The San Francisco Citizen

  Per FixMasonic: 

This morning, at a public hearing at San Francisco City Hall, it was decided without opposition to implement a 25 mile-per-hour speed limit on Masonic Avenue. This is a direct result of our petition and represents that first such change to Masonic Avenue in response to FixMasonic.

This is great news for all of us who want to see change to Masonic - not only because a lower speed limit can only lead to safer driving, especially if we encourage SFPD to enforce it, but because it acknowledges that Masonic Avenue is a residential street and demands a street design appropriate to a residential neighborhood.

Please come celebrate with us and help us keep this amazing effort moving forward:

FixMasonic Meeting
Wednesday, April 23, 2007, 6:30 pm
San Francisco Day School, Golden Gate @ Masonic

You are also invited to Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi’s office THIS EVENING, Friday April 18, at 5:30 pm for an exhibition of posters by schoolchildren envisioning a safer Masonic Avenue - City Hall Room 282.

Finally, we would like your response to a petition regarding usage and safety of Masonic Avenue. To complete survey online, go to www.walksf.org/fixmasonic

You know where you want to be the next time a Big One comes? The Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed state building in San Francisco’s Civic Center.

Why? Because it’s resting on 288 eight-foot hydraulic seismic dampers. Like this one:

You see, they’ve helpfully cut a hole in the wall just to show you one. It looks at first as if it’s some kind of sculptured art. Read the sign for details:

So when the big shake comes, you won’t feel a thing. Hurray! 

What’s the funniest line in this article from San Francisco Chronicle Staff Writer Dan Giesin - Single-minded cyclists have old-school cool 

“We’re shedding new light on an old tradition,”

“You feel like a purist,”

“You don’t need all those fancy gears.”

Too many gears can actually spoil the ride.

“…we single-speeders…”

“They are such a cool group,”

“It’s kind of a counter-culture,”

“There is that underground element: a little bit different, a little bit dangerous.”

This is called starting your own league, so it’s the same old thing. These people aren’t really dangerous either. They’re just having fun on bikes, nothing wrong with that. But you can have fun on bikes with or without gears, right?

There’s probably a more extreme element of fixed gear MTB-ers out there. The photo below clearly shows the typical non-fixed, freewheeling setup:

simondbarnes via Flickr

It’s the same crowd that’s attracted to fixed gear city bikes that find single-speed mountain bikes appealing.

And arthroscopic surgery is becoming cheaper and cheaper these days, so you should get in on this fun as well.

Perhaps it’s the abnormal width of Market Street that attracts so many sleepy folks?

San Diego Shooter via Flickr

Those foot patrols certainly can’t handle everything as it took cops from at least three Ford Crown Victorias last night to handle the lengthy detention of this Fly Yellow (Ferrari Light Yellow aka Giallo Modena) 355 Spyder and its driver near Ashbury Street in the Upper Haight section of San Francisco.

The driver looked exactly like Michael Schumacher what with his red Ferrari racing shirt (complete with logos from Marlboro, Shell, Vodafone, Bridgestone and Puma), red Ferrari baseball cap (that Schumi himself wears only after just winning a race) and, of course, Puma driving shoes.

Cold and windy Haight Ashbury gets less than its fair share of V8 “almost a Ferrari” convertibles driving around, so it’s not the greatest place to imitate the best living race car driver in world. We’ll just have to wait for the newsletter to see what the fuss was all about.

Zoom zoom.