Googling Jim Meko

SOMA Leadership Council, as maintained and presumably updated by Jim Meko, but doesn't give much indication for the current anti-bar push.

Jim Meko is ALLEGEDLY trying to shut down two hugely popular gay bars in San Francisco.

Meko is (was?) a contributor at Fog City Journal, with a grand total of three columns there from last year. Here's a quote from his 11/27/06 piece:

A word to my "yuppie loftdweller" friends ... when I was the newcomer to the neighborhood, they had a different name for us: it was "faggot." It wasn't said with a smile and it was often bellowed from a passing car. You froze in your tracks if the car slowed down. The modicum of safety you now enjoy in this neighborhood was painstakingly -- and often painfully -- achieved by building a sense of community and finding common ground with those who came before.

And yet now he wants to rip a vital organ from the community body. Two, in fact. It doesn't make sense. The SF Bay Times story notes that Meko seems to have a history of doing this sort of thing in other neighborhoods, but it doesn't seem to mention that he hasn't had a lot of success.

More blog stuff here. Everything goes quiet after the elections. He doesn't (at least from his writings) seem to be a fan of the Gavin Newsom anti-fun movement, so what's his motivation here? A modern day Carry Nation? A personal/historical grudge against one or both bars? The irresistible charms of a developer? I can't figure out what Jim Meko is up to. The leather community is the core of LGBT organizing and activism, more politically connected than people realize. Obviously more than Meko realizes. And he's going to take them on by attacking these two bars? Uh, okay.

UPDATE: At the Metblogs SF post, Meko (or someone claiming to be him) left the following comment:

I have been talking with Jeremy Paul, who represents the Hole, for quite a while and about two weeks ago we arrived at a compromise that I was hoping the neighbors would accept. But then the folks from the Hole started spreading all this crap against me. I didn't write the DR, didn't organize the neighbors, haven't talked to the Planning Department and am certainly not out to close the Hole (or the Eagle). I'm not the enemy of fun that they make me out to be. I do hold a seat on the Entertainment Commission, one that has been set aside to represent the interests of the neighbors. Now that this article has come out, with all these lies, I'm not so sure how interested in compromise these particular neighbors will be.

John's recollections about meeting me are ludicrous, I don't know this guy at the Bay Times and he didn't even bother to contact me. If he had, this is what I would have told him:

I think both the Hole and the Eagle are great bars and I hope they go on forever. One of the things that makes them so much fun is the outlaw factor. Joe Banks and John Gardiner operate right at the edge of what's legal and acceptable but they've been established in this community for so long that I'd fight to defend their right to continue that tradition. My complaint is that they didn't give any thought to this new neighborhood they decided to move into. Huge difference. Nearly a hundred neighbors in close proximity. 98 units of affordable housing at Folsom/Dore. 140 units of SRO supportive housing with drug rehab programs going in directly across the street. Joe and John got bad advice about that location. I wrote a letter to their real estate agent last July outlining the challenges they would face but they decided to bully their way through all of this. It's turned into a nasty and divisive fight and I deeply regret it.

Who to believe? I don't know. But I don't think either bar is going away.