Bay Briefing: Fake art threatens
school’s existence
Good morning, Bay Area. It’s March 4, and San Francisco is planning for
its largest Navigation Center while Oakland’s International Boulevard is
getting a major transit upgrade. Here’s what you need to know to start your
day.
‘Devastated’
When a small Oakland school with renowned music program got a surprise
donation of Chinese art valued at $2.8 million, it started spending the
windfall.
Then it found out the art was fake.
Pacific Boychoir Academy was just getting by when the paintings arrived,
and the loans it took out in anticipation of selling the art have put it in
deep financial trouble. Even with drastic cutbacks, the school may now close.
Nav Center on Embarcadero?
San Francisco city officials are hoping to persuade the Port Commission
to bring a 200-bed Navigation Center to the Embarcadero, just south of the Bay
Bridge.
Mayor London Breed has signed off on a plan to build what would be the
city’s largest Navigation Center on a parking lot across from Piers 30-32.
Supervisor Matt Haney, who represents the area, supports the plan but
wants other districts to host shelters as well.
“I really want to see other neighborhoods building shelters as well.
What about the west side? What about the Castro and the Marina?” he told
reporter Dominic Fracassa. “If this is the most urgent priority our city is
facing, we should see the entire city being part of the solution.”
International bus
If all goes as planned, a new kind of public transit will arrive as soon
as December in East Oakland: long, elegant, low-floored buses, big enough to
carry dozens of passengers but light enough to glide quietly past the bridal
shops and fruit stands on International Boulevard.
Some see the rail-like bus — known as BRT, for bus rapid transit — as
transformative for an area where merchants ache for foot traffic and residents
desperately need a quick connection to downtown.
Others say it will attract new development and hasten gentrification, if
the construction doesn’t kill the mom and pops first.
New version, age-old problem
History Professor Stephen Cole thought he was on top of the cheating
problem that’s so prevalent on college campuses. As many instructors do, he
requires students to submit their papers to a website that checks whether they
contain plagiarized material.
But he discovered the hard way that students are cheating in a way he
never imagined: They buy custom-written papers — an estimated $200 million
industry, Nanette Asimov reports.
Turnitin, the Bay Area company behind commonly used plagiarism detection
software, is planning to release a product the company says will be the first
to successfully tackle “contract cheating.”
But Cole has his reservations, believing those who are motivated to
cheat will keep doing so. “This cheating-industrial complex seems to be
endlessly adaptive.”
Hunting
Amid steep drops in the number of hunters and anglers in California, the
state has begun an initiative to boost interest in the sports.
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weekday.
The coordinator and the face of the campaign is a woman who is no
stranger to controversy. Four years ago, Jen Benedet began a program to teach
kids how to hunt — and found herself the target of online trolling.
But the Department of Fish and Wildlife is hoping to tap the same
charisma that drew children to Benedet’s archery classes — and that unleashed
an uproar from anti-hunting groups — to recruit a new generation of sportsmen
and sportswomen.
Around the Bay
• Strike ends: Oakland schools should reopen Monday after teachers
approved a new contract Sunday that won them salary increases and concessions
on class sizes and workloads.
• Killed by police: Stephon Clark’s family pledges to seek justice after
Sacramento police are cleared in his shooting death, including supporting a
state bill to change police use-of-force procedures.
• MacArthur mess: Think the MacArthur Maze is bad now? Wait until the
construction starts.
• Killion column: Will the Giants hold Larry Baer to a fair and equal
standard?
• Muddy water, camaraderie and fights: What happens when a journalist
finds himself marooned by the very floods he was sent to cover.
• Reservation headache: Trying to book a campsite at a national park is
a mess. Here’s one potential solution.
• New office channel: Slack is in talks for more San Francisco office
space as it plans to go public.
Chronicle Food
What do we expect from Chinese restaurants, and what happens when
restaurateurs try to change those expectations?
Our new restaurant critic, Soleil Ho, reviews three young Chinese
American restaurants — Z&Y Bistro, Stick & Steam, and Dragon Beaux —
that have busted out of the “authenticity trap” in their own ways.
“I know what to expect out of my dim sum,” she writes. “Or at least, I
thought I knew.”
Bay Briefing is written by Taylor Kate Brown and sent to readers’ email
in-boxes on weekday mornings. Sign up for the newsletter here, and contact
Brown at taylor.brown@sfchronicle.com
02
Perpetual corporate existence
After 38 years, Congress has updated the Corporation Code of the
Philippines (Batas Pambansa 68) to make it more responsive to the times and
help facilitate doing business in the country.
The Revised Corporation Code (RCC), or Republic Act 11232, retained some
of its predecessors’ provisions and enacted into law some decisions of the
Supreme Court and resolutions of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
on important corporate and securities issues.
It also allows the use of modern technological systems and processes by
corporations to facilitate the conduct of their internal affairs and compliance
with regulatory requirements.
Credit for the RCC should be given to former SEC Chair Teresita Herbosa
who initiated its amendments in 2013 and Sen. Franklin Drilon who steered them
through Congress.
Considering the expected impact of these amendments on the existing corporate
environment, it is likely the SEC will issue guidelines on their implementation
for the benefit of the affected parties.
A standout provision in the RCC is the grant of perpetual juridical
existence to all corporations, unless their articles of incorporation provide
for a different timeline.
In the old law, the maximum allowable period of corporate life was 50
years from the date of incorporation. At least five years before the expiration
date, it may file for an extension of its corporate life for another 50 years
or X number of years it wants.
The benefit of unlimited existence shall apply to all corporations
registered before the effectivity of the RCC and continue to exist up to the
present.
However, if a corporation has a specific corporate term in its articles
of incorporation and it wants to retain that period, it should, upon the vote
of its stockholders representing a majority of its outstanding capital stock,
inform the SEC of such intention.
Corollary to the “no expiration date” status of existing corporations,
the RCC is offering a new lease on life to corporations whose terms have
already expired.
If they want, they can apply for a revival of their corporate existence
and the enjoyment of their rights and privileges under their articles of
incorporation.
But this privilege is not going to be expense-free. The applicant
corporation has to pay whatever duties, debts and liabilities it may have
incurred before its corporate life ceased.
Depending on the nature of their business, these would include, among
others, fines or penalties for nonsubmission or late filing of certain
regulatory documents, e.g. audited financial statements and General Information
Sheet.
In effect, the defunct corporation that wants to do business again has
to “pay” for the consequences of its failure to comply with the SEC’s
requirements when it was still alive.
If the SEC approves the application, the corporation shall be deemed
revived and shall enjoy the benefit of perpetual existence, unless its
application provides for a different period.
The question is posed: Why go through the trouble and financial expense
of reviving a dead corporation when registering a new corporation would be a
lot easier?
The reasons for availing of the revival option may be sentimental
attachment to the corporate name, especially if it represents the names of its
founders, or the corporation has gained wide public recognition already, or—and
this is the most critical—the corporation owns real estate properties that are
still registered in its name.
The reason for the additional requirement is simple. These corporations
solicit money from the public so their regulators’ approval is essential before
they can be allowed to do business again.
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03
'A Very Strange Existence': The
Footballers Who Never Play Football
In the last few years, we have started to become accustomed to
high-profile footballers talking about mental health problems. One recurring
theme in their testimonies has been the damaging psychological impact of being
denied regular first-team football.
Danny Rose revealed he had suffered from depression prior to last
year's FIFA World Cup and said losing his place in the Tottenham Hotspur team
after injury had been "the start of" his problems. Burnley winger
Aaron Lennon said being frozen out of the first-team picture at Everton
left him in a place where "you don't actually feel like a
footballer."
Former Newcastle United goalkeeper Steve Harper, who spent years as an
understudy to Shay Given at St. James' Park, said the frustration of not being
in the side "got on top of" him. For David Cotterill, the former
Wales international, being deprived of the release of first-team football
"would double [or] triple" the amount of harmful thoughts swirling
around inside his head.
While most professional footballers will experience spells on the
sidelines at some point in their careers—whether due to injury, suspension,
poor form or tactical choices—for some, it is the rule and not the exception.
They represent one of football's great paradoxes: the players who never play.
As the son of one of Britain's most well-known football managers,
Anthony Pulis benefited from having doors opened for him that remained closed
to other budding players, yet regular first-team football always eluded him.
A hard-working central midfielder, he was considered sufficiently
promising to be capped four times by Wales at under-21 level, but he would make
only 58 appearances during his eight-year career in English senior football.
Anthony Pulis during a rare appearance
for StockportPete Norton/Getty Images
The nadir was a three-year spell at Southampton between 2008 and 2011.
Though loan moves—to Lincoln City, Stockport County and Barnet—gave him a taste
of first-team action elsewhere, he left St Mary's Stadium having not worn the
red and white stripes for a single second of competitive football.
"I can remember getting changed in the first-team dressing room
every morning. They go off to train and you're going on a different
pitch," Pulis told Bleacher Report.
"Some mornings I'd be stood there as a 24-, 25-year-old player
training with 16-, 17-year-olds. I'm not going to lie—I'd say to myself, 'What
am I doing? How has it got to this?'"
Pulis would seek support from the backroom figures who act as sounding
boards for disgruntled players at every club—the fitness coaches, the physios,
the assistant manager. His father, Tony, was always on hand for guidance too,
not least when the pair were together at Stoke City and Plymouth Argyle. But it
was his own desire to prove himself that kept him going.
"The only way to get out of those periods is to work hard and keep
training," he says. "Because if I'm not training hard every day and
my attitude's not right, if an opportunity comes up, I might not be in the
right state to make the most of it. That was always the thing that was driving
me."
It took a 2012 move to the United States, where he joined Orlando City,
for Pulis to finally find regular first-team football. He moved into coaching
after hanging up his boots in 2014 and is currently in charge of second-tier
Saint Louis FC.
His experiences as a player have inevitably informed his approach to
coaching, not least when it comes to explaining to players why they have not
been selected. (He cites Alan Pardew, his manager at Southampton, as "one
of the only ones who was really honest" when it came to telling him why he
was not being picked during his own playing days.)
"What frustrated me with certain managers was that they wouldn't
give you a reason as to why you weren't playing, so you had to go to
them," Pulis says. "Even then, they'd probably just tell you what you
wanted to hear. I say to the players: 'You're not going to like what I'm going
to say to you, but I'll always be honest.' I think players respect that."
Like Pulis, Carlo Nash knows all about the solace that can be found on
the training pitch.
In the latter years of his career, the Bolton-born goalkeeper went
through seven successive seasons with Wigan Athletic, Everton, Stoke and
Norwich City without making a single Premier League appearance. But despite his
frustrations at not playing, he lost none of his appetite for the footballer's
daily routine.
Carlos Nash (L) played three Premier
League games for MiddlesbroughStu Forster/Getty Images
"You get players who enjoy matches but don't particularly enjoy
training. I've always loved both," said Nash, who now works as a
goalkeeping coach at Salford City.
"I love football. I loved coming into the training ground in the
morning, getting in the gym, going on the field, having banter with the lads. I
think that helped me deal with those scenarios."
For back-up goalkeepers, long periods without playing come with the
territory.
"For a sub goalkeeper, you're only going to get your chance through
one of three things: loss of form, sending off or an injury," says Richard
Lee, who came off the bench only three times during a 14-season career spent at
Watford, Blackburn Rovers, Brentford and Fulham.
"As well as you train, you know deep down you're not going to play.
So it can be a very strange existence."
Lee made 14 first-team appearances for Watford in the 2006-07 season,
lining up against Manchester United, the club he supported as a boy, on three
occasions. But after the Hornets were relegated, he was unable to hold down a
first-team place, and in 2010, he dropped down another level to join third-tier
Brentford.
His first season at Griffin Park was a success—he was named Brentford's
player of the season after inspiring the west London club to reach the final of
the Football League Trophy—and he remained first choice throughout the
following campaign.
But as injuries and age began to take their toll, he lost his starting
place, at which point a new and insidious foe entered his life.
"In the last three years of my career, because of injuries, I lost
confidence in my ability and it all came together in a really bad bout of
insomnia," Lee told Bleacher Report.
"I was probably 40 or 50 per cent of the goalkeeper I was at my
peak, so I knew I could get found out at any moment. I couldn't sleep. It was
horrible."
After one such sleepless night in August 2014, Lee made three major
errors as Brentford played out a chaotic 6-6 draw against Dagenham and
Redbridge in the League Cup first round. The Bees won on penalties, but he knew
the game was up.
"The next day, I went and told the manager I was done," Lee
said. Despite a subsequent loan move to Fulham, it was to prove his final
appearance in professional football.
Nash was promoted to the Premier League with three different clubs, but
he never made it as a top-flight goalkeeper, making only 18 appearances in the
top division across spells with Manchester City and Middlesbrough.
His path to first-team football was blocked by some of the best 'keepers
the Premier League has seen—Peter Schmeichel at City, Mark Schwarzer at
Middlesbrough, Tim Howard at Everton—but as much as he enjoyed himself on the
training pitch, he took exception to accusations he was content to just sit
back and wait for his monthly paycheck.
Lee, whose interest in the mental side of the game led him to
write two books about football psychology, says for players on the fringes
of first-team football at a Premier League club, the allure of the big time
exerts a powerful hold.
Richard Lee during his Watford
daysGetty
"I only played 10 games in the Premier League, but they mean much
more to me than the other games I played," he says.
"A lot of goalkeepers would rather be a No. 2 at a higher level
than be a league or two lower and be an outright No. 1. It may be a strange
mentality, but it makes sense for a lot of different reasons.
"When it comes to the ego, you're in a bigger division.
Financially, you're often better off. And the facilities and everything that
surrounds it are that much better as well."
Though there will always be an element of "what might have
been" for players who spend the bulk of their careers on the wrong side of
the touchline, consolation comes in the knowledge that thousands, if not
millions, of players never even get that far.
"As a boy growing up, I wanted to be a professional football player
and I was a professional football player," says Pulis.
"I'd be a liar if I said I'm really pleased with everything. I
would have loved to have gone on and played 500 games.
"But I don't have any regrets. It's not 'if only I'd tried harder'
or 'if only I'd worked harder.' I know I gave everything I had."
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