The San Francisco Citizen

The Victory Garden at San Francisco’s Civic Center has a new lease on life due to today’s mayoral reprieve:

“Today Mayor Gavin Newsom announced his intention to keep the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden at Civic Center Plaza in place until November. The garden was originally scheduled to be disassembled and moved to a more permanent location on September 21, three weeks after the conclusion of Slow Food Nation.”

Now the whole idea of this garden smacked of Marie Antoinette’s L’Hameau de la Reine from the get-go and the fact it was supposed to be undone in September was met with some criticism, but having this thing around for another three months seems like a good idea.

Of course SFN was well-attended, with lots of coverage from the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, SFGate and Eater SF.

Now on with the show.

This voter registerer got cuffed by a Park Ranger right next to the Civic Center Windmill. Some rich hippies took offense and questioned the necessity of this detention. Apparently, the very same man was asked to leave SFN just the day before.

People, people, people, have you no respect for the DPT? Just one Parking Control Officer had the opportunity to issue scores of tickets to those in too much of a hurry to get to Slow Food Nation. It’s as easy as (slow) pie to park for free all day in this area.

See you next year!

Things are speeding up at Slow Food Nation ‘08 in San Francisco.  After fighting the worm wars, it’s nice to sit back and spend $500 to eat some celebrity chef food under the rotunda of City Hall. It’s the Victory Garden Celebration Dinner on August 24:

District Attorney Kamala Harris, Peter Coyote, Thomas Keller and Alice Waters invite you to celebrate the Victory Garden on Civic Center Plaza. We’ll gather in the garden, share a meal prepared by Chez Panisse, and plant the seeds of victory at San Francisco City Hall.

Or just get a table for $10k and invite a few friends to have some paella, your choice.

Blue corn as high as a elephant’s eye, and it looks like it’s climbing clear up to the sky: 

See you there!

“The Slow Food Nation Victory Garden, planted by a coalition of volunteers including Mayor Gavin Newsom and Alice Waters, is an edible garden on the Civic Center Plaza. Planted on the same site as the post World War II Victory Gardens 60 years ago, the Victory Garden represents the values of sustainability, community and stewardship of the land, while producing high quality food for people in need.”

“Chris Daly is not exactly the president of Mensa.” That’s the quote today in the Chronicle in an article about closing part of Market Street to cars. Is Supervisor Daly supposed to be stoopid or something?

1. Trying to close part of Market seems a lot more appealing than some other ideas. Ideas like this, or like corn ethanol for example. Trying this Market Street concept, which has been proposed by others in the past, would be cheap to implement and would be simple to undo if things didn’t work out.

2. Chris Daly could easily become president of Mensa if he had a reason to want to do so. (Look out Alan Winson!) Chris wouldn’t even have to take a test to join. He could most likely dig up the SAT or ACT scores he needed to get into Duke and use them to get into Mensa. Bingo bango. (Bonus: He seems familiar with the organization.)

Chris is a smart guy you just happen to disagree with on this or that. So, let’s leave Mensa out of future discussions of how to move forward, mkay?

Carry on.

The Presidio Trust wanted a big turnout, and that’s what they got. How many folks showed up last night at the Presidio Trust Public Board of Directors meeting? More than 500 and less than 1000. Read a vivid account here.

These poor souls had to wait about 45 minutes before being admitted, but nobody was “turned away,” as has been alleged. Across the street you can see the “First Amendment Area” at Moraga and Monkey. That’s the nicest time, place, manner free speech area this lawyer has ever seen.

The news of the evening is that public comment period will be extended to September, so expect another big meeting like this one. A transcript will be available soon, so let’s wait on that before getting into this too much.

Is there a NIMBY backlash developing among area youth?

The Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, was booed by a good chunk of the mob after he voiced support for the CAMP museum as well as the entire Presidio Trust proposal. Only in San Francisco….

In the words of world-famous architect Richard Gluckman, “Working in San Francisco is not like anywhere else.”

Here’s what Angelo King of the Bayview Hunter’s Point Project Area Committee has to say, and here’s the official case made for the museum:

To be continued…

The International Children’s Games are going on right now in San Francisco.

Click to expand. From Opening Day:

The San Francisco JROTC was there as color guard for all the colorful flags. Phasing them out wasn’t quite the breeze some anticipated.

The last flag you’ll see in this entry:

Oops, more flags. It looked like a Quidditch Invitational over by Kezar Stadium.

At USF: 

This soccer ball as your head thing is getting out of hand:

O.K, no more flags after this:

Participants are warming up now for the 42nd Annual International Children’s Games in our little burg.

The spirit of athletic competition that will sweep the world in August is coming to San Francisco in July. On Friday, July 11, the 42nd International Children’s Games kicks off with the Opening Ceremony at Kezar Stadium in Golden Gate Park. The International Children’s Games, this year held in San Francisco, brings together more than 1,200 youth athletes (between the ages of 12-15 years old) from 84 cities in 42 countries, and representing all six inhabitable continents.

Why don’t you buy yourself some tickets?

They aren’t all that expensive, and you’ll be able to see an international competition just like the Olympics but without all the drugs and the G-word issue that has Mia Farrow and the New York Times so upset these days. And who knows, maybe you’ll meet Brandi Chastain, winner* of the 1999 World Cup (thanks to a terrible noncall on keeper Brianna Scurry shown at 2:15 here).

Soccer practice at foggy, foggy University of San Francisco

Everything kicks off tomorrow. The Opening Ceremony at Kezar will feature Mayor Gavin Newsom and Assemblywoman Fiona Ma. 

Mobile phone users: Feel free to sign up to receive updates about schedules and match results by sending a text message to code 95294 with the keyword “KIDS” in the body of the text message.

Will you root for the team representing San Francisco, Oakland, or somewhere else?

See you there!

Here’s a test. Take a look at this spectacular hiking video that will make your heart race and then compare it with the structure from the East Bay shown below. Which is scarier? Now, hold on, just imagine living in such an apartment during the next Big One. The Northridge Earthquake back in 1994 showed us how people living in buildings with soft stories live and die in L.A. Mayor Newsom is using the bully pulpit to get out the word that some buildings in town need retrofitting now.

On the other hand, some don’t wish to “dive into” fixing things right now, perhaps preferring instead to wait until after an earthquake? Did “politics” hamper the push to get people to do what they ought to on their own, alleged by tenant advocate and artist Debra Walker in this concise report from Carolyn Tyler?

Click, ever so gently, to expand:

By seismophobic MaryMactavish, who can’t imagine it would take more than a 5.5 or 6 on the Hayward Fault to bring this building down, via Flickr

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with Mr. Newsom reminding building owners of their abnegation. What’s that? You want the city to pay to fix your house? Of all the uses of a home equity loan, retro-fitment for the next shake would seem to be the best choice.  

Quake safety is an obligation, is it not? Read the spiel and then decide.

Those Friends of the JROTC have certainly been active lately. Watch San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom stand up for the program here, via KTVU’s Paul Chambers. And FOX News has a few thoughts on the matter as well.

Steve Rhodes via Flickr (Like MasterCard, Mr Rhodes is everywhere you want to be.)

Are all those 13,600 signatures to Save JROTC going to pass muster?

What’s up with that? Earlier today, people trying to read the SFWeekly got sent to Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, in a way. More precisely, their browsers got sent to Cleveland Scene. Did somebody hack on the pooooor Weekly? Was this some kind of joke against Ohio’s Mistake By the Lake or agin Village Voice Media? Now who would do a thing like that?  Thankfully, things are back to normal now.

But what about over at the San Francisco Sentinel? Some web surfers interested in learning about the people working for Proposition G and Lennar Corporation weren’t able to access this page. All they could see is “Not Found” and “Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn’t here.” Isn’t that a shame?

But through the miracle of the cache, here’s the missing webpage:

After all, information wants to be free and available, doesn’t it? 

Wasn’t it Chairman Mao who said, “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let the hundred schools of thought contend”? It sure was. So, let’s stop all this internet fooferall and stop messing with peoples’ websites.

Capische?