Richmond Review

Reward now $25,000 in park homicide
The SF Police Department has upped a reward from $10,000 to $25,000 for information leading to the arrest of a suspect who shot and killed 20-year-old Brandon Lee Evans in Golden Gate Park the evening of Nov. 29, 2008.

Evans was killed after attending a gathering near the horseshoe pits at the northeast corner of the park. Someone shot him in the dark as he was going to his parked car near the Conservatory of Flowers.

Anyone with information is urged to call the police department's homicide detail at (415) 553-1145 or via the anonymous tip line at (415) 575-4444. For more information about the case, go to the Web site at www.justiceforbrandon.com.

Volunteers attack Park Presidio
The Spirit of Volunteerism is flourishing on Park Presidio Boulevard through gardening workdays organized by the Park Presidio Neighbors Association.

On Martin Luther King Day, a call went out and 74 adults and eight youth scoured all 14 blocks of the boulevard. They filled 90 recyclable trash bags, six brown bags and 10 to 20 buckets of recyclable materials. After that, dozens of young volunteers from Beth Shalom worked diligently to plant and clean the area.

All of the activities were coordinated with the SF Recreation and Park Department. Workdays on the boulevard are organized every month by Park Presidio Neighbors. The next gardening workday is Saturday, April 25, when volunteers will work on the unit to 300 blocks of 14th Avenue. Volunteers will meet at Geary Boulevard at 9 a.m.

"It a great sign of the spirit in our neighborhood when the citizens get out and make our neighborhood more beautiful," said Suzanne Tucker, a member of the Park Presidio Neighbors Association.

For more information, e-mail info@ppn-sf.org or go to the Web site at www.ppn-sf.org.

Home Re-assessment Applications Available
The office of San Francisco Tax Assessor Phil Ting has begun accepting Market Reduction Applications from San Francisco Homeowners for the 2009-10 tax year. For the first time, applications will be available for residential property owners in Chinese and Spanish. The applications can be picked up at the Assessor's office at City Hall, Room 190. According to Ting, there will be many more applications submitted this year as compared to previous years.

Festival Brings Emerging Writers to USF
The University of San Francisco will host five up-and-coming authors as they read from their work and share their views on writing during the fourth annual Emerging Writers Festival, which will be held April 15 and 16. The readings will be presented in the Maraschi Room of Fromm Hall at the University of San Francisco at 7:30 p.m. The event is free and open to the public.

Presented by the English Department and the Master of Fine Arts in writing program, and facilitated by students, the festival will bring together published writers who are well on their way to being renowned with emerging writers at a university level. The authors being hosted are Vyvyane Loh, Camille T. Dungy, Anthony Varallo, Drue Heinz, Caille Millner and John Casteen.

Each author is a success in their respective fields. Loh was short-listed for the 2006 IMPAC International Literary Prize in Dublin, and her work has appeared on the New York Public Library's top 25 books for 2004. Poet Dungy was a finalist for the PEN Center USA 2007 Literary Award. Varallo received the 2008 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Millner was part of the Journalism Review's Ten Young Writers on the Rise in 2002 and is on the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle. Casteen's work has appeared in the Washington Post and he teaches at Sweet Briar College in Virginia.

Owl Mating Season Begins at the Presidio
Birds do it. Bees do it. Even great horned owls do it. Volunteer birdwatchers at the Presidio have been hearing the tell-tale mating call of the park's resident owls, signaling the start of the owl's mating season.

"The mating call is much more distinctive than the 'hoo, hoo' most people think of as the traditional owl call. And the female's is even more distinctive. It's a much faster and higher-pitched call than the male's," says Peter Ehrlich, the Presidio Trust's forester.

According to Ehrlich, there are at least four great horned owl nests scattered throughout the Presidio. Getting an exact count, however, can be tricky, since the owls have no trademark nests of their own. They often just take over the nests of other birds, like ravens or crows.

"Just looking at a nest, you'd never know it was an owl's nest," says Ehrlich. "You have to actually see the bird in it."

Great horned owls, which grow to about two feet tall with a wingspan up to five feet, are among the earliest nesters both in the Presidio and among birds in general. The males and females actually begin their courtship in late fall and can often be heard calling to each other in a kind of duet. By the middle of February, the eggs, one or two per nest, have been laid. They'll hatch about a month later, in the middle of March. The young owls will remain in the nest for a couple of weeks, but by the end of April, they will begin to venture out onto nearby branches and about a week later they'll start to fly down to the ground. Great horned owls are extremely protective of their young so people are advised to avoid any young owls walking along the ground they might come across. Year-round, the owls are at home at the Presidio.

"They're very cosmopolitan. Very urban. People don't seem to bother them," says Ehrlich, who calls the great horned owl his favorite bird. "They're just a big, powerful bird. Very respect worthy. I also love their piercing yellow eyes. They are mesmerizing."

Prolific hunters, (they're sometimes referred to as the "tiger of the night") the owls perform a measure of rodent control at the Presidio. Young owls have been known to hang around begging for food as long as six months after leaving the nest, until they're finally forced out by their parents at the start of the next reproductive cycle. Once they find a mate, the owls become permanent residents of their territory. Until then, however, young and single owls are like vagrants, moving around in search of a mate and territory of their own.

- Eric Cagan

New Chinese immersion program
Due to the increased demand, the SF Unified School District is opening a new school which will offer a Cantonese two-way immersion program beginning with three kindergarten classes and two first grade classes. It will be located at 1351 Haight St. in the former De Avila Elementary School location.

Associate Superintendent Jeannie Pon explained that the district chose to open the new school as a Chinese Immersion program because of the popularity of Chinese Immersion education for both Chinese speaking and native English speaking families and the Board of Education's commitment to have all SFUSD students graduate with bilingual skills.

"The plan is for this to be a Cantonese immersion program since Cantonese continues to be a heritage language spoken by a large proportion of our students at home," Pon said.

For more information, go to the Web site at www.sfusd.edu or the district's Educational Placement Center at 555 Franklin St.

New Balboa sewer project
The SF Department of Public Works (DPW) will work on Balboa Street, between Arguello and Park Presidio boulevards, over the next six months to replace aging sewer pipes, construct handicap curb cuts and repave the street. Crews will first cut a trench down the center of the street, then pipes replaced and the trench backfilled. Although there will be some restrictions to parking during construction, there will be no interruption in sewer service for residents.

For more information, call Alex Murillo at DPW at (415) 437-7009.