There were hundreds of them! With millions of dollars worth of photography equipment blithely making their way through the troubled Microsoft Yammerloin.
As seen heading down Market in front of the now-shuttered Market Street Cinema strip club, which has supposedly “closed for remodeling” (or so they claim) for months. (I weep for the strippers – how will they pay their way through grad school now?)
I’ll tell you, whenever I photowalk through the gritty “Uptown Tenderloin” NeMa New Market NoSoMa North of South of Market area , I always wear four inch heels and carry a $700 full-size carbon fiber tripod, natch.
Can’t make the photowalk? Watch live tonight with +Karen Hutton and+Virtual Photo Walks™ !! It will be shared live here to my own stream as well.
The Plan: Look, it’s possible security may throw us out of our meeting spot (inside the event at http://goo.gl/FqJcw ) right away, and I may not be able to jump up on a bench and give my Mussolini-esque speech. If that happens, here is the plan:
Had lots of fun doing a +Virtual Photo Walks™ If you missed it live; you can watch it NOW on demand here.
A special thanks to +John Butterill and +Bruce Garber for helping to organize these virtual photo walks.
Please feel free to help share places we visit, by sharing this post and video with your circle of family and friends.
Thank you for your help and compassion.
“To Know, To Care, To Act”
Had lots of fun doing a +Virtual Photo Walks™ ! If you missed it live; you can watch it NOW on demand here.
A special thanks to +John Butterill and +Bruce Garber for helping to organize these virtual photo walks.
To learn more about +Virtual Photo Walks™ please visithttp://VirtualPhotoWalks.com where we walk the walk for those who can’t and have a lot of fun in the process.
If you would like to join us on a +Virtual Photo Walks™ or know some one who would please contact us http://VirtualPhotoWalks.org to learn how.
Figure one of these cams is constantly scanning license plates and the other is used on accident investigations:
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And there are other cameras on this bus as well. For MUNI fights ‘n stuff.
Anyway, if the SFPD is looking for you and you park your ride on a bus line street or, really, if you just drive it around the 415, this bus-mounted camera scanner is how they found you.
And if you park illegally in a bus stop, SFMTA employees will read your plate from the video and use that to issue you a ticket.
You see, Octavia used to be a regular old street until Redevelopment (a bad idea from the 20th century) and the failed Octavia “Boulevard” experiment (a bad idea from the 21st century) came along.
Well, not actually because this particular car vs. bike from last year happened to be the impatient cyclist’s fault, because he went across against a red, because bike riders don’t have as much time to cross as they used to, owing to the newish dedicated cyclist light Oh well.
Anyway, I would have said that Santa installed all the new hardware, but I was beaten to the punch by Dale Danley / Panhandle Park Stewards, who naively wonder why the Panhandle Bandshell went away despite the fact that the “partners” of PPS are the same people who made the harmless bandshell go away.
(So I don’t know, I’ll consider the Panhandle Park Stewards ranking someplace north of that horribly corrupt Willie Brown S.L.U.G. vehicle for the while. Enjoy your “partnership” with the corrupt RPD, and the NIMBYed-up NoPNA, and the millionaires’ kid’s school as you garden, Deutsches Jungvolk und Bund Deutscher Mädel.)
Anyway, you can look forward to the flashing lights of traffic cams when errant drivers err at Fell and Masonic. (UCSF shuttle van drivers beware, beware!)
On August 3rd 2011 at 1428 hrs. Victim Clyde Leo Neville was a victim of a homicide in a room located at 20 Franklin Street, San Francisco. The above pictured subject was caught on surveillance cameras entering the Franklin Street address with victim Neville Prior to his death.
Anyone with information or questions regarding this case may contact Homicide Inspectors listed below:
Inspector Martin, Inspector Cunningham or Inspector Warnke
SFPD Homicide Detail 415-553-1145 SFPD Department Operation Center 24/7 415-553-1071 SFPD Anonymous Tip Line: 415-575-4444 SFPD Text-A-Tip to: 847411 type: SFPD + msg SFPD CASE # 110 620 063″
“The replacement freeway and Boulevard were charged with ensuring a level of service comparable to the previous structure and configuration. This has been achieved…”
In no way, shape, or form does the newish Octavia Boulevard have a level of service comparable to the old Central Freeway.
And, BTW, did the Central Freeway block Fell, Oak, Page, Haight and Market? Nope. Does Octavia Boulevard? Yep, every day, all the time.
(This is an example of misplaced confidence, of the hubris.)
Now, what kind of signal timing does it take to accommodate a 3000-mile-long freeway ending on Market Street. Well, let’s take a look here. Do you notice that Market street peds have about four seconds to begin the journey across Octavia during the 95-second cycle? Why is that? I mean, that means that any given ped on Market has over a 95% chance of having to stop and wait for all those cars on Octavia to go by. Is that fair? Now, what about cars and streetcars and bikes and buses and whatnot heading outbound on Market – do you think it’s much better for them? Well, it’s not. Just 20-something percent of the traffic signal cycle allows traffic to flow uphill on Market at the Octavia Intersection. Why are the lights so biased in favor of the cars driving through on Octavia, you know, as opposed to Market Street?
Check it (oh yeah, that’s some homeless dude coughing at the end there, not me.)
Now, the term “fork-tailed doctor killer” used to be the nickname of the Beechcraft Bonanza, you know, the plane what killed Buddy Holly on the Day That Music Died. But that whole V-Tail sitch got addressed and now, Beech makes those Bonanzas with regular old straight tails. So let’s recycle this phrase and use it for Octavia Boulevard, why not?
Here’s the fork of the tail:
Now, how can I justify blaming the whole “Boulevard Movement” fad of the aughts for an famous accident that killed that UCSF doctor if the UCSF van driver ran a red light? Well, take a look at this:
Click to expand
See? Sometimes half the lanes of Oak have a red light and the other half have a green. Does that make sense? Well, if you’re struggling to make pathetic Octavia work and you don’t want traffic routinely backing up to Golden Gate Park, well then you yourself would be tempted to do whatever you could to help Octavia flow.
Does this unorthodox design factor in human nature, you know, the nut behind the steering wheel? No, it doesn’t. The fact is that car drivers, those sheeple, follow the pack. If the car to the right goes, then they want to go.
Of course, drivers should do better, but we need to factor in their behavior when we design roads, right?
What we shouldn’t do is to let Hayes Valley insiders, that very small but very influential group, to design anything for the rest of us.
And BTW, why on Earth are left turns allowed on inbound Market onto Octavia? Could it be for the convenience of those Hayes Valley insiders? Check it out. You’d think that Hayes Valley types would be satisfied with being able to make a left at the prior intersection or the next intersection, but no, traffic on Market has to wait on a dedicated signal for a dedicated lane of drivers.
Does that make sense?
Why not this? Why not narrow Octavia dramatically and just give up on the whole boulevard experiment? Just take out the frontage roads and all that on-street parking and those medians and that would be a good start on “completing” the Horrible Octavia Experiment, turning it into a “Complete Street.” Even the Great Designer of Octavia admits now that the boulevard is too wide.
And let’s get rid of that left turn lane that was built just for the NIMBYs of Hayes Valley. Why should Market Street, the more important one, take a back street to Octavia, which is basically a glorified freeway onramp?
And why not give people on Market Street half the time of the light signal and then the people on Octavia the other half? Wouldn’t that be more fair?
“Before the destruction of the Central Freeway, condominium prices in the Hayes Valley neighborhood were 66% of San Francisco average prices. However, after the demolition and subsequent replacement with the new Octavia Boulevard, prices grew to 91% of city average. Beyond this, the most dramatic increases were seen in the areas nearest to the new boulevard. Furthermore, residents noted a significant change in the nature of the commercial establishments in the area. Where it had been previously populated by liquor stores and mechanic shops, soon the area was teeming with trendy restaurants and high-end boutiques.”
