>> please direct your eyes to the water out over the bay. just a quick note -- the 5:30 to net the lawn is not canceled -- to nebulon is not changed. for those wishing to change rocket ships, you can talk to spot. we have another rocket ship on the way, but this one is where they take off, any minute now. we have a couple of speakers here today. the first one is an lazarus from the port. public art like this is not done without partnerships, and the partnership that we have with the port of san francisco turned this space into an art space and has been spectacular. thank you, ford of san

francisco. if you are representing the whole commission and some staff, though, ann if you want to say few words, that would be great. our boarding up is right here. >> thank you all for being here today. i would like to thank mike for wearing his seersucker suit so we were sure to get some sunshine today. i'm assuming there is a cause and effect there. it takes a village to accomplish something like this, just as with everything else in life. as mike said, this has the complete, wholehearted endorsement of the port commission, all of us, of our staff, our planning staff, even all the way across to our maintenance staff, led by tom carter. i just want to say in closing and thanking everyone, who says we do not have ships down at this waterfront? [laughter] thank you. [applause]

>> i also want to thank the opportunity thank thebcdc who helped us -- bank -- thank bcdc, who helped us get a permit for this. i told people that the cost of putting something up like this cost the city about the cost of a billboard for one month, and they had a greater ability to create community and space, and it has been a fabulous addition to the port of san francisco. people will talk about this rocket ship forever. the next person we have is our district supervisor, david chiu. when david first came to the board of supervisors, he had a conversation with the cultural affairs director for the city and county of san francisco, and he made art in san francisco a priority. he wanted to make sure the money we were spending was spent on artists from the bay area. it was very important to him that this happened.

as many of you may or may not know, san franciscans -- san francisco is one of the city with the most artists per capita. our government agencies spend more money on arts than any other government agency per- capita, and the foundations that work in san francisco spend more of a percentage of their money on art in san francisco, so with that -- for them, we're all grateful, and we will talk more about them. without further ado, supervisor david chiu. >> hello, fellow travelers. i go to a lot of events every day, and i have to say, this was the event i was looking forward to all week. yes, and one feel that way? happy friday, by the way. i'm going to say a couple of things that elected officials probably should not. when i was a kid, one of my favorite pastimes was to launch off bottle rockets. and if i had gotten some better grades in physics, i might be

helping to build these things as opposed to major in political science and becoming a politician, but at the end of the day, this is part of what is so special about san francisco, and one other thing that i'm going to say that i probably should not say -- i have never gone to burning man, but i think it might be about time. i want to thank all of you who are part of this amazing community that has helped to move forward not just the arts community, but to really improve upon community collaboration, improve upon how we think about living together as san franciscans, as californians, as citizens of the universe. i think the last thing i want to say is, as someone who represents much of the waterfront here, this is obviously what i hope is just one of a number of amazing installations that i know that the local artist community is so incredibly capable of developing, and i look forward to future installations like this so that we can make sure

that our art remains not just burned in our minds, but burned in the minds of everyone throughout the world and throughout the universe. congratulations. thank you. [applause] >> this fabulous relationship that the city and county have started in about 2005, and we had some very creative project that had happened since then, and it all started with the executive director than coming into the mayor's office and saying that we want to do more public art. put more public are on the streets and the community of san francisco, and start trying to build community. then, it changed to melissa. she carried over, and we had more projects, and we kept coming back, and then, it started to go national. started happening in detroit and

reno. if you want this to continue, you have to go and give. it does not happen without your support and supporting your community. i know we all do it in different ways, but you have to try to find a way to do more so that stuff like this can continue happen. with that, tomas is going to talk a little bit about the project and the people responsible for it. [applause] >> he just said everything i was going to say, except when we saw this ship last year -- i do not know how many of you were there -- and friday night, when the incredible thing happened that nobody thought could happen -- this rock actually launched, and as it was out there, i had a feeling that it would probably land right here.

thank you all for coming out. i do need to thank a number of people that made this possible. chad, andrea lesser l --ester -- lester, thank you all so much, and also, to alex rosenthal who pulled together this event, thank you. have a good time. [applause] >> one of the great things about this art and the other art from the desert that has come to san francisco is to see how much the art changes in a different environment and how our perception of where we are at in our space and how this has changed -- it will change before. it is interesting looking at the perspective here.

it is a really great day. i do want to bring up sean orlando, who is representing the artist. it is so great to have him here. he represents a team of many people, and i'm sure he is going to talk about those people. it is a great to see -- many times, artists have communities that follow them out there, but oftentimes, you do not have artists where community is the process. do you want to talk a little bit about your piece? . -- [applause] >> thank you all for coming out. this is really incredible. thank you to the port of san francisco for clearing the air space to allow us to crash land on pier 14. it is really quite an honor. this has been an incredible experience for us, working with brad and lesley trichet and the port and city to allow us to place this amazing work of art that was designed and built as a

group project in a collaborative manner by artists and engineers and programmers from all round the bay area, and i'm really proud to work with them. it is incredible that -- even more so, that this is the first ever rocket stop in the united states. virgin galactic, you have nothing on us. one of the new elements that we have added to the rocket, which you will notice in the background is the rockets thought, is our intergalactic bay area rocket transport or ibart. [laughter] thank you all for coming out. we have the phenomenon coming on in a little bit. we have the space cowboys, gastronaut and all their amazing food. thank you to all the volunteers. [applause]

i want to go over couple of things. first off, braf has a table over there, so if you can, and get more information about what they're doing across san francisco, across the country, and get them to try to dedicate a little bit of time, money, and cash to try to help them succeed in putting art like this together. here is the reason why -- if any of you have a chance, leslie wrote a piece about why flocked matters, which was a piece we put out in city hall a little while ago -- i guess three or four years ago. basically, it said that public art is art that you own. no one can tell you what to think about it. there's no one telling you how the field or believe is possible with this art. it is art that any opinion matters. one of the highlights for me was went 35 grammar school kids came up and tried to tell different

people what they thought that that was, and it was so fascinating. with each piece, there is a different story and a different tale that the community is telling. with david best's piece that went in his brain, some guys said thank you for that piece, and some guy said definitively without a doubt, but " this is a bird house", right? and everybody in the community saw an argument start between people in the community about a debate about what it was. another thing, the art that was created there has created another space, which is dedicated to art. out of that came the hayes valley coalition that continued to put up piece after piece and are committed to continue to bring artists into that space to show their work here in san francisco, which is really great. i'm trying to string a little bit of time out here before i introduce the mayor of san francisco, and i'm trying to get an indication of how far out he

is. any indication? >> [inaudible] >> laugh i do not know any jokes, but we do have someone here who wants to do some poetry. no poetry and no jokes, but what many of you may not know is that we built this rocket ship in 1944 and launched it in 1944. we got lost, so we -- throughout our travels, we have been traveling through space and time, picking up passengers, dropping them off, upgrading our rocket ship, collecting specimens and aliens, and some of the specimens and aliens are actually amongst you. we landed in san francisco because we thought you would not notice them as much, but the problem is that the customs agent approached me, and you all forgot your cards, your id cards, so aliens, if you could please come here and collect your cards, because you will get

stock. there is one. thank you. thank you. they just blend right in, don't they? thank you. great, here he is. ladies and gentlemen, the mayor of san francisco. gavin newsom thank you all for coming out. -- mayor newsom: thank you all for coming out. i want to thank all of you for being willing to once again allow the city to try new things. it was not that many years ago that we could not put a peace sign up at the panhandle. we could not put a spider on top of city hall, and we could not even put a giant foot down at

the embarcadero. folks, in san francisco, for all our progressive politics and our aggressive policies, there's just something about public art where we are not always as progressive as we should be. i made the distinction "public art." there is something about putting something on the streets and sidewalks that is incredibly personal to san franciscans, and as a consequence, incredibly controversial. when i came into office, one of my firm commitments was to break the rules. and i say that in a loving way, that the idea was that if we could not win by the current rules of the game, we either had to challenge those roles or change them. so what we did is we tried to reinvent our focus on public art by finding a loophole, and this was it. temporary public art.

that has been the big differentiator. we went in, and we said, "don't worry. it will just be here for 30 days." 60 days. 90 -- was it a year ago? i thought it was just 60 days ago. the point was once people got used to it -- in fact, we found the spider right here. she was here. and people started to say, "what is that?" and then, two months, they would ask why we were taking it away. that has been the narrative and partnership with the black rock arts foundation and all those incredible artists that you guys represent, all those artists that are here that are represented in this extraordinary piece. we have done that 20 significant public arts installations in this city in the last couple of

years, and that is pretty good. those are significant. thousands of others significant, but at a smaller level. we did the arts in the store front. people thought we were crazy, and now that has been replicated and modeled all across the country. we had a budget with $500 million deficit, and they thought we were crazy when we said there would not be any cuts to arts programs and arts investment in the city, but we were able to do that as well. so we are moving in a different direction. i will just end by saying i think an exciting direction. i think we have raised the bar once again. the bar was always high in our city with our 40 years of our neighborhood arts program and all that contribution at all of you make with a set aside on every new public projects, but this is one of my favorites, and that is really what i was coming here to say. i think this is just incredible.

this is going to get a lot of attention, appropriately, and deservedly. it is good attention. you have the new span on the eastern side of the bridge that is being done. you have the most environmentally friendly development in the history of this country that will happen next year on treasure island. you have a revitalized waterfront that slowly is evolving. organic produce, organic farming, our values being advanced here every single week. a lot to be proud of. a lot to be thankful up. in that spirit, great job. keep up the great work, and i am a proud san franciscan today. thank you all very much. [applause] >> ladies and gentlemen, the phenomenon will be here shortly. they are still trying to land.

they weren't the late, so it should be just another couple of minutes. thank you very much. >> ♪

there are so many ways that the internet provides real access to real people and resources and that's what we're try to go accomplish. >> i was interested in technology like video production. it's interesting, you get to create your own work and it reflects what you feel about saying things so it gives perspective on issues. >> we work really hard to develop very in depth content, but if they don't have a venue,

they do not have a way to show us, then this work is only staying here inside and nobody knows the brilliance and the amazing work that the students are doing. >> the term has changed over time from a very basic who has a computer and who doesn't have a computer to now who has access to the internet, especially high speed internet, as well as the skills and the knowledge to use those tools effectively. . >> the city is charged with coming up with digital inclusion. the department of telecommunications put together a 15 member san francisco tech connect task force. we want the digital inclusion program to make sure we address the needs of underserved vulnerable communities, not communities that are already very tech savvy. we are here to provide a, b and c to the seniors. a stands for access.

b stands for basic skills and c stands for content. and unless we have all three, the monolingual chinese seniors are never going to be able to use the computer or the internet. >> a lot of the barrier is knowledge. people don't know that these computers are available to them, plus they don't know what is useful. >> there are so many businesses in the bay area that are constantly retiring their computer equipment that's perfectly good for home use. computers and internet access are helping everybody in the community and people who don't have it can come to us to help with that. one of the biggest problems we see isn't whether people can get computers through programs like ours, but whether they can understand why they need a computer. really the biggest issue we are facing today is helping people understand the value of having a computer. >> immediately they would say can i afford a computer? i don't speak any english. how do i use it. then they will start to learn how to do email or how to go

back to chinese newspaper to read all the chinese newspaper. >> a lot of the barrier still is around lack of knowledge or confusion or intimidation and not having people in their peer network who use computers in their lives. >> the important thing i learned from caminos was to improve myself personally. when i first came to caminos, i didn't know anything about computers. the second thing is i have become -- i have made some great achievements as an individual in my family and in things of the world. >> it's a real issue of self-empowerment where new immigrant families are able to communicate with their families at home, able to receive news and information in their own home language, really become more and more connected with the world as well as connected even inside their local communities. >> if we value the er