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♪ >> i am -- i am the person santa claus. -- p histe sayserian sauc ersias i said, i'm going to go see my friends in city hall. i'm going to go see the people of san francisco. i am going to go see supervisor

avalos arenas -- supervisor mirkarimi. i'm going to see our new mayor. he said, why? i said, because it is our new year. are you kidding? i said, this is a different new year. this is persian new year. [applause] our culture has a different new year, the beginning of spring when everything blooms. the flower carts bloom, the earth becomes fresh, it

refreshes itself. -- the flowers and birds abloom. he said, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way." i said, not to that kind of new year. our new year has a different song. [singing] [singing] he said, ok, bye. because he was my older brother, i let him go.

i said, i will see you in nine months. persia in new year is the beginning of the spring, everything refreshes. we also refresh just like the earth. we refresh our friendship even with our enemies. we forget our sorrows and we look to the new year with bright eyes and full of hope, full of hope. let me see what i have in this bag. ah-ha! my brothers, he forgot.

in the persian new years, we put seven items on the table. we start with the letter "s," which represents the goodness of the earth. everything that comes from the earth. we celebrate, we celebrate these blessings, we love these blessings so we represent them with seven "s's." this is a sign of health, the apple.

please, can you put it there on this table? next, we have --, this is sour but it is good for your health. this comes from any other fruit. this is the vinegar. it was very hard to carry out. oh, -- is good for many things. persians knows for what. this represents wealth. i don't know why. let me see what i have. egs-- eggs, i don't know why we

put these. it does not start with s. we put this on kabob. we love this. do you love this? yes, you do. c'mon, this is very good for your health. this is garlic, for your health. everything is for your health. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. one more. oh, money. this is for wealth. those people who are wealthy, they have a lot of this. yes.

there are many more but i forgot to bring them. i came in a hurry. this is kind of crushed now. this is the greenery. we love this. i don't know for what. there is a big one, you can go and eat it. [laughter] ok, that is an asset. and, we put the book, usually hafiz or other books. i will read a few verses. but, i have to put my glasses because i am very old.

[speaking foreign language] morning breeze, and the old world will once again sale [speaking foreign language] to libs will bring a red cup to the meadows -=- tulips will bring a red cup

haifz -- hafiz will tell the tale [laughter] we will celebrate the rest of new year's in that room. this new year is for friendship and to put your sorrows away and to walk in love in the garden of your heart, that not the rows of love. let's celebrate new year for justice, peace, and everyone in the world'. [applause]

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>> there has been an acknowledgement of the special places around san francisco bay. well, there is something sort of innate in human beings, i think, that tend to recognize a good spot when you see it, a spot that takes your breath away. this is one of them. >> an icon of the new deal. >> we stood here a week ago and we heard all of these dignitaries talk about the symbol that coit tower is for san francisco. it's interesting for those of us in the pioneer park project is trying to make the point that not only the tower, not only this man-built edifice here is a symbol of the city but also the green space on which it sits and the hill to which is rests. to understand them, you have to understand the topography of san francisco. early days of the city, the city grows up in what is the

financial district on the edge of chinatown. everything they rely on for existence is the golden gate. it's of massive importance to the people what comes in and out of san francisco bay. they can't see it where they are. they get the idea to build a giant wooden structure. the years that it was up here, it gave the name telegraph hill. it survived although the structure is long gone. come to the 1870's and the city has growed up remarkably. it's fueled with money from the nevada silver mines and the gold rush. it's trying to be the paris of the west. now the beach is the suburbs, the we will their people lived on the bottom and the poorest people lived on the top because it was very hard getting to the top of telegraph hill. it was mostly lean-to sharks and bits of pieces of houses up here in the beginning. and a group of 20 businessmen

decided that it would be better if the top of the hill remained for the public. so they put their money down and they bought four lots at the top of the hill and they gave them to the city. lily hitchcock coit died without leaving a specific use for her bequest. she left a third of her estate for the beautify indication of the city. arthur brown, noted architect in the city, wanted for a while to build a tower. he had become very interested in persian towers. it was the 1930's. it was all about machinery and sort of this amazing architecture, very powerful architecture. he convinced the rec park commission that building a tower in her memory would be the thing to do with her money. >> it was going to be a wonderful observation place because it was one of the highest hills in the city anywhere and that that was the

whole reason why it was built that high and had the elevator access immediately from the beginning as part of its features. >> my fear's studio was just down the street steps. we were in a very small apartment and that was our backyard. when they were preparing the site for the coit tower, there was always a lot of harping and griping about how awful progress was and why they would choose this beautiful pristine area to do them in was a big question. as soon as the coit tower was getting finished and someone put in the idea that it should be used for art, then, all of a sudden, he was excited about the coit tower. it became almost like a daily destination for him to enjoy

the atmosphere no matter what the politics, that wasn't the point. as long as they fit in and did their work and did their own creative expression, that was all that was required. they turned in their drawings. the drawings were accepted. if they snuck something in, well, there weren't going to be any stoolies around. they made such careful little diagrams of every possible little thing about it as though that was just so important and that they were just the big frog. and, actually, no one ever felt that way about them and they weren't considered something like that. in later life when people would approach me and say, well, what did you know about it? we were with him almost every

day and his children, we grew up together and we didn't think of him as a commie and also the same with the other. he was just a family man doing normal things. no one thought anything of what he was doing. some of them were much more highly trained. it shows, in my estimation, in the murals. this was one of the masterpieces. families at home was a lot more close to the life that i can remember that we lived. murals on the upper floors like the children playing on the swings and i think the little deer in the forest where you could come and see them in the woods and the sports that were always available, i think it did express the best part of our lives.

things that weren't costing money to do, you would go to a picnic on the beach or you would do something in the woods. my favorite of all is in the staircase. it's almost a miracle masterpiece how he could manage to not only fit everyone, of course, a lot of them i recognized from my childhood -- it's how he juxtaposed and managed to kind of climb up that stairway on either side very much like you are walking down a street. it was incredible to do that and to me, that is what depicted the life of the times in san francisco. i even like the ones that show the industrial areas, the once with the workers showing them in the cannery and i can remember going in there and seeing these women with the

caps, with the nets shuffling these cans through. my parents had a ranch in santa rosa and we went there all summer. i could see these people leaning over and checking. it looked exactly like the beautiful things about the ranch. i think he was pretty much in the never look back philosophy about the coit. i don't think he ever went to visit again after we moved from telegraph hill, which was only five or six years later. i don't think he ever had to see it when the initials are scratched into everything and people had literally destroyed the lower half of everything. >> well, in my view, the tower had been pretty much neglected from the 1930's up until the 1980's. it wasn't until then that really enough people began to

be alarmed about the condition of the murals, the tower was leaking. some of the murals suffered wear damage. we really began to organize getting funding through the arts commission and various other sources to restore the murals. they don't have that connection or thread or maintain that connection to your history and your past, what do you have? that's one of the major elements of what makes quality of life in san francisco so incredible. when people ask me, and they ask me all the time, how do you get to coit tower, i say you walk. that's the best way to experience the gradual elevation coming up above the hustle and bustle of the city and finding this sort of oasis, if you will, at the top of the hill. when i walk through this park, i look at these brick walls and

this lawn, i look at the railings around the murals. i look at the restoration and i think, yeah, i had something to do with that. learning the lessons, thank you, landmarks meet landmarks. the current situation at pioneer park and coit tower is really based in public and private partnership. it was the citizens who came together to buy the land to keep it from being developed. it was lily hitchcock coit to give money to the city to beautify the city she loved of the park project worked to develop this south side and still that's the basis of our future project to address the north side.