“No one likes the stuffy galas,” said Róisín Isner, director of activism and operations for the San Francisco Tenants Union. Behind her, someone laid out a merch table on El Rio’s back patio — SF Tenants Union tote bags andThe Friday evening fundraiser was sponsored by mayoral candidate and Board President Aaron Peskin, Jim Stearns and Wolford Wayne, Westley Law, and Humprheys Joiner .
Improbably, the look worked. Peskin wore the hat with supreme confidence, mingling with a crowd that tilted heavily towards friends, colleagues, and campaign staff. He posed for a photo with Shane Saldivar, one of the judges and a manager at the and Myrna Melgar, supervisor for District 7 . “I swear when I last saw Myrna an hour ago she was wearing a completely different outfit,” said Peskin.
Participants in Seismic RetroFashion, the spring fundraiser for the San Francisco Tenants Union on May 17, 2023. Photo by Heather Smith. As jobs go, it was extremely different from negotiating water rights for Native tribes, which is the work that Peskin had been doing before. It was also, frequently, extremely not fun. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a concerted, funded effort to drive me crazy,” says Peskin. “By the middle of my first term I thought, ‘I’m not doing this.’ But I did!”