Monday, March 24, 2008

Norouz Art Party at Mirkarimi's Office



On the third Friday evening of every month, San Francisco Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi's office hosts an art show with free wine and occasional food offerings along with lots of political gossiping.



This month's edition was unusually lively as the half-Russian, half-Iranian supervisor was hosting an Iranian New Year Party (Norouz) which had become entangled in a fracas with Mayor Newsom and one of his supporters, a wealthy Iranian woman named Turquoise Bridges. She has been holding an expensive fundraiser each year at City Hall for Norouz that this year included a special $500 admission for a meet-and-greet with the Mayor.



The party was originally scheduled for the same date as the Mirkarimi art party, but Newsom canceled for a Southern California event, so the expensive party was rescheduled to the next week. However, Ms. Bridges decided to lash out at Mirkarimi and accused him of trying to ruin her expensive Norouz event because he had not been invited to speak, and that was why he'd scheduled his free event on the same evening.



This is nonsense, of course, but the truth has never been much of an impediment for Newsom and his supporters. For a thorough and entertaining account of the entire affair, click here for an article with photos and lots of wild commentary at Fog City Journal.



The same site has an entertaining account of the art opening (click here) and the Iranian feast with music which was laid out after I had already left.



My concerns over Iran are not about who is the queen of the San Francisco expatriate community, but about the safety of those who are living in that ancient culture.



Certain lunatics in Washington, D.C. and Israel are currently hellbent on bombing Iran into kingdom come, and according to Allan Uthman they are demonstrably crazy and evil enough to go ahead and do so, no matter how disastrous and publicly unpopular the attack would be (click here for the whole article). Pray we get through the next year without it happening.

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