SF Weekly

Meet the astrologers and mystics ministering to Silicon Valley’s elite.

A crowd watches a suicide in San Francisco:

“Some people look on silently, hands over mouths. A teenage girl in a sundress wipes tears from her eyes. A circle of high school-age kids debate whether a fall from that height would be fatal. A woman in a pantsuit talks into her phone, excitedly describing the scene. Others peck away at keypads. More phones pop up above the mass, angling for a snapshot. A light buzz of chatter hums along, punctuated by a shout.

“‘Jump!’

“Heads turn, seeking out the class clown in the sea of faces. Laughter rising all around, compressed snickers and knee-slapping roars.

“In between chuckles, a man in a blue button-down blurts, ‘He said “Jump!”‘”

A day after he deleted his Facebook account last month, Terry Braye — exiled public school teacher — called SF Weekly in a panic. “I’m in trouble,” he said. “They may arrest me.” It wouldn’t be the first time. More than a year earlier, the 61-year-old music instructor had been arrested for accusations that he’d had improper contact with female students who played in the guitar band program he built at Visitacion Valley Middle School. Braye denied the accusations, but finally pleaded no contest in May to two nonsexual misdemeanor charges. He’s banned from contacting anyone from the district, especially his former students. For Braye, that’s no easy feat.

Candidate Newsom is “narcissistic,” “thin-skinned,” “disloyal,” and “friendless.” And that’s from his former supporters.