Renowned Bay Area writer Dave Eggers is opening a huge new art and education center, Art + Water, this fall at Pier 29, aimed at keeping artists in SF. The space will also include galleries and a sprawling cafe with an Old World, art salon aesthetic, meant to spark revolutionary ideas.

Art + Water, a new 100,000-square-foot arts space planned for Pier 29 by beloved local writer Dave Eggers and esteemed Bay Area artist and educator JD Beltran, is built around a tuition-free apprenticeship model aimed at keeping artists in San Francisco. As the New York Times reports, Eggers wants to make art accessible again.

“Economically accessible, demystifying, and welcoming — like, ‘Here, this is how we do this. You can do it, too,’” he said.

In a recent McSweeney’s post, Eggers said Art + Water is designed as a working studio-school hybrid, with free studio access, daily instruction from practicing artists, and shared workspaces that encourage mentorship.

The program will host 30 local artists at a time, including 10 established artists and 20 emerging artists selected through an application process. All participants will receive free studio space for a year, with the established artists mentoring the newer cohort in a hands-on, atelier-style setup that emphasizes technique and day-to-day collaboration.

The Times reports that plans for the building also include a large exhibition hall curated by René de Guzman, with the first show centered on filmmaker and musician Boots Riley, along with regular talks, classes, family programming, and retail pop-ups.

Organizers say the exhibition hall is intended to double as a gallery hub for artists and groups priced out of traditional venues, with participating artists including Paul Madonna and Taraneh Hemani.

As Eater reported in October, Art + Water will include a sprawling cafe, overseen by local Yemeni coffee pioneer Mokhtar Alkhanshali. The cafe, which will reportedly take up a large portion of Art + Water’s space, will also host events and exhibitions. Alkhanshali said he’s envisioning an 18th or 19th century aesthetic, reminiscent of salon-style cafes in cities like Sana’a, Cairo, or old Boston, where cafes were hubs for revolution.

“[Eggers] noticed there was no coffee in that entire area,” Alkhanshali said. “He could have had 1,000 people open a cafe there. But what he wants to build, it’s going to be its own world.”

The cafe will also be home to Alkhanshali's new luxury coffee brand, which he said will be the first of its kind. Food will be included on the cafe’s menu, along with drink pairings inspired by high tea or omakase-style service, per Eater.

“This was like Willy Wonka showing you the plans to the factory before you built it,” Alhanshali said.

Eggers said he first noticed the vacant Pier 29 warehouse while biking along the Embarcadero in 2022. Originally built around 1915, the structure was damaged in a 2012 fire and rebuilt the following year for the America’s Cup, but has largely sat underused since, serving mostly as a parking garage, according to the Times.

The project comes as San Francisco’s traditional art school pipeline continues to shrink with San Francisco Art Institute closing in 2022, and California College of the Arts set to shut down next year, its campus slated to be taken over by Vanderbilt University.

In his McSweeney's post, Eggers points to skyrocketing tuition — often exceeding $100,000 a year, along with programs focused more on theory than hands-on skills. He says this has priced out many aspiring artists and left graduates with heavy debt, while offering limited practical training.

Drawing on his own experience as a painter, Eggers designed Art + Water to prioritize direct, hands-on learning with basic tools and shared studio space, aiming to make art education “accessible on every level.”

Art + Water is leasing Pier 29 through Community Arts Stabilization Trust, which develops and manages affordable space for artists and has backed similar projects, including the Warfield Commons on SF’s Mid-Market. While final terms are still being worked out, the nonprofit expects to pay roughly 10 cents per square foot — far below the typical industrial rate of about $2 — with the building split between Art + Water’s programming and CAST’s own cultural uses, per the Times.

The project will also rely on donations and has reportedly not yet secured the full seven-figure funding needed to build out and run the space, though organizers say commitments are in place. Some revenue is expected through on-site programming and retail-style components, similar to Eggers's 826 Valencia project.

According to the Times, the two-year lease was arranged with the Port of San Francisco, which connected the groups as part of its broader push to activate underused waterfront space. Officials say the project aligns with the city’s current focus on revitalization efforts backed by Mayor Daniel Lurie with the aim of “bringing new activity and energy to our historic piers.”

Related: Mid-Market Arts and Media Hub Warfield Commons Officially Opens Its Doors

Image: Art + Water/Instagram

Ugh. Melania Trump thinks more robots should be teaching children, which dovetails nicely with the administration gutting the Department of Education.

A Bay Area startup that makes humanoid robots to help with household chores, Sunnyvale-based Figure AI, got its signature product on a big stage Wednesday. Its Figure 03 humanoid robot walked a red carpet — actually just the hallway into the White House East Room — with First Lady Melania Trump, in both a first for humanoid robots and a rare-these-days public appearance by our humanoid First Lady.

This was all part of an education and technology event Melania was hosting at the White House, the summit of a group called Fostering the Future Together.

You can see that sort of awkward side-by-side walk in the video below.

The robot then spoke, as the Associated Press reports, saying, "Thank you, first lady Melania Trump, for inviting me to the White House. It is an honor to be at Fostering the Future Together’s global coalition inaugural meeting. I’m Figure 03, a humanoid built for the United States of America. I am grateful to be part of this historic movement to empower children and education."

The robot then said "Welcome" and offered a greeting in 10 other languages. And after that, the panel at the event, which included First Ladies Brigitte Macron of France, Sara Netanyahu of Israel, and Olena Zelenska of Ukraine, looked on awkwardly as the robot slowly walked back down the hallway out of the room.

The New York Times also covered the event, reporting that Mrs. Trump promoted the idea that more children should receive teaching from "humanoid educators."

"The future of AI is ‘personified,’" the First Lady said in prepared remarks that she definitely did not write. "It will be formed in the shape of humans. Very soon artificial intelligence will move from our mobile phones to humanoids that deliver utility."

"Imagine a humanoid educator named 'Plato,'” she continued. “Access to the classical studies is now instantaneous: literature, science, art, philosophy, mathematics, and history. Humanity’s entire corpus of information is available in the comfort of your home."

Did you ever imagine Melania would say the word "corpus" in any context? Me neither!

Figure AI CEO Brett Adcock celebrated the robot's special appearance, tweeting, "So proud to see F.03 make history as the first humanoid robot in the White House,” adding, “as always fully autonomous.”

Per the AP, Figure 03 is available for purchase for help with taking out the trash, and such, for around $25,000.

Class of 2026 seniors with a minimum 2.5 GPA from 43 California school districts, including several in the Bay Area, can now automatically enroll at 16 schools in the CSU system, and in 2027, eligible seniors from all 937 districts statewide will automatically be accepted.

As CalMatters reports, California Senate Bill 640, which went into effect January 1, aims to boost enrollment at 16 California State University campuses, including San Francisco State, Cal State East Bay, and Sonoma State, while streamlining the admissions process for qualifying graduating seniors, as part of the state’s Direct Admission Program. Beginning in 2027, students from public schools statewide will be eligible, in addition to students from county-run schools and charter schools tied to local educational agencies — but they’ll still need to enroll through CaliforniaColleges.edu and pay their tuition.

As Sacramento’s KPBS reports, the initiative, which began as a pilot program in Riverside County in Southern California, officially started rolling out this year, enabling graduating seniors from 43 school districts, including several in Alameda, Napa, Santa Clara, San Mateo, and Sonoma counties, to automatically enroll in fall classes. Per the Chronicle, six of the 22 CSU schools, including San Jose State, have nearly full enrollment and are exempt from the program.

Per KPBS, Democratic State Senator Christopher Cabaldon of Yolo County authored the bill, which he modeled after the College Promise program he launched as mayor of West Sacramento, which gives high school seniors tuition-free acceptance into Sacramento City College. According to Wikipedia, Cabaldon has a long history in higher education policy, including leadership roles in the California Community Colleges system, education nonprofits, and state and national advisory boards.

As the blog Abridged writes, Cabaldon hopes the new program will inspire graduating seniors to follow a path that they might not have considered before — or at least eliminate some of the bureaucracy surrounding the admissions process.

“In that moment, you and your family are rethinking the possibilities,” Cabaldon said in a hearing, per Abridged. “What never seemed like the normal path becomes already done. You don’t have to do anything more.”

“The core of the bill is not just to change the process and the legal entitlements,” Cabaldon said, per Abridged. “It’s mainly to change the way that the psychology of going to college is and to invite more students to go through that path.”

Catalina Cifuentes, an official in Riverside County, told Abridged that the pilot program has already made a positive impact on graduating seniors’ lives. “We have been able to help students who previously did not even know that they had met all of the requirements to get into college enjoy a smooth transition towards higher education,” Cifuentes told Abridged. “It is really exciting to see people realize they have the potential to go to college when it wasn’t even on their radar.”

Image: Cal State University East Bay/Facebook

Previously: SF State Faculty Announce Strike In December, Other State Schools Set to Join

The Board of Supervisors hosted a mock hearing Wednesday, where seven student legislators from local elementary schools reviewed proposals from four of their peers for alternative uses of Alcatraz Island, challenging the federal government’s laughable plan to reopen it as a prison.

As Mission Local reports, a group of third- through fifth-graders from San Francisco’s Tenderloin Community School, Bessie Carmichael Elementary, and Redding Elementary School, who all attend the 826 Valencia writing program, held court at City Hall Wednesday for the first time in the board’s history. The meeting was even recorded by the award-winning SFGovTV, but SFist was unable to find the video footage.

In addition to the seven child legislators, District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar and District 6 Supervisor Matt Dorsey (whose district covers Alcatraz) were also in attendance, along with the four kid presenters and the remaining students testifying in support of the proposals. Melgar, Dorsey, and the board clerk’s office staff educated the students on how a real hearing operates, including which buttons to push and protocol surrounding public comment and question-and-answer sessions, per Mission Local.

As to be expected, the four highly creative proposals involved a water park, a giant playground, and animal sanctuaries. Nine-year-old Allen Truong suggested that the island be turned into a bird sanctuary. “We need to keep them safe from vehicles that can crush them,” Truong said. “The birds deserve to have their babies in peace.”

“Our city animal is the parrot. What other birds do you think need protection?” Melgar asked Truong.

“Pigeons, I would say,” Truong responded. Indeed.

Dorsey mused that the proposed options were much more appealing than the reality. “I will say, I’m glad I don’t have to make a choice which one I would pick,” Dorsey said. “But I can confidently say that all of these are better ideas than what we have in the Trump administration right now.”

Image: Kārlis Dambrāns/Flickr

Related: Trump Still Barreling Forward With Certifiably Insane Plan to Reopen Alcatraz as a Prison

California Fifth Graders Take On Harmful “Sephora Kids” Skincare Trend, Challenge Lawmakers

Right-wing public interest law firm Pacific Legal Foundation is representing a white Berkeley high school student in a lawsuit against UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital of Oakland because the teen was rejected from its three-year CHAMPS internship, which is for minority high school students interested in health care careers.

Notably, the student's mother is an attorney who works for Contra Costa County, and Pacific Legal Foundation is a libertarian group funded by ultraconservative donors with a focus on pursuing “individual liberty and limited government,“ as coined by Courthouse News Service.

The Chronicle notes that this lawsuit is one of several recent attempts by the group to dismantle DEI programs, particularly in public education. So far, many of the cases have been thrown out of court.

Image: Mx. Granger/Wikimedia

Previously: Oakland Landlords Lose Case Over Paying Tenants $6,500 To Leave

Around 350 San Francisco Unified School District teachers have been found to lack an active teaching credential, according to a Friday press release from the district.

The district, which made the discovery as they reviewed data necessary to move away from the failed EMPowerSF payroll software, says that they are taking the appropiate steps to remedy the situation going forward.

"SFUSD began sending letters in early September to teachers who may not have an active credential on file with the [California Commission on Teacher Credentialing] to let the employee know of the immediate need to update their credential with CTC or to work with our Credentials Team to apply for a qualifying credential," the press release states.

This comes less than a week after Mayor London Breed dispatched a "School Stabilization Team" to aid the ailing school district, which itself came a day after the school board almost fired Superintendent Matt Wayne at an unusual closed-door, weekend meeting.

Wayne, who survived the near-firing, states in the announcement that teachers lacking active credentials will be removed from schools until their credentials are renewed.

“SFUSD cannot allow teachers whose credentials are not in compliance to remain in the classroom,” Superintendent Wayne said. “We are doing everything possible to support our employees in securing some type of credential or permit for an employee to remain in their assignment.”

Image: Ida B. Wells High School via Wikimedia

San Francisco's School Board has placed an emergency meeting on their schedule for Sunday morning. The meeting's agenda has only one item listed, a "public employee performance review" for its embattled Superintendent, Matt Wayne.

San Francisco Unified School District, the district that Wayne leads, is undergoing a period of chaos and uncertainty, as the district grapples with a budget deficit projected last year to grow to over $400 million by the end of the 2025-2026 school year.

In response to the looming fiscal crisis, Wayne has implemented sweeping changes, adding up to a $103 million dollar budget reduction for this year alone.

In June, the district announced that 610 current teachers and staff are slated to be slashed over the next two years, following a previous plan that cut 900 already vacant positions. On November's ballot is a $790 million bond measure, which would be the largest bond in San Francisco history if passed.

School closures are expected to be announced in October, in response to the deficit and sharp decreases in enrollment. Wayne told KQED last month that the district currently serves about 49,000 students, down from an early 2000s peak of 60,000 students, and an amount he expects to continue shrinking.

However, despite his efforts, Wayne's future remains in the air, with criticism mounting over several critical errors that have occurred under his leadership.

This year, the district's special education department was left $20 million short on its budget, leading to legally required educators not being hired. EMPower, a mostly defective payroll system implemented mere months before Wayne took office, left teachers often unpaid or underpaid, with the district spending $40 million trying to fix it before scrapping the program altogether. Dozens of people have seen their job offers get rescinded weeks after the fact, and the district began this school year with as many as 145 teacher vacancies.

These issues have culminated in Lainie Motamedi, the former president of the school board, publicly calling for Wayne's removal earlier this week.

In an interview, Motamedi told The San Francisco Chronicle that she left her position last month because of declining health and intense frustration with Wayne's leadership. She expressed that in her view, Wayne has not offered up the correct "road map" to addressing issues she views are easily fixable, and that the district needs to "cut bait" in favor of someone who will.

“I firmly believe that quality education in our city and quality neighborhood schools that no longer require a convoluted and ineffectual assignment system is completely possible and doable in this city,” Motamedi told the Chronicle. “We have the skills, we have the tenacity. We have the resources. We just have to do the job.”

Image: San Francisco School Board Commissioner Jenny Lam via X

San Francisco's public school system, grappling with declining enrollment and a looming budget deficit, is set to close or consolidate an unspecified number of schools by fall 2025, Superintendent Matt Wayne announced.

Wayne discussed the plan at a summit Saturday and gave more details in an interview with the Chronicle. "We feel like in order to create the schools our students deserve and our families expect, we need to have fewer schools," Wayne told the Chronicle’s education reporter, Jill Tucker.

SF public schools currently have about 49,500 students enrolled – down from 53,000 in 2015. Projections show they could lose another 5,000 by 2032.

With fewer students comes decreased state funding, further straining the district's already stretched resources and the city’s budget crisis. Wayne told the Chronicle that the district faces a "fiscal cliff" after years of overspending. He said the current lack of funds prevents the district form providing consistent support, programs, and necessary repairs across all of SF’s 121 schools. Wayne also noted that the potential for a state takeover if the budget isn’t balanced.

While no specific schools have been identified yet, the district apparently aims to finalize the closure list by September or October 2024, for a potential implementation by fall 2025. The next eight months will reportedly be dedicated to establishing closure criteria, conducting an equity audit to ensure marginalized students aren't disproportionately affected, and gathering extensive community input.

Previously: SFUSD Looks Likely to Cut 900 Jobs as District's Deficit Explodes to More Than $400 Million

Photo via Google Street View

The San Francisco Unified School District is using itself as an educational example tonight, ceremonially expunging a racist 1906 rule that's still on the books — though not observed and mostly-but-not-quite-forgotten — that calls for the segregation of Asian students.

"We have this really dark part of history in our school district," school board member Emily Murase told the Chronicle, who had the story. "It’s important to acknowledge that happened,” she said, explaining her rationale for prompting the vote, which occurs tonight.

The School Board passed the segregation policy 110 years ago as anti-Asian racism in California was at a zenith, and after the state Supreme Court ruled California had to educate students of Asian descent but didn't rule out segregation. The law angered the Japanese government in particular, and Japanese students in San Francisco were eventually exempt from the policy of segregation.

To that point, The New York Times recalls the above cartoon from a 1906 issue of Harper's Weekly. The announcement that year that Japanese students would be segregated in San Francisco "sparked a diplomatic crisis between Japan and the United States," the Times wrote, "prompting President Theodore Roosevelt to send Commerce and Labor Secretary Victor Metcalf, a native Californian, to San Francisco in an effort to persuade the school board to change its decision."

Korean, Chinese, and other Asian-American students were educated at institutions like the the Oriental School in Chinatown, or Commodore Stockton, as it was called by the late 1920s when it taught so many students that the city had to allow some to attend other nearby schools. In those ways, the policy fell by the wayside. But Ken Maley, a local historian, reportedly discovered that there was no evidence of the resolution's repeal and advocated for it. “There’s no hiding from the past,” Maley put it to the Chronicle. “You have to know where you’ve been to know where you are.”

Today, according to the San Francisco Unified School District, 33 percent of its 56,000-student population is Chinese-American while only 11 percent is white. Other Asian-American students like Korean- and Japanese-American students are less numerous, representing about one percent each.

Irene Dea Collier, a representative of the Association of Chinese Teachers, echoed Maley's call to teach the School District's problematic history. "We can say it’s all in the past, but unless kids know about how hard the struggle was to even have the right to attend school, they don’t appreciate what they have,” Collier told the Chronicle.

All a good reminder that the SFUSD hasn't always provided the atmosphere of inclusion it aims to foster today, when it's busy auto-dialing parents to assure them that it will protect their children regardless of immigration status, as it did in December, or dredging up its racist past to provide a history lesson.

Related: SF Unified School District Mass-Voicemail Assures Parents It Will Protect Immigrant Students

Fans of This American Life and loyal readers of SFist will remember CASA (Children's After-School Arts), the local after-school program that was featured because of a provocative musical they created and staged in the spring of 2015 called "City Not For Sale." The program has a tradition of putting on a big spring show, written by faculty and with students' input, often focusing on issues of social justice with a "only in SF" lefty bent. And this year, riffing on their appearance on This American Life, they're doing a show about the environment and bees called This American Hive. And, naturally, this "buzz-worthy original musical" (har) has got an audio cameo by Ira Glass.

This American Hive will feature 200 kids, from kindergarten to fifth grade, many of whom helped developed the script through improvisation and writing exercises over the course of the school year.

The plot goes something like this.

When a group of middle school kids enter the White House Science Fair, they are taken on a magical journey beyond their wildest dreams! Shrunken to the size of insects, the students experience the plight of honeybees first hand when they meet them face to face. Langston, a drone who identifies as a worker bee, introduces the kids to the natural world from the perspective of some of the most vulnerable species.

And, yes, like last year's show, issues of identity and privilege are tackled along with environmental concerns — but this time it probably won't feel to some parents like their children are being indoctrinated to hate the industry they work for.

As we learned last year, CASA is a pretty unique program that was developed two decades ago at the Rooftop Alternative School, a K-8 public school in the Twin Peaks neighborhood which itself has a social justice and arts bent. Kids take part in various creative activities for the three hours between when school lets out and their parents finish work, which include sculpture, clowning, painting, drumming, "magical arts," and improv.

This American Hive will play two performances, Saturday, May 14 at 6 p.m. and Sunday, May 15 at 2 p.m. at the Carol Channing Theater at Lowell High School. It will sell out like always, and tax deductible tickets are available here.

Previously: This American Life Highlights SF After-School Program That Put On A Children's Musical About Gentrification

Whoa. Forbes has not one but two pieces out today coming after the for-profit Academy of Art University and the multimillionaire Stephens family who have been running it for several generations. It's only been in the last two decades, though, that it's grown into the monster it is now, having had only 2,200 students enrolled back in 1992 and ballooning to 18,000 students at its peak in 2011.

One former teacher tells Forbes that despite the high enrollment numbers, which have dropped off a bit in recent years, a dismal percentage of students graduate with job placements in their fields. Vince De Quattro, who headed the school's online animation program from 2004 to 2011 calls to question the claim that 75 percent of students get placed in jobs — "There are many students left behind,” he says. “From an initial class of, say, 100 students, we get maybe 5 kids at the end that are employable.” This could spell problems for the school's accreditation from the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, which has scheduled a review of the school for next year.

Only 32 percent of full-time students graduate after six years, and that drops to 3 percent for part-time students (and 6 percent for online students). But still, students continue to take out loans to cover the $22,000 annual tuition.

With all that massive growth in enrollment the school also had to go hog-wild acquiring places to house and teach these students, and they notoriously have acquired over forty buildings across SoMa, downtown, and the Tenderloin, many of which are being used for purposes that run counter to existing zoning and planning code. (See the map.)

The Planning Commission has been decrying the AAU's violations for years now, and yet the school has done little rectify the situation, perhaps because they're obligated to keep their profit margin up. And now wealthy socialite and school president Elisa Stephens, whose grandfather founded the school for "advertising art" 86 years ago, says, "I don’t know what prompted somebody to wake up and see us finally. We’ve been here, and we haven’t been hiding out.” (It also seems as though Stephens thought Forbes just wanted to write a nice piece and make a video about her fabulous car collection and her wealth!)

There's been suspicion that former mayor Willie Brown and current Mayor Ed Lee have intervened to keep the AAU from facing any serious punishment, and so far, despite dozens of buildings out of compliance and over 20 hearings about AAU's misuse of properties, some of which were formerly rent-controlled housing, the university has only ever received one fine from the city of $420,000 for a single violation.

Also at issue is a draft Environmental Impact Report that the university and its attorneys were at work on for six years, which they finally submitted to the city back in February. It's expected to be finalized by next year but only addresses the school's real estate acquisitions since 2010, and therefore excludes some 28 buildings amassed since the 1990s.

The Forbes pieces point the finger squarely at Stephens, and point out how many expensive homes her family owns, and how she has a collection of 250 classic cars housed in the school's own "museum" (a nice write-off that benefits AAU's automobile design program).

And in all the years I've lived in this city watching the AAU grow, this is the first time a major publication has called them to task on several fronts, and highlighted the egregiousness of a family profiting gloriously on the backs of wide-eyed students who all just want to be creative professionals, and think this degree will help them.

Countdown to the blowback...3...2...1...

Oscar winner and recent Kennedy Center honoree Tom Hanks has voiced his full support in a NYT op-ed for President Obama's proposal to make two years of free community college available to all Americans. Hanks, who's a graduate of Oakland's Skyline High School, class of '74, says he had "lousy SAT scores" and generally poor grades and community college was his only option. He attended Chabot College in Hayward for two years — at the time, it was free; now it costs $46 per unit for California residents, or $2760 for the 60 units required for an Associate's degree. And, he says, "That place made me what I am today."

He notes that Chabot students should check the library's vinyl record collection to see if they can find a recording of Jason Robards performing the monologues of Eugene O’Neill. "You will find my name repeatedly on the takeout slip," he says. Also, he calls out some of the fine teachers he had, who are long gone.

Classes I took at Chabot have rippled through my professional pond. I produced the HBO mini-series “John Adams” with an outline format I learned from a pipe-smoking historian, James Coovelis, whose lectures were riveting. Mary Lou Fitzgerald’s Studies in Shakespeare taught me how the five-act structures of “Richard III,” “The Tempest” and “Othello” focused their themes.

In Herb Kennedy’s Drama in Performance, I read plays like “The Hot L Baltimore” and “Desire Under the Elms,” then saw their productions. I got to see the plays he taught, through student rush tickets at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and the Berkeley Repertory Theater. Those plays filled my head with expanded dreams. I got an A.

In the end he transferred to Sacramento State, studied theater there for a year, and then went off auditioning, and the rest is history.

But Hanks's point is that "many lives will be changed" if Congress manages the unlikely feat of funding the President's plan. And, "High school graduates without the finances for a higher education can postpone taking on big loans and maybe luck into the class that will redefine their life’s work."

Oakland High School released disturbing video capturing the moments where a freshman with cerebral palsy, handcuffed to a wheelchair, was brutally beaten by a security guard. This student's offense? Moving too slowly to class. Marchell Mitchell, 23, was fired and charged with child abuse for cuffing, punching and dumping Francisco Martinez, 17, out of his wheelchair on Monday May 19.

The Chronicle has more:

Mitchell ordered the student to move toward his next class, but the student "either refused to comply or was slow to do so," Principal Matin Abdel-Qawi wrote in a letter to parents.

Mitchell then took the handles of Martinez's wheelchair and pushed him toward class, prompting Martinez to object and try to slap away the guard's hands, officials said. Mitchell then handcuffed Martinez and continued to roll him, and the student turned around in his wheelchair and spat in Mitchell's face, authorities said.

"The security officer then struck the student several times before dumping him from his wheelchair onto the floor, at which time another security officer intervened to restrain his partner," Abdel-Qawi wrote.

Martinez was admitted to Children's Hospital on Thursday to be treated for non-life-threatening injuries. "He slapped me. He hit me so hard, it threw me out of my chair. I hit the floor with my chin first. I had a scar right here," Martinez told KTVU Thursday night. Martinez also claims that, though not seen in the video, the guard beat and threw him to the ground in the elevator ride beforehand, telling him, "I hope you don't walk for another two or three weeks."

When asked to explain why he spat at the officer, Martinez said, "I was handcuffed. I had no way to defend myself except for my mouth."

Mitchell, who was hired by the school district after an "extensive background check," will appear in court on June 16th for a pretrial hearing.

[Chron]
[KTVU]
[CBS SF]

If the city you live in fell into dystopia and horror and you had to survive for 72 hours, could you? Many of you, let's face it, will die. Squashed under that Victorian you called home. Kidnapped from your SoMa loft by Occupy comrades. Murdered by an angry mob after you snatch more than your fair share of Charmin during a CVS loot. Or worse. But Rift Recon, a physical security agency made up of researchers, former military and private security detail contractors, and computer and hardware hackers, can and will help you survive.

Rift Recon's Eric Michaud and Kelly Alwood teach classes on how to survive a kidnapping, how to commandeer a boat and navigate out of the Bay, and even how to take a motorcycle or car out of the city. And much more. It's called the Art of Escape and the next set of classes (three nine-hour days) will be at The Armory (1800 Mission), February 27th - March 1st.

SFist talked to Eric Michaud to learn more about surviving a kidnapping, philosophies on looting, and post-earthquake bedlam, among other things.

SFist: How did you become interested in urban survival? How did you become interested in teaching this class?
Eric Michaud: The Rift staff who created Art of Escape (myself included) come from a variety of backgrounds, including military, US government, hacking, private security details, security engineers, etc. We have a lot of fun combining our professional backgrounds to develop the best ways to get out of risky situations, especially for people who have a minimal amount of training. We became interested in teaching for this audience when we came to realize there was no class available to the public that actually deals with the realities of an urban environment failing apart, and how to survive.

SFist: Have you ever been in a quake? If so, which one(s) and how did you react?
Michaud: Yes. I think the epicenter was under San Ramon, back in December. It wasn't that big, so I didn't need to do anything.

SFist: Can you tell our readers the two most important things one should do right after the next "big one" hits?
Michaud: Attain access to food (including water) and attend to any first aid. You can't function or help anyone without fuel for your body, and you can be quite limited depending on how serious any injuries may be. Next would be assessing safety and potential threats, and determining whether to stay put or move out.

SFist: What will people learn in your class?
Michaud: This is the fun part, because it's also really empowering. I love that what we teach will quite literally save your life, or the lives of people you care about. We cover survival basics, like food, water, shelter, and performing emergency triage (including bullet wounds; this is an urban survival class after all). Students learn how to move around the city without being noticed, as well as how to escape when they're being chased. Speaking of bad guys, we teach how to perform threat and safety analysis, and how to defend yourself with and without with weapons (even impromptu weapons). If things go sideways, we also teach how to escape a kidnapping, including getting out of handcuffs, escaping rope and tape, and getting in and out of locked areas (you'll be able to pick locks when we're done). One of the controversial things we teach, but I think it's necessary for Bay Area survival, is how to commandeer a boat, navigate it out of the Bay, and to land it - where we also make sure you know how to commandeer a car or motorcycle. There's more, but these are the highlights.

SFist: How much are classes?
Michaud: Classes start at $950. The education will not only give you life-saving knowledge, but people will also get a significant of amount gear to take home with them.

SFist: Ok, now what about looting? Are you pro/con Walgreens free-for-all in times of melee?
Michaud: At Rift Recon we don't condone looting. However, we all should acknowledge that there may be a time when social order has completely broken down, and you, your family and friends need to survive and get out alive.

SFist: Anything else?
The class we're teaching in San Francisco is for The City, but is designed to be adaptable for peninsula-based cities. Each class we teach is tailored to the city we're teaching in, so each class experience will be different by necessity of location. Of course, due to laws in different cities, states and locales, we have to adjust curriculum accordingly — so I'm sad to say that Tokyo won't be getting any Rift Recon lockpicking lessons.

Also, last week's Art of Escape class at Triple Aught Design was booked solid. After the class, one female student told me, "Everyone needs to take this training ... I am forcing my sisters and female friends to take this class."

We'll continue with classes in San Francisco, and maybe even one in Austin in the near future.

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To sign up for Rift Recon's Art of Escape class at the Armory, go here.

Here we go again. The Law Offices of Bornstein & Bornstein and Bay Property Group have invited you to learn the art of kicking out tenants. There's money to be made and those human beings won't fling themselves out to the gutter. Okay, that's a touch dramatic — two sides to every story, right? — but tonight's event, which helps landlords better understand how to kick out tenants, couldn't come at a worst/best time.

Topics will include: Rent Control v. Non-Rent Control, Just Cause Eviction Rules, The Eviction Process, Tenant Buy-Out Agreements, Owner Move-In Evictions, and Protected Tenant Analysis.

Broke-Ass Stuart covered this last year, when the same (popular) seminar went down in November. Even the Chronicle and 7x7 chimed in too.

Details. (Also, depending on which side of the fence you're on, Bornstein's YouTube channel is helpful/chilling.)