by Thomas Keister

It is not very often (read: rarely at best) that I find myself in agreement with talk radio colleague Michael Savage, but one thing I can completely agree on with Dr. Savage is his notion that the city of San Francisco has completely lost its fucking mind. Case in point- the ongoing battle between Greg Schoepp and the Mayor's Office of Disability.

Schoepp, who has been in a wheelchair for 30 years since being shot by a home invader (remember the good old days when we could still call them burglars?), is in the process of opening a medicinal marijuana dispensary, has run smack dab into the gears of a city powered by dumbassery.

The property that Schoepp is renting is a former chiropractor's office. The issue? The city is making Schoepp roll through miles of red tape, and for no reason other than to handicap a legal business from opening its doors. In its role as a chiropractic practice, the building at 2139 Taraval Street passed all the access tests conducted by the Department of Building Inspection. That was all well and good, but a medicinal marijuana dispensary? Time for the second set of rules.

Unlike any other business in the whole of San Francisco, medicinal marijuana dispensaries do not go through the Department of Building Inspection, but the Mayor's Office of Disability. Guess which office has more stringent access rules? Yep, the MOD. Guess which office wants to require Schoepp to not only build a seven foot tunnel/entryway at the front door (and that's AFTER requiring him to level the sidewalk out front)? Yep, the MOD. Given the way this seems to be leading, guess which office is probably going to make Schoepp hang in limbo for the next year or so as he makes his way through the appeals process? You guessed it- the MOD. I would give the winners a cigar, but I just don't feel like filling out the mountain-like molehill of forms San Francisco probably requires just for that.

Proposition 215 may have won over the voters' hearts in California, but typically, it has quickly degenerated into the same, tired, run-of-the-mill excuse for even more government, as ham-fisted and unnecessary as one has come to expect all too often in this country anymore. A budget-strapped state such as California does itself no favor making it more trouble to open a business than it is realistically worth. I will not even begin to touch on the irony that the lady responsible for this boondoggle, Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, is a wheelchair user herself. I wonder if the ramp she uses to get on her high horse is up to specs.

As a final thought, I almost want to tell Schoepp to say hell with it, cut his losses, round up some day laborers, have them make all the modifications, and quite possibly even physically carry the customers through the front freakin' door. Knowing this guy's luck, while he would no doubt score points with La Raza, he would also wind up being those rarest of birds - a business owner actually busted for employing undocumented workers.