When an actor wins a coveted Oscar for a film which has it’s basis set in a specific location, everybody at said location joins in on the celebrations. San Francisco Chronicle reports that they’re going wild in the Castro, over the two Oscars that ‘Milk’ brought home for best original screenplay (Dustin Lance Black ) and best actor (Sean Penn).

The same Oscar hysteria spread across Mumbai when Slumdog Millionaire started gobbling up the Oscars (8 in all), and in Barcelona when Penelope Cruz took home the first Oscar of the night as best supporting actress in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Already, there are tour operators offering San Francisco vacations with ‘Milk’ themed tours in the Castro, and companies in India offering slum tours in Mumbai. The Guardian UK is offering a free trip to Barcelona as part of the launch of Vicky Cristina Barcelona.

Coming back to the Bay Area, turns out that two San Francisco hotels (Hyatt at Fisherman’s Wharf at 555 North Point St. and Le Meridien at 333 Battery St. ) are in a soup after a union issued a call for a boycott of these hotels.

Local 2 of Unite Here is asking consumers to boycott the hotels after management refused to allow the union to try to organize the workers via a “card check,” by which union representation would be authorized if a majority approve it.

And if that’s not enough to convince you of the immense clout and dominance that progressives enjoy in San Francisco, then the news that a rookie Assemblyman from San Francisco has introduced a bill to legalize marijuana and tax it.

Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, in his third month as a state lawmaker, introduced the bill which, if passed, would regulate marijuana like alcohol, with people over 21 years old allowed to grow, buy, sell and possess cannabis. So now you can add pot farms to the list of unique attractions in San Francisco.

The state stands to gain $1.3 billion a year from tax revenues and a $50-an-ounce levy on retail sales if marijuana were legal. California is just recovering from a major budget fight over how to deal with a $42 billion deficit.

Photo by bobster1985 via flickr (creative commons).

Posted on February 24th, 2009 by Thomas
Filed under: San Francisco