You might not know it, but a few conservatives do indeed call our 49 square miles home. With that in mind, here are a couple of stories I’ve written recently on this rare and (for SF, anyway, exotic) breed of political animal.
Back in August, I spent an evening with some McCain supporters at a Potrero Hill house party. Two months on, the McCain campaign sign hanging on the host’s window is still the only one I’ve seen in the city outside of St. Francis Wood, a solidly Republican garrison out west. A few months ago, with their man near-even in the polls, these McCain supporters were hopeful, maybe even confident. I wonder what they’re thinking now.
“The Loneliest Republicans in the World.”
The Pacific Rod and Gun Club, squatting on a spit of land overlooking Lake Merced, is another Republican preserve. The club has been around since the 1930s, and it was once a regular stopover for Hollywood stars and city pols, but times are changing. The city, at the direction of a welter of nonprofits and neighborhood groups, is sprucing up the lake, which for years seemed better suited for dumping bodies than for recreation. And the gun club, which has leased a prime site at the lake, may get the boot. Skeet shooting, lots of people will tell you, just might not be compatible with day hikers, boaters, and kids’ field trips–not to mention the neighborhoods that have sprung up around the lake in the last half-century. The guys at the gun club see it as a conspiracy, a plot to get rid of them. Others just told me it was a sign of the times.