Features

Brown gives S.F. sales pitch 

SAN FRANCISCO – Mayor Willie Brown treated several hundred convention planners to a distinctively San Francisco sales pitch Thursday, portraying the city as an anything-goes place. 

“For many of you,” the mayor told the crowd at a posh hotel ballroom three blocks from the White House, “as I look around and observe you, you’ve got no shot at heaven. None.” 

“But San Francisco is close,” he said. “You can lie and cheat and steal, ... and we don’t ask you about those things.” 

Convention planners bring millions of visitors to the city each year and are accustomed to speeches of big-city mayors extolling the virtues of hotel space and convention facilities. 

Brown also mentioned the city’s various alternative lifestyles. 

“Those of you who wear white shirts and red ties, blue suits and regular shoes, and all those kind of things for the public to see, but there is a different side of you. Well, San Francisco caters to you,” Brown said. 

Woman punished for ham battery 

PLEASANTON – A Livermore woman involved in a grocery store brawl over a free ham has been sentenced to time served, a fine and 40 hours of community service. 

Rachel Cheroti, 33, pleaded no contest to a charge of battery on a police officer. Charges related to two store employees were dismissed. 

She was sentenced Wednesday to the three days she spent in jail after the Sunday night melee. She also must pay fines totaling $350, perform community service, apologize to the people involved and attend three Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week. 

Cheroti showed up at a Ralph’s market in Livermore, spent $48 and demanded a free ham, which the store was giving away for purchases totaling $50 or more. 

The store agreed to give her the ham. But she got rowdy when the manager refused to give her more hams for money she says she spent for earlier purchases. 

She rammed the store manager with a grocery cart and wrestled with other employees. An officer sent to quell the brawl was slightly injured. 

Commission to consider store earthquake safety 

SAN FRANCISCO – After viewing a dramatic video of toppling water heaters, a state safety commission heard proposals Thursday to protect shoppers and workers from falling merchandise during earthquakes. 

During the hearing professor Andre Filiatrault, from the University of California, San Diego, ran several videos showing what happened when Home Depot steel storage shelves filled with paint cans, tiles roofing, and other various merchandise were tested on an earthquake-shaking table. 

The shaking table simulated the force on the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, and a number of boxes could be seen tumbling from the shelves, including several that contained heavy water heaters. 

When the boxes were shrink-wrapped in plastic, however, the boxes did not fall, he said. And the racks did not collapse.