Police Commissioner Julius Turman was unanimously reappointed by the Board of Supervisors last week to serve as vice president, a position he has held for four years.

Turman made his case for reappointment to the board's Rules Committee the day before his selection, saying that the commission is his "passion." He received a positive recommendation from the committee, which is made up of supervisors John Avalos, Malia Cohen and Katy Tang.

"I am particularly proud to be a Board of Supervisors appointee because it means that I think I have a greater responsibility to make sure the community's voice is heard," Turman said.

The Police Commission crafts policy for the department and oversees serious discipline of officers. Its work is particularly important as police-community relations are under intense scrutiny in The City and nationwide.

Turman was lauded by supervisors and the public for being a facilitator between police and the residents. He has worked to revise police general orders and policies on stun guns, and to increase the number of officers enrolled in language training.

"He has the ability to listen to both sides," Supervisor David Campos told the board, noting that Turman is a gay black man. "The level of scrutiny that he received in this process also gives him a mandate to push for more transparency and accountability, which is badly needed."

Now that he has been reappointed, Turman will serve until April 30, 2019. All commissioners work full-time jobs and are unpaid for their work on the commission.

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There's an old saying among Muni circles, told this time by John Haley, director of transit at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, that goes something like this:

"Every bus stop has a constituency."

As the SFMTA, which operates Muni, rolls out its Muni Forward plan to speed up bus and train service across San Francisco, 136 out of about 3,600 total bus stops will be removed or shifted. The agency sees the consolidation as vital to speeding up the consistently underperforming Muni, yet the decisions are rarely straightforward.

Following the recently halted proposed removal of one bus stop on Hayes Street last month, and the potential shifting of another along Bayshore Boulevard, the SFMTA faced hue and cry from businesses that feared the potential negative impacts.

Central Coffee Tea and Spices worried the removal of a bus stop would send its customers packing. Flowercraft Garden Center believes a bus stop that may be moved close to its driveway will create a parking problem for its green-thumbed customers, along with truck loading problems.

Whether the SFMTA takes a bus stop out, or moves one a block away, someone feels the effects.

"I'm a native San Franciscan who grew up in the Mission in the '60s," Lydia Patubo, the garden center's manager, told the SFMTA board of directors on Tuesday. The business opened in 1974, and Patubo said its customers are "grandmothers, their daughters and their daughters."

Shifting a 9-San Bruno bus stop to be in front of the Garden Center, she added, "would be suicide for our business."

The struggle emerges as Muni continues to try to increase on-time performance — a goal mandated by voters in 1999 to be at 85 percent. Muni has never met that goal, and last year fluctuated between 50 and 60 percent.

Muni is striving toward this goal now with a number of efforts, including moving and eliminating bus stops.

On the 9-San Bruno line, for instance, 19 stops are proposed for removal and three stops might be moved. Often these stops are moved from just behind a stop light to just past one, which saves buses from being trapped behind a red light while passengers board.

This is the scenario for the bus stop by Flowercraft.

If the SFMTA goes through with the changes, it will shave five minutes off a trip for each bus, agency documents show. The cumulative time savings are equal to adding an additional bus to the 9-San Bruno route.

Haley, the transit director, told The San Francisco Examiner he's grateful for the feedback from the community because residents, riders and business owners often times see an impact that the SFMTA might miss.

As for the business that did not want to lose a bus stop on the 21-Hayes line, Central Coffee on Hayes Street owner Ali Ghorabi knew the stakes would be high. Even a small amount of construction on Hayes Street years ago turned so many customers away from his cafe that he almost had to close.

"We lost all our bicycle business" initially, Ghorabi said. "It almost never came back. So the bus stop is crucial. It really allows me to do business."

Supervisor London Breed successfully intervened on Ghorabi's behalf, and asked the SFMTA to leave the bus stop there on behalf of her constituents.

Flowercraft's owners and management are applying political pressure as well. They started a Change.org petition to prevent the bus stop from being moved across the street. The petition has more than 500 signatures.

Weighing the needs of riders and businesses is not easy, Cheryl Brinkman, the SFMTA board's vice-chairwoman, told The Examiner.

"It's definitely a balancing act," she said.

And with the SFMTA eyeing at least 100 more bus stops to move or eliminate, it's a balancing act that will continue.

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It is Nov. 6, 1905. Police have surrounded a room at 748 McAllister Street. Hiding in the room is Milton F. Andrews, a notorious card shark and probable serial killer. But was he also "Erdnase," author of the greatest book on conjuring ever written? The search for Erdnase is one of the greatest and most controversial mysteries in the history of magic.

Born in Connecticut in 1872, Andrews picked up an early interest in magic and card manipulation and became a professional gambler at 18. By 1900, he was one of the best card sharks in the country.

In 1902 a man calling himself S.W. Erdnase self-published "The Expert at the Card Table." This 143-page book explained and demonstrated the "shuffles,""shifts," and sleight-of-hand techniques used by card sharks and magicians. The first edition sold poorly, and the author reduced the price to $1 per copy.

By 1903, Andrews was at the peak of his career, claiming an annual income of more than $20,000 (worth $600,000 today). But life as a hustler had taken its toll. He had developed serious digestive problems and a raging temper.

He took up with Bessie Boutin, a prostitute with a taste for luxury. They fought frequently over her drinking and his jealousy. In October 1904, Boutin disappeared in Denver, and Andrews left town with her jewelry. When her body was discovered, he was the main suspect in her death. Andrews was later linked to two other unsolved murders.

In November 1904, Andrews met Nulda Olivia, who was to be his lifetime companion. The couple fled to Australia, where they met William Ellis, a crooked jockey who became their gambling partner. When their victims grew suspicious, the trio took their winnings and booked passage back to America. Andrews and Olivia rented a cottage in Berkeley under the name of Brush, and Ellis stayed in a nearby hotel. Andrews' health had worsened and he was living entirely on bread, health food and malted milk.

His jealousy turned deadly when he thought Ellis had designs on Olivia. On October 11, Andrews invited Ellis for lunch at his cottage. During the meal, he crept up behind Ellis and brought a large hammer down on his skull — a blow that would have killed an ordinary man, but Ellis had an unusually thick skull and was able to escape. Milton and Olivia hastily gathered their valuables and fled to San Francisco.

The attack was front-page news, and when police learned Andrews' real identity, a massive manhunt was initiated. Because of Andrews' health, police kept a close watch on all the health food stores. Olivia rented a room at 748 McAllister Street posing as a single woman. A few weeks later, the owner of a local grocery store mentioned to police that a single woman was buying large amounts of bread and malted milk. Police put the room under surveillance and saw the shadow of a tall thin man behind the curtains in her room. Andrews, feeling that the net was closing around him, sent The San Francisco Examiner a rambling letter denying the murder charges against him and justifying his attack on Ellis.

That night, two officers pounded on her door. "You will enter at your peril," she cried. Moments later, two shots rang out from within the apartment. When police entered they found the bodies of Andrews and Olivia. They were buried side by side in unmarked graves.

By 1905, "The Expert at the Card Table" was back in print and rapidly making its way through magic circles. Over time, the book, often called "The Bible" became the most influential book ever published on the art of conjuring. The biblical comparison is appropriate; magicians argue about "The Open Shift" with the same ferocity that Christians disputed the divinity of Christ.

The "Expert at the Card Table" has been published in more than 40 editions, translated into five languages, and has inspired a string quartet, a musical and a play. But the author's identity remains unknown. Investigators believed S.W. Erdnase to be an anagram of the author's real name. Spelled backwards it is E. S. Andrews.

Martin Gardner, who wrote a puzzle column for Scientific American, interviewed the book's illustrator, Marshall Smith, in the 1940s and concluded that Erdnase was Milton F Andrews. Many magicians were horrified by the idea that the magic's "bible" was written by a murderer and sought alternative candidates.

In 2000, a first edition of the book sold for more than $10,000. This spurred additional research and speculation. Today, the leading possibilities include a mining engineer named W.E. Sanders, a railroad agent named Edwin Summers, Andrews and a con artist named E.S. Andrews, whose names are also anagrams of S.W. Erdnase. Chances are, the identity of S.W. Erdnase, like Jack the Ripper and The Zodiac Killer, will never be known.

Paul Drexler is a crime historian and director of Crooks Tour of San Francisco, www.crookstour.com.

Correction:This story originally mistated the name of the woman Andrews met in November 1904. She was Nulda Olivia.

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It could soon be lights, camera and action once again for the long-vacant, century-old Tower Theater in the Mission. But the script for its revival has an interesting twist.

Rodrigo Santos, a former City College of San Francisco trustee and longtime structural engineer, has entered into a five-year lease for the site at 2465 Mission St. with the intent of transforming the dilapidated building into a state-of-the-art film school for CCSF.

Santos was appointed by Mayor Ed Lee to serve on the CCSF Board of Trustees in 2012. He has also provided his structural engineering services pro-bono for a number of San Francisco's nonprofit development projects. Though he does not currently serve on the board, Santos plans to offer structural engineering work and much of the construction free of cost for CCSF.

Today, the interior walls of the boarded-up theater are splashed with graffiti and a pile of theater seats are rotting inside. Built in 1911, the theater has sat vacant for a decade after it ceased movie screenings in the late 1990s and was briefly used as a community church until the mid-2000s.

Santos, whose firm Santos & Urrutia is also located in the Mission, noted the theater in its current state is an eyesore. Additionally, he said, the school's current film department is sorely lacking in resources.

"This building has been sitting idle for awhile, attracting pigeons," Santos said. This project, he added, will "help the school, help that particular stretch of Mission Street, and bring out the love of films that I've always had.

"It's sort of a perfect storm, the combination of three things that I want to do."

Although Santos has yet to file project information with the Planning Department, he has already retained the services of local architect Leonardo Zylberberg, whose initial sketches for the film school include a ground-level screening room, a rooftop amphitheater and a six-story building likely for classrooms.

"The building, to be a school, needs to have a different organizational structure," Zylberberg said. "You can't just patch it up."

Located two blocks from CCSF's Mission campus, the building on the 60 foot wide and 122.5 foot deep lot also needs to be upgraded to meet seismic and accessibility requirements. Such retrofits alone for a building that size would cost around $1.2 million, Santos said.

City records do not indicate the seismic-safety condition of the building, because seismic requirements that went into effect after the building was constructed in 1911 would only be triggered by new work. Other than for the removal of the marquee in 2013, there have been no permit applications with the Department of Building Inspection associated with the property.

Santos declined to speculate on the entire cost of renovating the theater or disclose the cost of the lease. He said he plans to solicit donations as the project moves forward, but will finance the structural engineering and much of the construction out-of-pocket.

CCSF's cinema department, comprised of four full-time faculty and around 15 part-time faculty, currently operates out of one classroom and two computer labs at Cloud Hall on the main campus on Ocean Avenue. The department previously taught some 600 students, but that number has dwindled to about 450 in recent years.

Lidia Szajko, the department's chair, said film studies are desperately seeking new facilities, particularly after plans to build a new performing arts center were put on hold when the school's accreditation was threatened in 2013.

"There has been a dire need for adequate facilities for the cinema department," Szajko said.

Ideally, Szajko said, a film studies facility would include a sound stage, mixing studio, and various production and post-production labs. In their space currently, "the classroom is supposed to be our big studio. There is not a dedicated screening room," she added.

Santos said he recognizes that the lack of a new performing arts center is a sensitive and distressing subject for CCSF, and that he hopes plans for a new film school will ease that tension.

"The only thing I deal with as a structural engineer for most of the buildings happening around the Mission ... is pain and suffering and controversy," Santos said. "I hope that this building offers the opposite. This is something that is going to serve the community, it's going to serve City College, it will serve the Latino community."

Its location is also within two blocks of CCSF's Mission Campus, where the cinema department initially sought to move more than a year ago until the existing available spaces were found to be inadequate.

CCSF spokesman Jeff Hamilton said Santos has submitted a proposal to Virginia Parras, campus president, who as of earlier this month had yet to review it.

"We're in the very preliminary stages of looking at this," Hamilton said. "We don't know the details at the moment." He added, "We're very grateful for Rodrigo Santos for wanting to contribute to the success of City College and to the film students."

Alfonso Felder, president of the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation that aims to protect neighborhood theaters in The City, also supports the idea for Tower Theater.

"The hope is always that the historic use is honored and preserved in a meaningful way," Felder said of San Francisco's aging theaters. "A film school would be a pretty exciting way to honor its history."

The project will have to undergo planning, historical and environmental reviews. Neighborhood notification, along with a building department review that includes seismic upgrades and full handicap accessibility compliance, will also be required.

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The San Francisco Examiner's practice of providing free home delivery of its Thursday and Sunday Peninsula editions has aroused the ire of some San Carlos residents, who say they don't want the paper but have been unable to stop delivery.

To address these complaints, the San Carlos City Council is considering an ordinance that would create a city-administered opt-out list similar to the national do-not-mail registry run by the Direct Marketing Association. Under the ordinance, businesses that regularly distribute free, unsolicited publications could face fines if they failed to stop delivery to addresses on the opt-out list.

In a February 20 op-ed in the San Mateo Daily Journal, San Carlos Vice Mayor Cameron Johnson claimed the newspaper's failure to honor cancellation requests has been a problem for years, and he said he had personally been unable to stop delivery to his home.

Johnson told The San Francisco Examiner last week that the phone number listed in the paper for circulation matters connected him to a voicemail unrelated to distribution, and he said the paper's website form for stopping deliveries did not work when he tried it.

The vice mayor's experience might come as a surprise to Aaron Barbero, vice president of operations for the San Francisco Media Co., which publishes The Examiner. In his three months with the company, Barbero said he has received seven requests to begin home delivery in San Carlos and four to stop delivery. All requests were fulfilled, and he has not heard any complaints from those customers.

Johnson also claimed the unsolicited newspapers can wind up in the city's storm drain system, which is especially problematic because the copies are sometimes delivered in plastic bags, which could end up in the ocean.

Another concern, Johnson said, was that newspapers could pile up in front of residents' homes while they're on vacation, and thus attract the attention of potential burglars.

"You can call the Post Office and have your mail held," Johnson noted, "but if you can't stop your newspaper delivery, you've got people coming by twice a week to let the neighborhood know you're not home."

The Examiner's twice-weekly home delivery in San Carlos totals about 7,000 copies.

The proposed ordinance was considered by the City Council in February, but according to Councilman Mark Olbert, the legislation was sent back to city staff for some "fine tuning" to ensure that it wouldn't infringe upon the free speech rights of political campaigners, religious groups, nonprofits or other entities that might infrequently leave printed materials in residents' driveways.

The council voted on the ordinance May 11, but Councilman Matt Grocott was absent and the vote resulted in a tie, with Olbert and Johnson supporting the measure and Mayor Ron Collins and Councilman Bob Grassilli voting against it. Johnson said the council will vote on the ordinance again, either next month or in July.

Collins said he did not object on principle to the measure, but felt it was important for all council members to be present if the ordinance was going to be adopted. The mayor added that he also wanted to be sure protections for publishers of annual publications, such as the Yellow Pages, were strong enough that there would be no question they were exempt from the proposed law.

"This is an ordinance that I believe we need to get right," Collins said.

Barbero said his organization is committed to honoring the wishes of San Carlos residents, but he has some concerns about the proposed ordinance.

"We strive to serve our readers in the best way possible, whether that means promptly starting or stopping our free home-delivery service," Barbero said.

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If Netflix wants to produce a "House of Cards" based on San Francisco politics, the race to win Chinatown has plenty of plot points.

Mayor Ed Lee is popular in Chinatown and will likely win re-election without challenge in November. But his real opponent is running for supervisor in District 3, which includes Chinatown and North Beach.

Former Supervisor Aaron Peskin — nicknamed "Napoleon of North Beach"— was a polarizing force when he held office from 2001 to 2009. Now he wants his old job back. Supervisors can return to the board if they sit out at least one term between two consecutive terms.

Peskin is running on a populist "affordable city" platform, but don't be fooled. Peskin's policies helped create today's housing crisis. He made sure we didn't build enough housing to meet demand, which led to higher prices.

A master of Not-In-My-Backyard politics, Peskin said no to new housing, a new subway, even a new library because they didn't fit an idealized, frozen-in-amber version of San Francisco.

Peskin's return is part of a NIMBY agenda to undermine Lee, starve the tech industry of office space and housing, keep millennials out (along with the change they bring), and take San Francisco back to the 1970s.

It's a good plan for residents who already have secure housing and prefer the "Tales of the City" era. But limiting density in the high-demand eastern neighborhoods only pushes property values higher — making below-market renters more vulnerable for eviction.

If Peskin wins, the so-called "progressive" supervisors will have a majority. They support anti-progress measures like a moratorium on new market-rate housing in the Mission, which most economists say will make the housing crisis worse.

If Peskin loses, Lee and the moderate supervisors will prevail. They know that more housing construction at every price point takes pressure off existing units, which means fewer evictions — and helps the kids and grandkids of longtime San Franciscans afford to stay here.

So the stakes are high.

Peskin is running against Julie Christensen, who was appointed District 3 supervisor by Lee in January.

While District 3 stretches from Union Square to Fisherman's Wharf, Chinatown determines its politics, said David Lee, director of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee.

He said District 3 turnout is typically 30,000 votes, which means Chinatown's bloc of 7,000 votes can swing an election.

Ed Lee's popularity in Chinatown explains why Peskin's Chinese-language fliers claim how much he will "work with Mayor Lee."

Yet Peskin regularly tells non-Chinese media what he really thinks about the mayor's leadership: "the hegemony of nothingness" and "a cesspool of pay-to-play politics."

When Peskin opposed the mayor's move to relax chain store restrictions, he told the San Francisco Chronicle that "we will stick it up their asses."

The tone is familiar to anyone who had to endure Peskin's widely reported temper. The Chronicle recently quoted Ed Lee warning a return to "the days of drunken calls at midnight."

Then there are Peskin's incen- diary quotes in the Epoch Times denouncing the "political influence" of the "People's Republic of China" in San Francisco.

If the race is decided on the issues Chinatown cares about, Christensen has the edge. She supported the central subway, a parks bond to renovate playgrounds and Ed Lee's transportation bond to improve pedestrian safety. Peskin opposed all of it.

Still, Chinatown political expert David Lee predicts a close race.

"Chinatown voters don't pay attention to negative quotes on campaign mailers. They remember who they saw on the sidewalk kissing babies," said David Lee, who isn't endorsing anyone in District 3.

"The best organized candidate who can meet the most people will win. Christensen is committed, down-to-Earth and approachable. Even Peskin can be warm and friendly, and his Chinese isn't bad."

As Chinatown goes, so goes San Francisco. Voters should choose wisely.

Joel Engardio lives west of Twin Peaks. Follow his blog at www.engardio.com. Email him at info@engardio.com

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Officers responded at 11:36 p.m. to a report of a collision between a pedestrian and a party bus at 10th and Mission streets, San Francisco police Officer Grace Gatpandan said.

The pedestrian was transported to San Francisco General Hospital with head injuries that are not considered life threatening, Gatpandan said.

Gatpandan said officers are still investigating the cause of the collision and who is at fault.

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If you're a high-profile donor to San Francisco Pride, you might be able to discriminate against the LGBT community and get away with it.

The Facebook real-name debate is raging again. Amid this push for digital civil rights, the San Francisco Pride board considered dropping Facebook's sponsorship of its parade. But it appears a phone call changed the board's mind.

Banning the social media giant would have been a bold move that might have put pressure on Facebook to change its stance on its controversial "authentic name" policy.

However, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Gary Virginia, the board's president, and perhaps other board members to discuss the issue, according to documents obtained by The San Francisco Examiner.

Insiders said this call may have been key in swaying the vote in favor of Facebook.

Virginia did not return calls for comment.

The board backed Facebook in a 5-4 vote to allow the social media giant to march in the Pride Parade next month.

Last year, Facebook came under fire from local drag queens when its authentic-name policy led to local performer Sister Roma and others being barred from the social network. The policy allows users to report people they believe are using fake names.

Sister Roma and others said LGBT users were disproportionately targeted by bigots. Trans people, drag queens, drag kings and others in the LGBT community often go by something that is not their legal name, but nonetheless honestly reflects their identity.

As the issue heated up, others who rely on pseudonyms on Facebook spoke out. They included domestic violence survivors, people fleeing stalkers, teachers who want private lives away from their students, those transitioning to a different gender and many more.

"We firmly believe in and are committed to our authentic name policy," Facebook wrote in a statement last week, adding that "we've made significant improvements over the last nine months in the way the policy is enforced."

But Sister Roma, a leader in the #MyNameIs campaign, was in those negotiations with Facebook. She said she feels fooled, as the social media giant barely budged on its policy.

Supporters of #MyNameIs plan to protest at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park on June 1. The protest is one thing, but a black eye from San Francisco's Pride board could have put serious pressure on the social media giant.

So what happened?

The Examiner obtained draft minutes of the contentious meeting.

"Since Gary [Virginia] mentioned it at the Tuesday meeting, advocates know that Mark Zuckerberg has been on the phone with us," say the minutes recapping testimony from board member Jesse Oliver. "What does it say if all it takes is a 15-minute phone call from Zuckerberg for Pride to sell out our own community?"

Board member Larry Crickenberger, who voted in favor of Facebook, said booting Facebook was the "nuclear option" and "too extreme," meeting minutes show.

Many worried a vote to ban Facebook would hurt future donations.

Before the board voted to back Facebook, member Jose Cital pleaded for his colleagues to put people's rights ahead of corporate interests:

"Why am I here? I am supposed to represent youth and I am a person of color, but my view is never listened to on this board. If we aren't here to take a stand, why are we even doing this?

"I don't care about raising money for a party. I care about making a difference."

Take Action: Join the #MyNameIs supporters as they take a caravan of buses to protest at Facebook HQ on June 1, and sign their Change.org petition at http://bit.ly/FBMyNameIs.

SF Weekly reporter Julia Carrie Wong uploaded the text of the Pride board's draft minutes online, which you can read below. Read her report here.

SF Pride Minutes 5.17.15

On Guard prints the news and raises hell each Tuesday. Email him at joe@sfexaminer.com.

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