View the San Francisco for Sunday, December 22, 2024
Stephen Sherrill: “I think a lot has been made about my relationship with Mayor Bloomberg. I think a lot of it is almost more coincidence than anything else.” San Francisco’s newest supervisor says he has a lot of big ideas and a limited time to prove he can accomplish them.
Outgoing Mayor London Breed on Wednesday appointed Stephen Sherrill to fill the District 2 seat vacated by Supervisor Catherine Stefani’s term after Sherrill, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Innovation, will represent San Francisco’s northernmost neighborhoods, including wealthy areas such as Cow Hollow, Pacific Heights and the Marina. He could hold office at least until June 2026, when he would have to run for reelection to serve the remainder of Stefani’s term. The winner of that race would run for a full term that November. Sherrill is a relative unknown in The City, lacking the name recognition or history in San Francisco of some of the other candidates who were reportedly in the running.switched his birthplace from New York to California when he registered as a Democrat for the first time last year. He admitted to The Examiner that it was his own error — he was born and raised in New York City — and cited it as proof that government forms need to be clearer.But the bigger controversy is that Sherrill formerly worked as an advisor for billionaire Michael Bloomberg — a former mayor of New York, a contributor to Breed and the recipient of her 2020 Democratic presidential primary endorsement. Bloomberg gave around $1.5 million to a political-action committee supporting, according to campaign finance data. The Mayor’s Office of Innovation is funded by a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, a nonprofit tied to Bloomberg. But in a phone call with The Examiner on Thursday, Sherrill dismissed those concerns and said he is determined to spend the next 18 months proving that he is fit for the job.Stephen Sherrill, Mayor London Breed’s appointee as District 2 supervisor, dismissed ethical concerns about his appointment in an interview with The Examiner. “At the end of the day, the most important thing that I want to prove to my constituents is that they’re gonna see me on the streets,” he said. I think the most common question I’ve gotten or read since you were named is ‘who is Stephen Sherrill?’ So, who is Stephen Sherrill? Theater was my No. 1 extracurricular activity in college at Yale. I thought I was gonna be a professional actor for a while. Turned out I probably wasn’t quite good enough at that, and then I also realized some lifestyle factors — I wanted to have a family and be a little more stable. Politics and government was something that I always thought was interesting. My dad’s a Republican. My mom’s a Democrat. I got an internship in the White House in college with the Bush administration. I was giving people tours of the back offices and opening mail. It was a pretty seminal moment for me where I loved kind of being in the mix on the government side. Then, I was lucky enough to work on Michael Bloomberg’s campaign right out of college, and I started to really kind of understand what I embrace and what I love. A lot has been made about the fact that I was originally registered as Republican, and then no party preference. I think everybody has an evolution throughout their lives, and I’m very proud that I’m able to kind of figure out where I stand on things. What’s interesting to me is I don’t think my views have actually changed much. It’s more that I’ve been able to categorize them and say, “OK, this is where I belong.”Going from Republican to no party preference was easy. I just was like, “Look, this is bulls---. I believe in a woman’s right to choose. I believe in gay marriage, and I believe in science, and I’m not going to be part of a party that doesn’t agree with those things. I just think these are very basic, straightforward things.” When I was watching Barack Obama run for president, I was acting in a play called “Blues for Mister Charlie.” It’s a play about a generic Jim Crow South in the 1950s, which is an overly simplistic way to put it. My role as a white man was the racist guy, which not a lot of people wanted to audition for. I thought it was a really important role to be able to play. Being in a play about race relations while the first Black person ever became president of the United States was really meaningful. Going to no party preference, I was working for Michael Bloomberg, who’s an independent and he was all about delivering services. How do we make things better for residents? And the Fiorella LaGuardia quote about “There’s no Republican or Democrat way to pick up the trash” — that’s what I thought was important.The real trigger point was elections were coming up, and I also looked back at my voting history, and I hadn’t voted for a non-Democrat in 18 years. I was kind of like, “Oh, I’m not actually making any compromises here. This is who I am. What are you doing? Don’t be an idiot. Don’t be quiet.’”In this Thursday, Sept. 13, 2018 file photo, Michael Bloomberg speaks during the plenary session of the Global Action Climate Summit, in San Francisco. Why do you consider it such a seminal moment in your life when you worked for Michael Bloomberg’s 2009 mayoral campaign? I think it’s less about him and more about getting my first job out of college. I was lucky — I was a 22-year-old kid and I got assigned to the South Brooklyn outreach team as an intern. I liked the issues we were pushing for. That was an incredible first experience. I think a lot has been made about my relationship with Mayor Bloomberg. I think a lot of it is almost more coincidence than anything else. When I was interested in working for The City of San Francisco a few years ago, I was just looking at job postings, and the Mayor’s Office of Innovation came up. I was literally just on The City website. I applied. I actually hadn’t known before I saw the posting on the website that Bloomberg Philanthropies had provided the grant . I was aware of the program, obviously. The people who manage the grant are old colleagues of mine, and so is this kind of a fortuitous opportunity to be able to work with, but not quite alongside, them. When it comes to Mike Bloomberg himself, I think no one’s done more to invest in cities around the world and to help leaders grow and increase capacity. And I’ve been a huge beneficiary of a lot of those programs. I mean, I think the support they provided for our innovation team here in the mayor’s office was incredible. I think my peers would say the same thing.I met him when I was on his campaign. I got to know him because my desk was about 10 feet away from his desk as an assistant to the deputy mayor. Basically, he sat in a cubicle in the middle, and his deputies surrounded him, and their assistants surrounded them. He’s an incredibly generous and thoughtful person. I think a lot of people would say they have a personal relationship with him because of that. But I don’t think I’m unique in that way, either.Mayor London Breed speaking to her supporters at an Election Night party at Victory Hall and Parlor at 360 Ritch Street in San Francisco on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024. What is your response to people who have ethical concerns about London Breed appointing somebody who used to work for and has a personal relationship with Michael Bloomberg, knowing that she is going to be leaving office and has received $1.5 million in campaign funds from his office? I think Mayor Breed has made it clear time and time again with the sacrifices that she’s made to be a public servant that that’s not the kind of decision that she would make. At the end of the day, the most important thing that I want to prove to my constituents is that they’re gonna see me on the streets. It’s still several months before the election has to take place, and the most important thing is delivering for residents. They’re going to see how much I care. I understand people being upset about this or that, but I love the neighborhoods that I’ve lived in here in The City. My first apartment was at Broadway and Laguna, then I lived at Fillmore and Green, and I’ve been in Presidio Heights for seven years now. I just think these are the greatest neighborhoods on Earth. District 2 gets pigeonholed as an area of wealthy residents who are very resistant to change and they want to keep the fabric of their communities intact. As someone who’s a member of Northern Neighbors , how much of an appetite do you think there is for upzoning in your district? I don’t think it’s fair to pigeonhole the Marina, Cow Hollow or Pacific Heights residents that way. I think District 2 residents are incredibly generous and outward thinking and really care about The City as a whole. I think what they see is a beautiful, incredible neighborhood, and there’s fear. We could do a much better job of engaging with residents, helping them understand what the options are and what the potential outcomes might be. I think when you put forward an upzoning map that has the tallest buildings colored literally in red, that’s going to spook people. I think we need to have a deep and honest conversation about what some of the challenges are and what some of the opportunities are when it comes to upzoning.— we don’t really have a choice, but we have an opportunity to take control of the process and do it thoughtfully. District 2 is a great opportunity to be a part of the thoughtful evolution of The City.Public safety, safe streets, clean streets, is my number one priority. That is above all. It’s table stakes. The other thing that I am so excited to dive into is making sure our small businesses can thrive here. We’ve got to be a city that’s easy to do business with, and that applies to if you want to build a deck at your house or apartment, or want to have a cactus outside your restaurant. And then housing as well, and I’m also going to want to focus on homelessness, which is something that I’ve worked very closely on. It’s a critical issue, making sure our streets are clean of tents and people getting the care they need is incredibly important. But I think we haven’t focused on prevention quite enough. We getevery year, but the inflow is just too big, so we need to throw up a sign that this is not a place to come to be homeless and to do drugs. That’s not what San Francisco is for.Rock-concert photographer Larry Schorr, 73 — seen at his home in San Francisco — shows off photos he took of Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra at the Mabuhay Gardens in 1978. Amateur concert photographer Larry Schorr says he can’t always keep track of the countless photos — or “pitchers” as he likes to call them — in his collection squirreled away in boxes, closets or books in his Nob Hill apartment. But if he had to choose, he says, his all-time favorite would be a close-up shot of Jello Biafra with the Dead Kennedys at the Biafra’s eyes are wide, his pupils dark with intensity and the light casting his face in a glow as he screams into a microphone, frozen midsong. This expression, this pause in the heady energy of a rock ’n’ roll performance, frozen in time, is a trademark of Schorr’s style, what he likes to call “stage portraiture.” “My concert photography was a lot different than a lot of other people’s concert photography,” Schorr, 73, told The Examiner. “I go towards stillness more than I do action. I look for parts when everything is still on the stage.”Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols on their final concert at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco on Jan. 14, 1978 by rock concert photographer, Larry Schorr. Schorr’s work captured some of the most iconic 20th-century rock ’n’ roll performers, some when they were first starting out and others at their peak. He says he photographed performers such as Blondie, Pink Floyd and individual members of The Beatles , all at classic venues in The City and throughout the Bay Area. But unlike other concert photographers of the era, Schorr’s work has remained relatively unknown and almost entirely unpublished, save for a solo show at a local bar nearly 15 years ago and a couple of book inclusions in the last 20 years. Schorr has remained hidden from the spotlight, and with it, the photos of the legends he amassed during one of The City’s biggest eras for live music — until now. Retired from his day job as a computer programmer, Schorr said that he has in the last month gained new motivation to put himself out there for the first time as some of his subjects approach milestone anniversaries of their debut albums. He said he has seen an opportunity to reach out to them with his work. On a recent dreary December morning, Schorr told The Examiner that he had just gotten off the phone with the son of a well-known British artist he asked to remain unnamed who was excited “to see all of them” and was “really interested in buying a lot of pictures right now.” Schorr said he could have been a professional photographer if he’d wanted to, learning the trade from an uncle as a teenager and photographing his high-school yearbook. He said he graduated with a photography degree in 1973 from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.“That’s not my personality, really,” he said. “I’m a back-office kind of guy, not an out-front salesperson.” Instead, he said, he took off for San Francisco as soon as he graduated and landed a job working in a record store. From there, Schorr said, he tried to attend as many live shows as possible and feed his true passion. David Byrne at the Zellerbach Auditorium in Berkeley on August, 8, 1979 by concert photographer, Larry Schorr. One of the first big shows Schorr said he remembered attending after arriving in The City was in November 1973 at the Cow Palace, where The Who was just starting its tour for the album “Quadrophenia” with Lynyrd Skynyrd as the opening act. Schorr said he recalls that night especially well because that was the iconic moment when Keith Moon, The Who’s drummer, passed out on stage and a member of the audience, “ took a bunch of stuff backstage, and they kind of hit him while he was playing, and he went down, and they had to drag him out backstage,” Schorr said. “ came up and he played drums on about four blues numbers with the band.” Schorr said he liked the photos he got from that night, but Cow Palace was far from his favorite venue. Armed with a single film camera at the time — a 1968 Nikon F — he said he preferred venues where he could get as close as possible to his subjects without the benefits of a press pass or other special treatment a photo pass might get him. “Most of my pictures don’t have more than one person in the picture,” he said. “Most of them, I took it with my 200 mm lens, and I was usually right up near the front.” On the rare occasion he was able to get backstage, he said, he took advantage of the situation, as he did in 1981 at the Oakland Coliseum with “We got to hang out with their drummer, Albert Bouchard, our favorite one,” he said. “ invited us onto the tour bus, and we were just chatting about all sorts of stuff and doing lines of coke.” But that was the beginning of the end, he said, as in the 1980s, venues started becoming stricter about requiring photo passes, and he didn’t want to deal with the hassle. He said he hung up his camera, and let it gather dust for the next several decades in his closet. It wasn’t until 2010 that he approached Michael “Spike” Krouse, the owner of Madrone Art Bar at Fell and Divisadero about putting on a show of his work. “I immediately, when looking through the photographs, saw a treasure trove of images,” Krouse told The Examiner about that first meeting. Hearing Schorr’s story is what sold it, he said.Debbie Harry of Blondie at the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco on March 3, 1977 by rock concert photographer, Larry Schorr. “I’m kind of a history buff when it comes to that kind of stuff, ‘So I was like, ‘Oh, man, this is great,’” he said. “I mean, he had Debbie Harry at the last Sex Pistols show, he had Elvis Costello — it was all in San Francisco at clubs like the Trocadero and Mabuhay Gardens, just so many old places that no longer exist.” Krouse said the show itself was a smashing success, and he felt that under different circumstances, Schorr could have been a well-known rock-and-roll photographer due to the technical skill behind his work alone. “They should be recognized for the quality that they are ... a lot of people go through different doors in life and end up going down different paths,” Krouse said. “But here’s a guy who had one path and went down another path for different circumstances.” “It’s not often that you find somebody who puts things away and then comes back to them 30 years later,” he said. While Schorr said his heart is in film photography, he dabbles with digital cameras, although he laments that they are not the same. He said doesn’t go to too many concerts anymore, due to his age and other circumstances, but Schorr always makes time to see his favorite artist — New York-basedPhoto of and autographed by Kristeen Young at the DNA Lounge by rock concert photographer, Larry Schorr. “He’s very good at getting the right moment, shooting the right moment — he’s very much an action sort of photographer,” Young said. “From what I can tell, he doesn’t do a lot of post-work on it. it’s just very authentic, and I think that’s what people respond to.” Young said she first met Schorr around five years ago after doing a show at DNA Lounge in San Francisco through Jello Biafra, a mutual friend, and the two quickly connected over music and photography. Young is more contemporary than the other subjects Schorr used to photograph, but he said she hearkens back to the artists of the era, that she’s truly “a musician’s musician.”Young said that the appreciation is mutual, and he fits in with her circle. “A lot of my following are other artists and eclectic people,” she said. “It makes me really happy that he finds something in my music that he likes. While Schorr has spent most of his adult life known more by his day job as a computer programmer rather than his artistic pursuits, he said he’s hopeful that could soon change.“While I was shooting the pictures, there would be no stress on me; there would be no tension on me,” he said, keeping his credo going even now as he finally puts his work out there. “It’s easy-peasy, at my own pace.”In a welcome sign for San Francisco’s economy, multiple real-estate analysts said preliminary data showed a fourth-quarter decline in The City’s office-vacancy rate, and they expected an increase in demand for space in the new year.Leasing activity for the year was on track to hit the highest level since 2019, said Colin Yasukochi, executive director of CBRE’s Tech Insights Center, in a prepared statement.will get additional momentum next year, though recovery will likely be “uneven and segmented” over the next several quarters, with the vacancy rate changing little overall or rising and falling.Given the high number of vacancies, The City will need an “extended period of high growth” to bring it to a more supply-demand balanced range of 10%-15%, though the highest quality buildings will fare better than the rest of the market, he said.has been weighed down by the rise of remote work following the COVID-19 pandemic and layoffs in the tech industry, though The City’s burgeoning artificial-intelligence sector has been a bright spot. JLL researchers similarly said preliminary numbers suggested the fourth quarter would end on a positive note, but that vacancies might rise again in the first part of the coming year before continuing to decline. They also predicted that the office market will take years to “stabilize.” The real-estate market still must absorb space to be added by large companies exiting leases, according Alexander Quinn, senior director of Northern California research at JLL, who predicted a more sustained turnaround could emerge later in the coming year, possibly in the second quarter. “We’re definitely more optimistic than we were a year ago,” Quinn said. “There’s more of a rebound story occurring in San Francisco” CBRE said San Francisco office-leasing activity increased to 7.6 million square feet in 2024, up 20% from the prior year to the highest level since 2019. when 12.7 million square feet was leased. Tenant demand in the fourth quarter remained relatively high, although it had declined some after the completion of several large leases, and the expectation was that tenant demand would again increase in 2025, Yasukochi said.at 888 Brannan St., followed by 66,500-square-foot renewal and expansion by Grammarly, an AI-based writing-assistance service, at 475 Sansome St., CBRE said. Tech accounted for 47% of the leasing activity, with AI taking 21% of that amount, according to Yasukochi. In 2019, tech industry leasing had reached 60%, he said. For the first time in nearly five years, net absorption was positive — meaning more space was leased than vacated — a fact attributable to AI companies growing their office footprints, Yasukochi said. OpenAI, the richly funded generative-AI company, notably signed a lease for 315,000 square feet at 550 Terry A Francois Blvd. Quinn said about 71 artificial-intelligence companies were expected to lease a total of 1.1 million square feet by the end of the year, most of them new market entrants taking smaller spaces with the potential to grow bigger. Last year, about 35 AI companies leased 1.2 million square feet, he said.in August, vacating its Mid-Market headquarters and putting 468,000-square-foot more space on the sublease market, bringing its total offering for sublease to 782,084 square feet in two buildings near the intersection of 10th and Market streets, Quinn said. The stability suggested “that most tenants who could have put space on the market have already done so,” he said. Also on the encouraging side, JLL researcher Chris Pham said data indicate that remote work is dissipating. Pham cited a 16% decrease in the number of remote-job postings in San Francisco, as well as recent announcements by companies requiring workers to be in offices more frequently. Salesforce, The City’s largest private employer, started requiring employees to be in offices more often starting in October, according to a recent report from the San Francisco Controller’s Office. Amazon also announced in September that in January, it will require workers to be in-person five days per week. “The question is whether or not people are meaningfully going to return to the office or not,” Quinn said. “That is the existential question that we’re all asking.” Yasukochi also said that should return-to-office and new hirings accelerate, many firms might find that they have over-reduced their office space in recent years to account for remote work and workforce reductions, with the result possibly being increased leasing activity and reduced vacancies within the next few years.Click and hold your mouse button on the page to select the area you wish to save or print. You can click and drag the clipping box to move it or click and drag in the bottom right corner to resize it. When you're happy with your selection, click the checkmark icon next to the clipping area to continue.This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. 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