View the San Francisco for Thursday, July 25, 2024
Around this time last year, Alexander Massialas was working as an intern at MHC Engineers, a mechanical-engineering firm headquartered in an unremarkable three-story SOMA office building near Civic Center.
Massialas’ work days were usually filled with putting together engineering analyses, staff lunches, helping his coworkers solve puzzles — and, after work, joining them for happy hour.On Friday, Massialas will be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his nearly 600 Team USA teammates, riding on a boat parading down the Seine during the opening ceremonies of the Massialas is no longer a typical summer intern. Instead, the 30-year-old San Franciscan — one of the greatest American fencers of all-time — will be representing his country on the world’s stage. This will be the fourth Olympics for Massialas, a two-time NCAA champion at Stanford and 11-time Pan American champion. His first was in 2012, when he was the Since then, he’s captured three Olympic medals — bronze in the team foil event in Rio De Janeiro in 2016 and again in 2021 in Tokyo, and a silver in the individual foil in 2016.after coming into close contact with a COVID-positive athlete. That severely affected his performance at the games, he told The Examiner on Wednesday during a phone call from Paris, two days before the lighting of the Olympic torch and the official start of the games. By contrast, “this year has been awesome,” he said while walking around the streets of the French capital to meet teammates for dinner. “It reminds me of the way things were when I competed in London and Rio. To come back to such an incredible Olympic experience after what happened in Tokyo, it’s really, really great and a lot of fun.” Massialas, who grew up in lower Pacific Heights, has fenced since he was seven. His dad, Greg Massialas, is a legendary Olympic fencer who owns a training facility in the Outer Sunset and is the head coach of the U.S. fencing team. His sister, Sabrina, has also been an Olympic fencer, although she didn’t qualify this year. Alexander Massialas attended Stanford on a fencing scholarship, and years later helped save the university’s fencing program from budget cuts. Despite earning a degree in mechanical engineering, he said, he fully committed to fencing in the years that followed. But after the last Olympics in 2021, he finally started to think about what his post-athletics life might look like.and brother of Massialas’ mother. MHC is based at the same downtown San Francisco warehouse it moved into when Hsiu-Chen founded the firm in 1993, the year before Massialas was born.“I decided there’s no better opportunity than working for my uncle,” Massialas said. “He was a big inspiration for me to become a mechanical engineer in the first place. The pieces fell into place pretty well.” MHC hired Massialas in the fall of 2022. For the next year, in between his rigid training schedule and national and international fencing tournaments, he worked in the office full-time three days per week. It was fairly routine for Massialas to compete in a fencing tournament in Asia one day and be at his desk at the MHC offices at 8:30 a.m. the next. If his flight landed in the afternoon, he even considered going to the office for a couple hours that same day, he said. “I was really taught by my parents to never take a day off,” Massialas said. “For my co-workers, they were kind of shocked. But for me, it was just another day at the office.” Some MHC employees had heard stories that the company’s owner had a famous nephew. But others — such as James Lui, an engineer at the firm for three years — didn’t know anything about Massialas until about a week before Massialas started his year-long temp job when Hsiu-Chen announced his nephew would be joining the firm as an intern. “One of my co-workers who heard about him said ‘Oh my God! An Olympian is going to be working with us!’” Lui said “I was like, ‘What? An Olympian?’”But it didn’t take long for Massialas to immerse himself into the office’s culture and just become another engineer at the firm, those who worked with him say. “He blended right in,” said Eiki Or, a partner at the firm and Massialas’ direct supervisor when he worked there. “He had a very fun and outgoing personality. He just got along with everybody immediately.” It didn’t hurt that Massialas is a positive person, said Michelle Lee, MHC’s human-resources director. “He had a positive vibe about him,” Lee said. “He was always talkative. He was always smiling. It was great for our company, because we have so many unique personalities, and it was nice to bring him in.” Massialas, who lives in an apartment near the Geary Street tunnel, was a regular at staff lunches, happy hours, offsite retreats and holiday parties, his co-workers said. He also joined in the intense water-cooler discussions at the company about what constitutes a sandwich, helped his colleagues put together puzzles and took part in the annual office pingpong tournament. It might come as a shock to those on the outside to learn that the Olympian didn’t win the competition. But Massialas said he hadn’t played since college and had to pull an upset against one of the favorites in the semifinals to even make it to the championship match. “I was no match for the champion,” he said. “I gave it my all, but clearly there was a skill difference.” In addition to all those office activities, Massialas also frequently joined his colleagues when they made office orders for boba tea. Massialas takes boba almost as seriously as his fencing career, he said. His favorite concoctions in The City include watermelon juice at Wonderful Foods, black milk tea with honey instead of sugar at Little Sugar, and Hong Kong milk tea with boba at Boba Guys. On top of having a laid-back and jovial presence in the office, Massialas proved himself to be a “great engineer,” Or said. Massialas’ career has benefitted from his athletic training, Or said. “It takes a certain amount of focus to do any kind of work, and he has that kind of focus,” Or said. “Give him a task and he will put his full effort behind it ... It might not be his No. 1 passion, but he was certainly good at it.”Summer intern Jake Woo, left, and Eiki Or put in a day’s work at MHC Engineers on 8th Street. Or supervised 2024 U.S. Olympic fencer Alexander Massialas when the latter was a 2023 summer intern at the firm. During his internship, Massialas said, he primarily analyzed different San Francisco buildings’ energy efficiency. One of his most memorable projects involved analyzing the heating and ventilation energy loads at“That’s the person you go to if you need to get an energy model done,” Lui said. “He was really good at it. He picked it up really fast, too.” Massialas was drawn to mechanical engineering because problem-solving is an intricate component of the field, he said. “It’s really hands-on,” he said. “You can really see what the problem is, diagnose, and then as quickly as possible, find a logical way to fix this issue.” As much as he might enjoy the field, Massialas has put on hold any plans to transition to a full-time engineering career after the Paris games. Last week,“I never wanted to close the door, especially because I have my degree in mechanical engineering,” he said. “But at the end of the day,” he continued, “I really do love fencing ... It felt like too good of an opportunity to pass up.” Massialas’ former co-workers at MHC said they look forward to watching him compete for gold. His first match is Monday at 9 a.m. “If the hours work for us, we will definitely make time to watch,” Lee said, though she admitted nobody at the office knows anything about fencing. Massialas did have a message for all his former deskmates following along with the Olympic tournament. “I hope to see them again sometime,” he said. “Unfortunately, I will not be employed there, but I’ll still go to a happy hour and visit the office at some point.”Woody LaBounty, President and CEO of SF Heritage, in the research library with a historic Sanborn map at the Haas-Lilienthal House in San Francisco on Tuesday, July 16, 2024. SF Heritage’s mission is to preserve San Francisco’s unique architecture. A 1915 Sanborn Map of Battery Street and Pacific Avenue last updated in 1950, in the research library at the Haas-Lilienthal House in San Francisco pictured on Tuesday, July 16, 2024. Old city directories, fire insurance maps first published in 1915, newspaper clippings spanning decades of San Francisco history — this collection of yellowing, brittle documents spread out atop a stately wooden table tells the century-spanning story of the brick-walled building that has housed the Old Ship Saloon, a venerable local landmark in The City’s Financial District. These days, the Old Ship is a neighborhood restaurant and bar nestled at the corner of Battery Street and Pacific Avenue, but it traces its roots all the way back to the Gold Rush era, when one of The City’s earliest residents began serving drinks out of the hollowed-out side of a beached wooden ship — one of many vessels to come aground along the shoreline of the rough and tumble neighborhood that would come to be known as the Barbary Coast. “Here’s the actual original permit for the building when it was created after the 1906 Earthquake and Fire,” preservationist Woody LaBounty said, shuffling through the papers. “Yeah, building permits were a lot simpler — like, four pages!” This rare cache of historic documents is housed inside a jam-packed library that makes up much of the third floor of the Haas-Lilienthal House, a towering Victorian that serves as a fitting headquarters for the preservation-advocacy group SF Heritage. For LaBounty, the group’s president and CEO, the stunning hodgepodge represents more than a collection of historical curiosities. Those musty tomes and creaky cabinets hold key evidence that one day soon could mean the difference between demolition and preservation for hundreds of San Francisco buildings that are considered to be historic but have not yet been formally added to The City’s registry of official landmarks.Many preservationists worry that historic structures that still lack the protection of landmark status have been imperiled by a recent“And so you can lose the Old Ship Saloon,” said LaBounty. “Like, wait — I don’t think we want to lose the Old Ship Saloon.” Preservationists both inside and outside of city government argue that since construction permitting has now been streamlined, The City’s heretofore sluggish landmarking process must be sped up as well. If The City leaves this long standing backlog of historical work unaddressed, warned Rich Sucre of the San Francisco Planning Department, “we might be the next Ferry Building, or the next Harvey Milk camera shop at some point, unexpectedly,” referring to two iconic buildings that have already made their way onto the official landmark list.— still in its early stages — comes at a moment of heightened scrutiny for preservation efforts, which have come to be seen by some as a disingenuous tactic to thwart new housing developments.. Ultimately, neighborhood organizers were successful in their bid to win historic status for the tony enclave, made up of expansive properties topped by striking homes, all laid out along an unusual “residential park” design. Critics of the effort, though, saw only an attempt to skirt Senate Bill 9, the California housing law that abolished single-family zoning. With St. Francis Wood’s historic status now in place, the neighborhood is exempt from SB 9 provisions that would have allowed for the construction of denser lots. Amid concerns that communities had hit upon a winning playbook to circumvent California’s housing laws, pro-housing advocates responded this year by introducing statewide legislation that would require cities to make“So it’s basically making sure that cities are aware that the state is watching and that the state knows that historic preservation is being abused to block housing,” said Matthew Lewis, who directs communications for California YIMBY, the advocacy group behind the measure. LaBounty strongly opposes the bill — which is now working its way through the state Assembly — arguing the threat to housing posed by preservation has been overblown. He also believes the measure unfairly stigmatizes legitimate efforts to preserve buildings treasured by local residents. His own group first emerged As he works with the Planning Department to shore up landmark protections, he also hopes to push back against the climate of suspicion he says preservationists now face. “If this narrative and this wave continues, and more laws keep getting passed, it’s open season on everything,” he said. One challenge facing LaBounty: drawing together all the research and documentation needed to make a convincing case that a building is not just old, but historically significant, is specialized, labor-intensive work. That’s one of the main reasons San Francisco has not carried out such an effort on a broad scale sooner, despite the fact that prior surveys conducted over the decades have identified roughly 1,100 buildings that potentially meet the standards for historic status. The other major challenge is the review process itself, which city officials say takes five months at a bare minimum, requiring sign offs from the Historic Preservation Commission, the Board of Supervisors and the mayor. Over the course of a typical year, between five and 10 San Francisco buildings join the ranks of The City’s official landmarks, according to the Planning Department. To get that number up, conservationists have floated the idea of passing groups of buildings through the review process en masse, though Planning Department officials say they are still conferring with other city leaders. The agency is also considering policy changes to cut down on the review time and formulate more objective application requirements.— including Alamo Square, Dogpatch and Telegraph Hill — and just more than 300 properties, all together accounting for less than 1% of The City’s total housing stock, according to planning officials. As The City works to whittle that 1,100 figure down to a more manageable number, officials say they are focusing their efforts on commercial buildings because residential structures already enjoy relatively robust protections. They are also conducting outreach to a number of ethnic and racial communities — including African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Chinese Americans and Russian Americans — to make sure San Francisco’s landmarks reflect the full panoply of The City’s famously diverse history. Critics of historic preservation say such efforts have Time is of the essence in this work: For now, new construction projects are emerging at only a trickle in San Francisco, held back by stubbornly high industry costs and interest rates. But when the housing industry picks back up, developers will benefit from SB 423, a recently expanded streamlining measure, which now requires the Planning Department to grant permits for most projects on an expedited timeline, so long as they meet The City’s planning code. That streamlined process bypasses review measures that might have otherwise revealed the presence of a historic resource, which could have then triggered further layers of review. In most cases, gaining landmark status would be enough to block an attempt to demolish a structure, or at least significantly slow it down. It also adds additional hurdles for other modifications that might detract from a building’s historic character. But due to California housing laws passed in recent years, that landmark status must now be in place before a project application has been submitted. Hence, the sense of urgency: “We’re all on borrowed time,” said LaBounty. Once housing construction revives, he wonders, “are we going to be ready for the onslaught?”“Even people who want to see more housing built, we’re not going to be like, bulldoze the city,” said Jane Natoli, San Francisco organizing director for the national YIMBY Action group. “It’s a tool,” she said, referring to landmark protections. “And any tool can be used for good or ill.” Nevertheless, some still fear that even well-intentioned historic preservation could inflict unintended harms — for instance, creating added barriers that could discourage property owners fromStill, he said, “The City’s got a much more pressing issue that its tax rolls are collapsing, and it’s struggling across the city with commercial properties that are sitting vacant, that are not going to be full anytime soon.”“Just because you have a historic property doesn’t mean you can’t build housing,” he said. As one example of a San Francisco property that has been radically reimagined, he pointed to the transformation of Ghirardelli Square from a chocolate factory into a destination shopping spot that also includes a number of apartments. “It just means that you have to be more creative with it,” he said. “And creativity is actually a good thing.”David Troup at Harvey Milk Plaza in San Francisco on Wednesday, July 17, 2024. Troup was taking Viread, a medication to treat HIV, is involved in a lawsuit against Gilead for withholding a safer HIV treatment drug. The longtime San Francisco resident resisted medication at first, but eventually began the fraught medication journey with which those living with the condition are familiar — a drug “cocktail” involving a strict regimen of several medications a day. After trying several such combinations of drugs to keep his HIV levels in check, he eventually started taking just one drug — tenofovir disoproxil fumarate.that includes TDF, Trout said, he started experiencing severe bone-density loss. About eight years ago, he was diagnosed with osteoporosis. Although he was only in his 60s at the time, his bone-density loss was comparable to that of men 20 years older. And that wasn’t the end of his troubles. By now, he’s shrunk four inches, in part due to six compression fractures in his spine. He’s had several back surgeries. Just a couple of years ago, he fractured his pelvis just stepping off a curb. There have been times when he’s been confined to a wheelchair, he said, and he now walks with a cane. “For several years now, I’ve been in constant pain,” Trout said. “It’s the first thing I’m aware of when I wake up, and the last thing I’m aware of before I go to bed.”Hank Trout said his use of HIV medication Truvada caused him osteoporosis, and he now needs a cane to walk as a result. He is involved in a class-action lawsuit against Gilead. Trout and thousands like him in California are trying to hold TDF manufacturer Gilead Sciences responsible for their pain and suffering. They’re part of a lawsuit filedthat accuses the Foster City-based pharmaceutical company of failing in their duty to bring a similar drug to market with less severe side effects sooner. For its part, Gilead has been fiercely fighting back. After its motion for summary judgment of the case was denied in San Francisco Superior Court, the company went to the California Court of Appeal. When that court ruled against Gilead in January, it appealed again to the Supreme Court of California, the state’s highest court, which agreed in May to hear the appeal. Gilead filed its first brief earlier this month. Robert Jenner, co-lead counsel for Trout and the other plaintiffs said that the process will take some time, with a decision unlikely to come before the fall of 2025.“You have to show there’s an obligation to do something,” said Jenner. “They didn’t do that obligation. They failed in that obligation, and that failure caused the harm.” In its motion, Gilead argued there’s no legal basis for it because the medication and the warnings included with it was not defective. The company welcomes the Supreme Court of California considering and ruling on its motion, a representative said in a statement to The Examiner. With its decision rejecting Gilead’s appeal in January, “The Court of Appeal overrode a century of common law to impose on manufacturers a duty that no court anywhere in the country has ever suggested,” the representative said. The lawsuit against Gilead accuses the company of promoting TDF while ceasing to develop a related drug, tenofovir alafenamide fumarate. TAF can be prescribed at lower doses than TDF while still having the same level of effectiveness, decreasing the risk of severe side effects, according to the law suit. Gilead began developing TDF in 1991, and in 2001 applied for FDA approval of the medication. That same year, it began development of TAF, but it stopped in 2004 due to the drug’s similarities with TDF, which was already on the market. Despite knowing TAF was safer, Gilead continued pushing TDF-type medications for the next several years so the company could maintain its monopoly over such drugs until its patent expired, the lawsuit alleges. Gilead offers five different TDF drugs — Viread, Atripla, Complera, Stribild and Truvada. Gilead didn’t resume development of TAF until 2011, and applied for FDA approval of TAF in 2015 — around the time TDF’s patent was set to expire. In a statement to the Examiner, a Gilead spokesperson said: “Both TDF- and TAF-containing medicines are approved by the FDA successfully helping to treat and prevent HIV in millions of people.” But Jenner said that the lawsuit isn’t questioning the efficacy of TDF. Instead, it’s charging that Gilead forced people to take a product that had more severe side effects when it had another option that could have been developed instead. Under California law, people and companies can be held responsible for injuries to others, even if they didn’t mean to cause harm, if those injuries are due to their “reckless negligence.” “There was something that you could have and should have released earlier so that people wouldn’t have to take the less safe product,” he said. “That’s negligence.” While Trout’s side effects have been more severe than others have experienced, he’s not alone in coming to terms with them. Local activist Paul Aguilar, 61, blames Truvada for his height loss. After taking the drug for several years, he went in for a medical checkup in 2014 and had his height measured.He kept arguing with staff until he finally went home and measured himself, he said, and found that he was indeed now just six feet tall. His physician had him take a bone-density test, which found that Aguilar had developed osteopenia, a precursor to osteoporosis. Aguilar was floored. When he first began taking Truvada, it felt like a “miracle.” Previously, to manage his HIV, he’d had to take “17 pills a day,” he said. “My viral load went undetectable almost immediately” after starting to take Truvada, he said. “We were all very happy. Life went on.” After he learned about his height loss, he was able to switch over to a TAF drug. But the damage was already done, both physically and mentally. “When you find out that a pharmaceutical company knowingly withheld a drug that had fewer effects than one that they were currently peddling because of profits, that really undermines the whole trust of the medical community,” he said. Gilead’s alleged actions have particularly negative resonance and connotations in the HIV-positive community, due to the community’s history with experimental drugs dating back to when the epidemic first began. “Here we are again, 40 years later, being used as guinea pigs,” said Aguilar, who has joined the lawsuit as a plaintiff. “This time it was unconscionable, because they knew what the side effects were and what it was doing, as opposed to 40 years ago, when it was a brand new drug.” David Troup, 60, another San Francisco resident and plaintiff in the lawsuit, shares this sense of betrayal. Troup said he took Viread, a TDF medication, for several years. Like Aguilar, he was diagnosed with osteopenia. He also lost about six teeth due to the side effects of the drug and ended up spending around $40,000 to deal with the consequences of his tooth loss, he said. “I always had assumed that human beings at those companies would never prioritize profits over the health outcomes of the patients using the drugs,” said Troup. “Now I realized that was a naive assumption.” Although some compensation for the expenses he’s accrued would be “nice,” Troup said he didn’t join the lawsuit out of financial motivations. “My entire reason to want to be part of this lawsuit is that I think that a company that engages in this kind of behavior — where they’re putting profits ahead of the health of patients and doing it knowingly, they need to be punished,” he said. “They need to be sent a message that this is not okay.”Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. 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