Rights Commission (HRC) is set to release recommendations on how to address racial disparities in the city soon. Meanwhile, the Fillmore District’s Black population is still disadvantaged compared to other ethnicities and systemic racism is a widespread problem in all of San Francisco.

The Fillmore’s past has been marked by racism, said community leader Rev. Dr. Amos Brown. City-led urban redevelopment changed the former center of Black culture and community lastingly, he said. And the neighborhood, like the rest of San Francisco, is still battling racism and inequity today, according to the racial justice portal Race Counts. The HRC said it is working on solutions to the problem in a nationwide unique program but also said that time pressure is high.

Issues of race are easily visible in the Fillmore District’s art: Fulton Street in the heart of the district is covered in big and bold yellow letters as wide as the street. “BLACK LIVES MATTER“ is written on the road that leads toward city hall, spanning three city blocks. The street mural was painted by the local Black community in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the nationwide protests in 2020 as a sign against racism, as can be read on the Fillmore’s African American Arts and Culture Complex’s Instagram page.

This fight against racism has been fought by Fillmore-based Civil Rights activist Brown for decades. According to Brown, the neighborhood has been victimized by racism. “That’s still going on,“ he said. Brown identified the city’s redevelopment of the Fillmore as the key policy that displaced the community and destroyed the Black population’s economic prosperity. “So: No, San Francisco has not been kind to Black folk.“

Juell Stewart, a staff liaison at the African American Reparations Advisory Committee (AARAC), a part of the city’s Human Rights Commission, agrees. “Urban Redevelopment pushed people out of the Fillmore.“ She described a backlash against San Francisco’s Black population and said the redevelopment was one of the biggest and most obvious systemic harms done to Black San Franciscans.

“Over time, Black residents had fewer housing options and were disenfranchised from being able to obtain the same income and you see income disparities to this day,“ said Stewart. The AARAC, established in 2020, is tasked to develop a set of recommendations on how to repair the harm that has been done to the Black community of the Fillmore and the whole city.

But the first step lies in identifying the harm. “You have racial wealth gap disparities, you see disparities in education and things like that,“ said Stewart. According to the racial justice portal Race Counts, San Francisco’s Black population is indeed greatly impacted by disparities in areas like health, housing, education and crime. Stewart specifies: “You see discrepancies in police interactions, in the jail population and that’s because of a legacy of systemic racism that exists in the institutions of the city.“

Asked about that, the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) said in a written statement that it was committed to unbiased policing for all communities. The statement also said the SFPD had taken educational initiatives to raise awareness about the issue and wants to introduce new policies in cooperation with communities.

“You can trace the systemic issues that lead to the disparities today,“ said Stewart. “It’s the responsibility of the system to correct those wrongs.“ The reparations committee is one of the first of its kind and is tasked with this, according to Stewart. “The committee is established to examine the scope of those problems and articulate that in the context of what the city is responsible for.“ In December 2022, it will release its recommendations for the city to implement, according to its December 2021 report.

And it is particularly important to keep Racial Equity in the conversation, according to Dr. Sheryl Davis, Executive Director of the Human Rights Commission which also houses the reparations committee. “We all need to pause and see what’s wrong with the system,“ said Davis. But that’s not all.

“It’s important to not just do another report, to not just keep saying ’this is what needs to be done’ but to develop a plan of action to actually begin to do it.“ Davis said that with Mayor London Breed’s and Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton’s help, the HRC was able to launch initiatives and start the movement. 

When addressing racial disparities with measures and initiatives, it is imperative for Davis to include the community. “We were able as a community to center equity, especially Racial Equity, during the civil unrest and during the protests around George Floyd but that interest is waning and it’s not gonna be here forever.“ She said the time pressure is high now. 

“I believe that there is potential to do better but I don’t think we have a big window to be able to do that.“ Real movement has to happen within the next two years, said Davis. “I am optimistic but within reason.“

by Theo Dennert // March 09, 2023 // San Francisco

Meet Ryan Wyatt, the head of San Franciscos Morrison Planetarium.

Ryan Wyatt is a pretty good pilot. But he is unlike most. Once a month, he flies through space, past bright stars and colorful galaxies. After years of practice, he now smoothly circles the most interesting objects in the night sky, like a newly discovered exoplanet.

And he takes a whole planetarium audience with him. Wyatt stands in the presenter’s booth of CalAcademy’s Morrison Planetarium, in the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, never physically leaving Earth. The star-sprinkled night sky spans digitally over the giant dome, creating a full immersion for the viewers in their cinema seats. This journey through space is Wyatt’s monthly “Universe Update”, where he presents the latest discoveries in astronomy.

From the International Space Station circling Earth, Wyatt steers the audience past the red gas giant Jupiter, then out of our solar system to the brown, half-icy, and newly discovered exoplanet TOI-700 e, only to fly even further out, so far away that the entire Milky Way floats like a silver-blue disk over the audience’s heads. Eventually, it shrinks to a dot, one in an ocean of dots.

Wyatt is the Senior Director of Morrison Planetarium and Science Visualization and, aside from presenting the “Universe Update”, directs and writes the planetarium’s main shows. His latest show, “Living Worlds” explores both our home planet and distant worlds, asking fundamental questions: How does life evolve? Are we alone? What’s the future of humankind? Wyatt and his production team work at the forefront of science visualization, bringing raw data accurately to life in many award-winning shows. “Living Worlds” has already reached more than two million viewers.

Some 46 years ago, 8-year-old Wyatt first set foot in a planetarium in Chicago. The night sky was projected on the dome by an analog projector that looked a little bit like a spaceship itself. Young Wyatt was fascinated — and also terrified by the thought of the finiteness of the universe. The youngest of five siblings, he grew up in the nature of northern Indiana, roaming the forest, reading a lot, and eventually deciding to study astronomy.

“There’s a purity to astronomy. Nothing is interfering with your object of study,” he explains. Wyatt is fascinated by the sense of scale inherent to astronomy, and the process of extracting information purely out of the sky’s lights. “Astronomy represents something to humanity that is immediate and unattainable,” he says, “something cultural, intellectual, and emotional.” It’s a gateway science with universal appeal.

Today, 54-year-old Wyatt — tall, calm, friendly, well dressed — looks back at a career that took him from planetarium to planetarium, from Albuquerque to New York to San Francisco. Since 2007, he has spearheaded the digital planetarium experience at the California Academy of Sciences. The old analog projector in Morrison Planetarium was replaced by a digital system, capable of displaying anything the production team wants with top-notch scientific accuracy.

Many ideas for new shows grow in Wyatt’s head over time, sometimes in the form of specific animations. He describes how he sees a shot in front of his inner eye, like showing the codependent relationship of a tree’s roots and underground fungi networks on a cellular level and then “traveling up the tree and emerging into the canopy of the forest.”

A whole production team made up of producers, former Hollywood VFX artists, and advising scientists works on a single show for up to two years. For the upcoming one, the team is currently animating neutron stars, circling each other, and a colorful supernova, making astronomy accessible to the average museum visitor. “I certainly am a very visual learner, and I think that visuals play an important role in the way we process information,” says Wyatt.

Back at the “Universe Update” show, these visuals are live in action. Wyatt explores sandy planets and burning stars in real time and traverses vast distances in a split second. “As we look out in space,” he explains to the audience up from the presenter’s booth above, “we’re looking back in time." The light takes so long to reach Earth that we look at the universe as it was millions of years ago. Working with these mind-blowing facts doesn’t intimidate Wyatt.

“I don’t feel insignificant. We are a small part of the universe but we can contain much of it in our minds,” says Wyatt. And he also doesn’t believe that we humans are alone. “Just look at the statistics.”

Work is a big part of Wyatt’s life, multi-faceted and fulfilling. It’s not just creating shows, but also leading a team that he is most proud of, administrating, and coordinating. When he isn’t working, Wyatt likes to read and go to concerts, museums, and galleries together with his partner of twelve years, Karl Schultz. Schultz, Wyatt, and their cat Nigel live in the heart of San Francisco where it’s too bright to look at the stars. But they also like to travel to countries across the globe.

In his latest show, “Living Worlds,” Wyatt ends with a message: to rethink our relationship with planet Earth. Surveys revealed that viewers felt optimistic after watching that show. Wyatt thinks his educational work can make a difference, and he’s confident that humanity will manage the challenges it has to overcome. At the end of a show, when the audience flies back to Earth, they realize that they never left this planet and likely never will — obligated to solve our earthly problems.

by Theo Dennert // April 20, 2023 // San Francisco

About my after-graduation self-finding trip that led me to a seemingly obvious conclusion.

I was alone. As far as the eye could see, there were no other human souls around. I could yell as loud as my lungs let me, no person would hear it. My phone was just a piece of metal and plastic without any cell towers around to connect it to civilization. Truly alone. Just me, the snow, the car, the lake, the mountains. 

To my surprise, I had managed to light a ridiculously small fire in the cold. But even with the fire crackling, it was too cold to stay outside the car for long as the night crept over my campsite.

The fire died after a few minutes, and the effort to revive it wasn’t worth freezing my hands off. So I lay on the makeshift bed in the back of my black 2008 Mazda Tribute instead, cuddled in a Walmart sleeping bag that wasn’t made to defeat the Canadian winter. The mountains across the lake vanished in the darkness. 

Great, so I had gone “into the wild” now, like Alex Supertramp from Jon Krakauer’s famous non-fiction story. I’m on the self-finding journey that young adults are supposed to go on. The trip I’ll tell everyone about for years to come, my big adventure, the story that no one really wants to hear. The corny thing about this is that the self-finding actually worked and the life lessons started pouring in.

Lying in the back of my car somewhere between Banff and Jasper in the Canadian Rockies, I wasn’t really happy. This didn’t feel like a fun adventure à la Alex Supertramp. I felt alone, even though I’d certainly meet people again the next day. This was not how I imagined my post-graduation journey to be. I flew to Canada to find what Europeans have been looking for in North America for centuries: freedom and subsequent happiness. I bought a car and earned some money so I could go anywhere I wanted. And yet I didn't feel free or truly happy.

The whole trip started some five months earlier when my plane touched down near Toronto, Canada. I stepped out of the airport looking like a cliché, with a tall backpack on my shoulders and hiking boots on my feet. I was excited to see American-made trucks and yellow street markings again. I was even excited to board a Canadian bus: it’s just a different, fresh, un-European vibe.

I was 19 years old, had 5,000 euros in my bank account, and no plans or obligations whatsoever. I had left my school work, family troubles, and friends behind. I might as well have spread my arms like Leonardo DiCaprio in the airport’s parking lot and yelled: “I’m the king of the world!” 

Little did I know that the freest moment of my journey had just passed. 

In Montreal, I bought the Mazda. I worked in a warehouse for a month, until Quebec hid away under a thick blanket of snow in late October. I slept on the makeshift bed in the back of my car: a foam mattress on top of a plywood construction, with storage space underneath. I showered in the gym I signed up for. A stranger on the bus suggested I had become a “vagabond”, which sounded cool. I worked long, boring hours, putting tags on thousands of Joseph Ribkoff outfits. But I was about to head West, toward the mountains, the Pacific, the wild, the freedom.

In November, I took the Trans-Canada Highway through the mighty forests of Ontario (where I met a moose) and over the wide and empty plains of Manitoba and Saskatchewan until I arrived on a farm in Alberta, where I had found a job and place to spend the winter. 

The multi-generation, multi-family farmhouse I stayed at stood between snow-covered fields, the Rocky Mountains looming on the horizon. The people living in it were Christian fundamentalists, and they thought they knew what my self-finding trip was about. During the day I welded, hammered, and sawed for them, and at night we argued about god and the world, literally. 

One night, about a month into my stay, we were sitting at the dinner table (that I had built together with one of my hosts). “We” means me, Ellis (who is the same age as me to the day and already has two children), her husband Tim, Tim’s cousin Emma, 2-year-old Seren, and baby Boaz. Ellis had made carbohydrate-free dinner because in this household the women were supposed to cook and baby Boaz had some food allergies. 

“You’re just running away,” said Ellis after we had emptied our plates. “Running away from your family issues and responsibilities.” I had told them about my parents’ divorce and the complicated relationship with my father. “No, I love traveling and want to have some fun seeing North America…. enjoy my freedom for some time before I’ll go to college,” is what I probably responded.

After two impactful months on the farm, I proceeded to “have some fun seeing North America,” in the seclusion of the Canadian Rockies. On the day that I had managed to light the ridiculously small fire, lying in the dark in my car, I realized that I missed the argumentative Christian fundamentalists a lot. 

The nature around me was stunning, but I couldn’t appreciate it. I also missed my actual family at home. And my friends. And something to do except get stuck in the snow with an old Mazda again and again. Were the crazy Christians right? Why was I running away? Alex Supertramp from “Into the Wild” also missed his friends and family — did his journey suck, too?

I arrived in Vancouver a few days later. There it was: the Pacific. I had made it all the way across Canada. This was less fulfilling than anticipated, but now I was excited and optimistic again: in a few days, two of my best friends would come to visit me. We planned to drive all the way down to Los Angeles. And sure enough, the day I picked them up at the airport was the day I felt good again, happy again. I even looked forward to taking on real life again.

“Happiness is only real when shared” is the truism that Alex Supertramp wrote down in his notebook before he died alone in the wild (spoilers!). I read “Into the Wild” before I left for Canada, and yet I needed to have that realization myself. And, as corny as it is: I wrote that down in my notebook, too.