Taking Water Pollution By Storm

By Dennis Herrera
[Originally published in Windows on the Waterfront, February 2003]
To those of us with family and friends living on the East Coast, it’s been a difficult winter to avoid gloating about the relative good fortune we enjoy here in San Francisco. Sure, we’ve endured a few big rainstorms during the fall and early winter, but El Nino seems fairly tame compared to the fierce wintry onslaught that pummeled our easterly fellow citizens. Not that we’re unsympathetic, of course. But let’s face it-there isn’t a non-native one of us who doesn’t enjoy hearing a little envy from the hometowns we left behind. There’s certainly no harm in thinking that winter weather is just one more reason we’ve got it better here, right?

Why Shaq Is Not Funny

By Dennis Herrera
[Originally published in the San Francisco Examiner, January 16, 2003]
I’ve made it a general rule in life to avoid public criticism of people whose height exceeds my own by more than a foot-and-a-half. And the fact that I’m about to break that rule in no way diminishes the compelling wisdom of a principle that has served me well throughout my career in law and, more recently, politics.