Actually, The Wiggle is The Rookie’s Choice, full of part-timers like CW Nevius (oh he just quit cycling in The City, hardly surprising) and fast fixie riders who don’t know any better.
And The Movement prefers the Wiggle, for some unknown reason. But if you just want to get from A to B, then its Market McAllister Divis and eventually Fell for you.
Like this – that’s UC Hastings, your Hastings Cutoff lodestar, there in the background on the left:
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So you climb a bit more using McAl, like 20 more vertical feet if you add up all the ups and downs, but big whoop.
Columbus Day 2012 marks the 520 year anniversary of the genocidal and ecocidal project of Empire building and colonial expansion that began with the conquistador invasion of this continent and continues to this day through the daily violence and exploitation of global capitalism.
It also marks the 20 year anniversary of the first American Black Bloc which disrupted the 1992 Columbus Day Parade in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood.
This year during Columbus Day weekend, a West Coast Anti-Colonial, Anti-Capitalist convergence is being organized in San Francisco. As a contribution to this effort, we are calling for friends and comrades to gather at 2pm on Saturday, October 6 for a rowdy march through the heart of the city’s financial district.
We will honor the memories of all those who fought back and resisted the onslaught of empire over the past five centuries by unleashing the power of our own resistance in the very heart of capitalism on the West Coast. We are proud to stand in solidarity with others whose fierce struggles continue to hold off the machinery of domination and exploitation.
We draw inspiration from the countless struggles of indigenous resistance to capitalist projects of development and expansion: from the mountains of Black Mesa, where elders fiercely protect their way of life in the shadow of a coal mine, to the rebel autonomous municipality of Chéran in Michoacán, México where both the repressive forces of the state and the drug cartels have been expelled while loggers infringing upon indigenous territory have been chased off communal lands, to the far north of Canada where indigenous peoples block roads and disrupt plans for expanding resource extraction while students and radicals in Montreal riot outside the gates of the Plan du Nord summit. These brave fighters motivate us to spread the fires of resistance in the ongoing struggles against colonialism and capitalism.
It is also fitting that October 7 marks the 11 year anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, another brutal example of colonial domination’s recent manifestations. We invite all those who stand in opposition to Empire and in solidarity with the struggles of the Afghan people to join us on this march.
The Anti-Colonial, Anti-Capitalist March will gather at Justin Herman Plaza for a rally at 2pm and the march will begin at 3pm sharp. Stay tuned for additional details and ways to get involved.
This action is part of the Decolonize the New World 2012: West Coast Anti-Colonial, Anti-Capitalist Convergence in San Francisco during Columbus Day weekend. The convergence is being called for by Decolonize and Anti-Capitalist comrades in the Pacific Northwest and Bay Area.
On October 6, 2012 at approximately 2:50pm, a group of protesters gathered at Justin Herman Plaza. The group began a unpermitted march west bound on Market Street. The group, a number of them wearing black clothing, masks covering their faces, took to the streets disrupting the normal flow of traffic. Officers arrived in the area and were struck by projectiles thrown at them by members of this group. One officer was struck in the head and sustained non-life threatening injuries. The protesters were admonished multiple times that the march was unpermitted and there were causing a public safety hazard.
When the group failed to leave the roadway, Officers encircled them at California and Battery and the protesters threw flares and bags of paint at the officers. Some of the bags of paint contained rocks. A portion of this group ran to the area of Pine and Sansome where they were detained. A number of police officers and their uniforms were covered in paint.
Police made approximately 22 arrests from both locations. The suspects were arrested on one or more of the following charges: conspiracy, riot, refusing to obey a lawful order from a peace officer and resisting, delaying and obstructing a peace officer, and assault and battery on a peace officer. A lawful search of the arrested suspects’ backpacks revealed that many were armed with hammers, an ice pick, flares and other weapons and more bags of paint containing rocks. The suspects vandalized vehicles and businesses as the walked. Any witnesses to these acts of vandalism are encouraged to notify the SFPD. Attached are photos of some of the weapons the protesters had in their possession.”
Seen walking away from the open-air stolen iPhone market on the north side of this very intersection:
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Next month, fences will have to start charging 10 cents for each booty bag. Cause it’ll be The Law. So that’ll be $20 for that TV plus 10 cents for the bag. And the remote? Well, you’ll have to look it up and buy one online…
[UPDATE: And, you know, I guess I hadn't considered the one-way streets. Particularly inbound, they can get you there fast if you're up for lights timed at 20-something MPH. I've seen people on Oak and Golden Gate inbound, but, due to geography most likely, I haven't seen that many using the outbound analogs Fell and Turk. See footnote.]
Well here we go. This shot from United 931 shows, in high relief, why you’re better off talking McAllister Street, Bike Route 20, to downtown from the Panhandle and vice versa.
You see Alamo Square inside the red box on the lower left? It’s the summit of Alamo Heights, sitting there in the sunlight jutting in from the left.
The vaunted Wiggle bike path takes you from the Panhandle through Lower Haight and then behind the Church Street Safeway to Market Street and beyond. Your preferred alternative has you leaving the end of the Golden Gate Park Panhandle by taking Baker north to Fulton to Divisadero up to McAllister. That’s the pass over Alamo Heights – it’s the intersection of McAllister and Divis. Then it’s all the way downhill to Market.
You’re going between the camel humps, between Alamo Square and Kaiser Heights (seen in the sunlight on the left side).
Now it’t true that Route 20, aka the Snickerdoodle, does have you climbing up, outbound, 20 more feet vertically, net, than the Wiggle (and also inbound – there’s one block of Divis that’s uphill a bit) and it’s also true that Route 20 has a couple steeper blocks betwixt Fillmore and Pierce in the Western Addition.
Has you waiting less time staring at red lights (which is nice when compared to the Wiggle’s concomitant Market Street section with the Octavia Boulevard obstacle, which has traffic signals biased for car drivers heading north-south using Octavia)
Avoids hated Octavia Street / Boulevard entirely (cause Octavia simply doesn’t exist as a road in the McAllister area – it’s like you have a permanent green light)
Has less traffic
Has fewer peds to deal with
Has fewer cyclists to deal with (cause, you know, especially in the Lower Haight area, you just don’t know what those cyclists are going to do)
Is, due to the factors cited above, safer
Avoids the ridonculas behind-the-Safeway-to-inbound-Market puzzle that makes no sense (that I can see – I don’t know how to get across Market at Duboce legally without getting off and walking in the crosswalk)
Has zero cops sitting around handing out tickets (because you’re avoiding Fell and Scott, and Duboce and Steiner, and Haight and Pierce, and all the other places the SFPD hangs out during those periodic stop sign and red light enforcement actions)
So, I don’t care, go whichever way you want. I’m just saying the Wiggle is the wrong way to get the Panhandle (and Beyond) from Downtown.
And vice versa.
*I suppose that jinking over to Oak and taking it all the way (almost) to Market might be faster still, although you’d have to decide which side of the street to go on. (The left side has more room, but there’s no longer a dashed line to keep left lane traffic out of your way. The wait at Octavia Boulevard might slow you a bit, however.
Oh, and there’s Golden Gate Avenue as well, inbound…
I guess they have the money now and they’re working on figuring out who’s going to run the thing.
Appears as if the SFMTA has given up on a giant Parisian Velib-style program with 5000 bikes strewn all over town – they’re starting small. Regardless, some of this free advice still applies.
The deets:
“…the pilot service area will be centered in San Francisco’s employment- and transit-rich Downtown/SOMA corridor between the Financial District, Market Street and the Transbay and Caltrain terminals. This area is notably flat, has the densest bikeway network coverage in San Francisco and enjoys the highest levels of cycling, yet those who commute by transit from cities to the east and south encounter difficulties bringing a bicycle with them on BART or Caltrain.”
“Heath Maddox, senior planner for the Livable Streets Subdivision of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), says the defining characteristics of the service they’ve outlined in an RFP draft is that the bike system be solar-powered with no need for external AC power and no requirement for excavation that would turn the installation process into a construction project.”
Remember, sharing is caring.
All the deets:
“The map of the pilot service area presents northeast San Francisco. The highlighted area in the map is the bicycle sharing pilot service area bound by South Van Ness Avenue and the Ferry Terminal along Market Street. To the north, the service area boundary includes the Federal Building at Turk Street, Union Square at Post Street, the Broadway and Columbus Avenue intersection, and The Embarcadero at Sansome Street. To the south, the highlighted service area includes the Embarcadero to Mission Bay, Townsend Street and Concourse Exhibition Center.”
Bike sharing is coming to San Francisco! A regional pilot program led by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) in partnership with the SFMTA will bring approximately 50bike share stations and 500 bikes to San Francisco’s downtown core beginning in spring 2012. The SFMTA is working with a regional team to implement this pilot along the Caltrain corridor in San Francisco, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City and San Jose and shown in this Regional Bike Sharing System map. The project is funded through a combination of local, regional and federal grants with major funding coming from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Innovative Bay Area Climate Initiatives Grant Program (BACI).
What is bike sharing?
Similar to car sharing, bicycle sharing is a term used to describe a membership-based system of short-term bicycle rental. Members can check a bicycle out from a network of automated bicycle stations, ride to their destination, and return the bicycle to a different station. Bicycle sharing is enjoying a global explosion in growth with the development of purpose-built bicycles and stations that employ high tech features like smartcards, solar power, and wireless internet and GPS technologies.
Who is involved with launching the San Francisco bike sharing system?
The BAAQMD is the overall regional project lead, coordinating the planning and implementation efforts of the local partners: the City and County of San Francisco, the Cities of San Jose, Mountain View and Palo Alto in Santa Clara County and the City of Redwood City in San Mateo County. The SFMTA is leading the project in San Francisco, and we are working in cooperation with our City and County partners, including the Planning Department, Department of Public Works, San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and the Port of San Francisco. The regional partners will be selecting a contractor in fall 2011 to install, operate, and manage the system.
Where will bike sharing be located in San Francisco?
As the San Francisco Bicycle Sharing Pilot Service Area map (PDF) presents, in San Francisco, the pilot service area will be centered in San Francisco’s employment- and transit-rich Downtown/SOMA corridor between the Financial District, Market Street and the Transbay and Caltrain terminals. This area is notably flat, has the densest bikeway network coverage in San Francisco and enjoys the highest levels of cycling, yet those who commute by transit from cities to the east and south encounter difficulties bringing a bicycle with them on BART or Caltrain. Much of San Francisco’s densely urbanized northeastern quadrant is similarly well-suited to bicycle sharing.
When will bike sharing launch in San Francisco?
The regional partners will be selecting a vendor to install, operate, and manage the bike sharing system in 2011 with the goal of a system launch in Spring/Summer 2012!
Further Information
If you have any questions, comments or feedback about bike sharing, contact the SFMTA at sustainable.streets@sfmta.com.
