The NIMBY Tyrant of Telegraph Hill
From imbyism to bullying to drinking on the job, has Aaron Peskin changed? — Part 4 of a four-part series
“Peskin switched his vote to kill a charter amendment Alioto-Pier was pushing for the February ballot. Alioto-Pier said she asked Peskin about the move in a meeting in his office. She said he replied by telling her, ‘Payback is a bitch.’ She said Peskin said he was punishing Alioto-Pier for giving a television interview opposing Proposition A, the Muni reform measure he sponsored on November’s ballot.”
— Peskin thwarted in attempt to gut Environment Dept., by Wyatt Buchanan, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 25, 2007
As one of the longest-serving politicians in San Francisco history, Aaron Peskin has had his ups and downs. Over the course of a year, I spoke to numerous colleagues, former colleagues, neighbors, and former neighbors, only one of whom was willing to speak on the record for fear of Peskin’s infamous spite. Nowhere was that more evident than in 2007 when then District 2 Supervisor Alioto-Pier accused Peskin of “using his legislative power to punish others who don’t go along with him,” telling San Francisco Chronicle reporter Wyatt Buchanan she had a recent run-in with then (and current) Board President Peskin and wound up “paying a political price” when Peskin switched his vote to kill a charter amendment Alioto-Pier was pushing for the February ballot. Alioto-Pier said she asked Peskin about the move in a meeting at his office and that his reply to her was “Payback is a bitch.” Alioto-Pier said Peskin told her that he was “punishing her” for giving a television interview opposing Proposition A, the Muni reform measure he sponsored on that November’s ballot. When Buchanan asked Peskin about the conversation, the board president said he didn’t divulge details of private conversations with other supervisors but added — in classic Peskin “I am the real victim” form — that Alioto-Pier’s comments on the conversation sounded “unfortunate and vindictive.”
Drinking games
Fresh from his Colombo Building win and with his Telegraph Hill Dwellers (THD) gaining momentum as “neighborhood preservationists,” Peskin made his first run for District 3 supervisor and took office in 2000, where one of first official acts was designating the Colombo Building as a landmark. In 2005, he managed to repeal previous zoning to decrease building heights from 200 feet to 65 feet in the Jackson Square neighborhood. For each of these new ordinances, Peskin was the sole sponsor. The blatant building height hatred in his district earned Peskin nicknames like “North Beach Napoleon “and “The Tiny Tyrant of Telegraph Hill.” For his part, Peskin seemed to relish his reputation as a NIMBY — a colloquialism for “not in my backyard.”
While NIMBYism became Peskin’s calling card, his reputation for abusive, drunken late-night phone calls to other city officials also flourished. On New Year’s Eve, 2008, the San Francisco Chronicle ran a front-page story entitled “President of S.F. supes accused of harassing calls, threats” based on a leaked letter sent by then Port Director Monique Moyer to the city’s Department of Human Resources and Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office. Moyer claimed Peskin called her at home after 8 p.m. sounding drunk, saying he was “done with me,” and that he would be “going after me.” Human Resources employee Micki Callahan later verified that an investigation into Moyer’s complaint found Peskin “had committed no wrongdoing;” however, Moyer’s complaint wasn’t the only one. Wade Crowfoot, then Mayor Gavin Newsom’s director of climate protection initiatives, said that on two occasions Peskin threatened to “eliminate his job out of spite.” Peskin also introduced a measure that would have gutted the city Department of the Environment after the head of that agency defied him on a major energy policy. The city attorney’s office ultimately deemed the legislation illegal. That was the same month Alioto-Pier said Peskin told her, “Payback is a bitch.” Newsom also spoke to then City Attorney Dennis Herrera and then District Attorney Kamala Harris about Peskin’s proclivity for treating city department heads poorly.
After the Chronicle article ran, Newsom said numerous city officials and private citizens called his office to report having received threatening phone calls from Peskin. “Everyone’s been hearing this for years. I don’t think there’s a person in city government who’s surprised,” Newsom said. “I don’t think anyone that I’ve met in elected office, or a community leader hasn’t received these types of calls. What was surprising is why it took so long for this to come out.”
Peskin’s drunken phone calls and bullying behavior didn’t end when he termed out after eight years as District 3 supervisor in 2009. In fact, some argue, he continued to run District 3 by endorsing and helping to elect a compliant David Chiu, San Francisco’s current city attorney, to warm his seat. I wrote a story for the Marina Times in 2014 called “The vacancy preservationists: David Chiu and North Beach cartel still making it tough to do business,” which details efforts by a young man named Jordan Angle to bring a high-end restaurant and lounge to 493 Broadway Street in North Beach, a building owned by his grandmother, Alyce Craft, for over 160 years. The incestuous neighborhood groups of North Beach, which included THD and the North Beach Business Association, which Peskin had just joined, were against Angle from the start. “Aaron Peskin’s wife, Nancy Shanahan, is on the board of THD and she’s close friends with Stephanie Greenburg, who is president of both SoTel [Southern Telegraph Hill Neighborhood Association] and the BCBD [Broadway Community Benefit District]. The vice president of the BCBD is Joe Carouba, who owns all of the strip clubs in North Beach, and David Chiu helped to create the BCBD. …” Well, you get the picture. I reached out to Angle for an update and wasn’t surprised to hear that, over a decade later, the building remains vacant.
I felt the wrath of Citizen Peskin in 2013, when, as co-owner and editor in chief of the Marina Times newspaper, Peskin sent his longtime lapdog, Joe Eskenazi, then a reporter for the now defunct S.F. Weekly, to write a hit piece on me for supporting a Pet Food Express on Lombard Street. It wasn’t just me, either — Eskenazi also called my publisher and business partner Earl Adkins (now publisher of The Voice of San Francisco) as well as then executive director of San Francisco Animal Care and Control, Rebecca Katz. While Eskenazi was leaving voicemails “seeking a quote” from me literally oozing Peskin’s trademark spite, Peskin himself was calling Katz with thinly veiled threats to her job if she continued to publicly support the local chain. Why was Peskin so angry about a Pet Food Express moving to Lombard Street? He was consulting for the small pet food stores in the area. The Pet Food Express on Lombard Street was rejected, and thanks mostly to online retailers, the small pet stores ultimately closed.
So, how do I know Peskin put Eskenazi up to the hit piece? Because when I interviewed Peskin in 2015 as he was running to reclaim his old seat, he admitted it to me. “Sorry, that was Aaron 1.0,” he said with a slight chuckle, “Now you’re seeing Aaron 2.0. — I’ve changed.” When asked about his drunk dialing past, Peskin laughed it off. “Like I said before, I’ve mellowed, I’ve got perspective, and getting out of that pressure cooker has allowed me to return back to earth. …” Peskin won the election, and reelection in 2021 (I endorsed him in the Marina Timesas the best candidate to lead San Francisco out of the pandemic.) Peskin even penned a monthly column for the Marina Times, a counterpoint to his more moderate Northside colleague, District 2 Supervisor Mark Farrell.
“When asked about his drunk dialing past, Peskin laughed it off. ‘Like I said before, I’ve mellowed, I’ve got perspective, and getting out of that pressure cooker has allowed me to return back to earth. …’”
On Saint Patrick’s Day, 2018, I was out for dinner with friends when one of them said, “Is that Aaron Peskin?” She was pointing to the television behind me, and when I turned around, indeed it was. “This was an abject failure of the Fire Department,” Peskin said as the building at 659 Union Street, across from Washington Square Park, was engulfed in red-orange flames. Peskin seemed unsteady on his feet and his speech was slurred, leading me to think the worst — and I wasn’t alone. As he called for then Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White to be canned because firefighters “had been slow to pour water on the blaze,” Hayes-White said firefighters were concentrating on battling flames inside the building and making sure no one was trapped before spraying water from the outside. Internal department memos included firefighters’ statements that Peskin, who had rushed over from a restaurant, appeared to be intoxicated.
About a year after I wrote a 2019 story that led in part to then Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru’s arrest on fraud charges, Peskin left me a drunken voicemail after 9 p.m. on a Friday night. “You deserve a Pulitzer for your corruption stuff,” Peskin slurred. “But goddamm it, now the FBI wants to talk to me.” The next day when I returned Peskin’s call, he apologized and asked me not to play the voicemail for anyone, to which I agreed. “I was just a little uneasy last night after getting a message that the FBI wanted to talk to me. Turns out it was about the bridge in Chinatown Mo [Nuru] helped me with.” He also confessed that, while “everyone at City Hall knew Nuru was corrupt” they stayed silent because “you could call him at 2 a.m. on a Saturday and tell him there was a garbage can dumped over on Columbus Avenue and he’d go there himself to clean it up.”
During and just after the pandemic, the Board of Supervisors held their meetings via Zoom, and the camera proved to be Peskin’s foil. On several occasions he was so drunk he could barely speak, interrupting conversations with slurry “I love you guys!” as fellow board members looked down in obvious discomfort. At a June 12, 2021, hearing an inebriated Peskin went completely off the rails, smirking as he berated Recreation and Park Director Phil Ginsburg with alcohol infused shouts of “You’re lying, Phil!”
Ginsburg, who served as chief of staff under Mayor Gavin Newsom in 2007 and 2008, told the Chronicle that Peskin’s bullying behavior and alcoholism had been “an open secret at City Hall since 2000” and that he was one of many officials who received calls from Peskin as late as 11 p.m. in which Peskin would scream expletives. When Ginsburg accepted the parks job in 2009, he said “he stopped answering Peskin’s calls after 8 p.m.” but revealed that in a February 2021 phone call supposedly about parks business, Peskin told him that his wife was “hot,” which, needless to say, Ginsburg found highly inappropriate.
Two people also told the Chronicle that in June of 2020 during a private phone meeting regarding the city’s gross receipts tax, Peskin used profane language while arguing with another staff member on the call. According to the sources, Peskin said, “This will have to be one of those times where I take my d— out, and the mayor takes her d— out, and let’s see whose is bigger.” Reporters viewed a screenshot of text messages sent between the two attendees afterward where one wrote, “The comments tonight were really offensive. I hope we can all agree that talking about sucking d—, cursing, and being clearly drunk on a call is not appropriate.”
Finally cornered by his own bad behavior, Peskin said he “decided to enter into alcohol treatment under the guidance of professionals,” but would be staying on the job. As the daughter of an alcoholic this immediately raised red flags, and it appears my instincts were correct. According to a number of sources, Peskin hadn’t “attended a meeting since September of 2023.” As recently as three months ago one person claimed to see Peskin imbibing at Savoy Tivoli in North Beach. Another said he “literally stumbled into me on Union Street.” A longtime city business associate of Peskin’s, who admits their relationship has always been cantankerous, said, “Aaron is a sneaky drunk. Do I think he’s being more careful now that he’s running for mayor? Yes. Do I think he’s abstaining? No.”
Behind the ‘Aaron Curtain‘
Besides bullying and drinking, what else hasn’t changed over Peskin’s nearly two decades in office? He’s still a proud NIMBY. Nowhere is it more evident than in the landscape of Telegraph Hill, which amply displays what a fierce defender of sameness Peskin has always been. While he likes to pretend his hatred of building density is about historic preservation, foes believe it’s really about view preservation for him and his wealthy friends. The cliffs of Telegraph Hill obstruct the vistas of downtown to the south and the Golden Gate Bridge to the north from Peskin’s home. In the graphic below, this is delineated by the rust-colored “Aaron Curtain.” Peskin’s almost 180-degree view spans from Pier 39 on the north to Pier 14 on the south, including Alcatraz Island to the north all the way beyond the Ferry Building to the south. According to S.F. Planning Department records, the green area highlights all of the housing units produced in Peskin’s panorama since 2005 — just two six-story buildings (735 Davis Street and 88 Broadway Street). The views from Telegraph Hill, which sits between 100 to 285 feet of elevation, are protected by 40-, 65-, and 84-foot height restrictions in the neighborhoods below, while the yellow line shows where Peskin’s home and three rental properties are located.
Who wrote enacted those height limits? Peskin, starting with his first term as District 3 supervisor in 2000, when he stealthily passed that legislation designating the Colombo Building as a landmark, and in 2005, when he was the sole sponsor to repeal previous zoning, thereby decreasing building heights from 200 feet to 65 feet in the Jackson Square neighborhood.
The land below Telegraph Hill features the Port of San Francisco Embarcadero Historic District, Northeast Waterfront Historic District, and North Point Sewage Treatment Plant Historic District. Yes, you read that right — there is a sewage treatment plant historic district. Ironically, the statement of significance for the Northeast Waterfront District states that it “contains commercial warehouse buildings from nearly every decade of San Francisco’s history.” By every decade they mean every decade until the Tyrant of Telegraph Hill moved in, at which point time stood still.
Even while mulling a run for mayor, Peskin was defiant about keeping views from his neighborhood pristine: a law he authored last year to allow for more housing downtown inadvertently relaxed height limits in the Jackson Square Historic District and along the Northeast Waterfront Historic District, opening the door for a 200-foot-tall housing project at 1088 Sansome Street, backed by billionaire investor Michael Moritz. In response, Peskin authored new legislation once again limiting heights in that 15 to 20 block area. It passed March 5, but nine days later Mayor London Breed vetoed it, citing San Francisco’s need to build taller and more dense developments to reach the state’s mandated goal of 82,000 new housing units by 2031. In a surprising turn of events — and a victory for Peskin — the Board of Supervisors overturned Breed’s veto.
Peskin called the decision “responsible planning” — a term he uses often. “It’s the right thing to do for two of the city’s historic districts that date to the Gold Rush.” It’s certainly a win for the North Point Sewage Treatment Plant Historic District, but Breed doesn’t see it that way, accusing Peskin of trying to destroy housing production by scaling back existing laws that would allow developers to build denser projects. “I’m sick of his shenanigans,” she told a crowd of supporters last March.
For nearly two decades Aaron Peskin has gotten away with bullying, misogyny, blocking buildings that would block his views, breaking the law by drinking on the job, using political connections to get his way, and even forcing a woman from her home so he could buy it for himself, yet he now believes he’s the right choice to be mayor of San Francisco. As the only recognizable candidate considered a “progressive,” Peskin has his supporters, but he likely has just as many if not more detractors. Perhaps the X account Reheated Burrito said it best when describing Peskin’s campaign pitch: “Trust me with the recovery, I was in charge of the downfall!”
👏👏👏Right on reporting. Slimy politicians seem to be everywhere!