Or so they say:
“This morning from 10-11 am a large military watercraft will arrive on Ocean Beach. This is part of an exercise and is only a drill.”
“This morning 11am-1pm there will be an exercise w/2 helicopters at Sunset Blvd & Lake Merced Blvd. Noise will be elevated. It’s only a drill”
These days, in the Financial District of San Francisco, it’s the BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association of San Francisco) vs. the SEIU (Service Employees International Union Local 87).
Seems that it’s contract negotiation season for area janitors, don’t you know.
So you’ll find hundreds of workers loudly circling target buildings, marching around, for example, the 101 California, yesterday.
You know, like this:
Click to expand – the cops seemed to be cool with marching on the sidewalk, but union members wouldn’t have been allowed to just stand around, apparently
But you know, some building owners have a Back Up Plan, you know, the plan to hire replacement workers at $18.65 per.
Here’s yesterday’s ad from the Craiglist:
“We are accepting applications for temporary janitorial positions in San Francisco. The work involves replacing our current work force at commercial office building throughout downtown San Francisco due to a possible labor dispute with the SEIU- Service Employees International Union.
The rate of pay is $18.65 per hour. Typical shifts are from 6:00pm to 2:00am. The length of temporary employment is unknown at this time.
JOB DUTIES INCLUDE BUT NOT LIMITED TO:
Vacuuming
Remove trash and recycling.
Cleaning and stocking restrooms
Dusting surfaces
Spot cleaning carpets
Follow all job site safety regulations
REQUIREMENTS
Ability to work 7.5 hours on your feet
Ability to push and pull up to 25 lbs.
Ability to work independently or in a team environment
Must be 18 years or older to apply
If required, must be able to pass a criminal background check”
On It Goes…
I don’t know, one of these days…
The nice thing is that these choppers all have inflatable floats for those times when the engine conks out and all aboard autorotate down to a (hopefully) soft landing on a (hopefully) placid bay. The Coast Guard throws you a line and then your bird gets towed to Sausalito…
Click to expand
Anyway, I don’t approve. This chopper pilot, for one, was too close to the GGB on this day, IMO
We’ve had some extra low-and-loud chopper traffic over the 415 recently, not sure why.
Are our U.S. Coast Guard HH-65 Dauphin helicopters taking a new short cut from the east side to the west side, buzzing the NoPA and Nob Hill, when they’re on search and rescue missions nowadays? Could be.
As seen over the Western Addition (yes, there are tiled roofs on the DivCo).
Click to expand
As it noisily flew over my vast real estate holdings I started thinking about how a trend like this could affect property values, so I started yelling and waving my arms and chanting “U.S.* out of NoPA!” But I remembered I’m not a God Damn Landed Gentry NoPA NIMBY Millionaire and then everything was fine once again. Crisis averted.
Semper Paratus.
*The CG is the smallest branch of the U.S. military, hence the mil in .mil.
Oh it’s on. The fundraising campaign to get the Medical Center at Mission Bay off the ground is going well enough, so the University of California Board of Regents just gave the go-ahead for the project. The next step will be the groundbreaking ceremony.
(And oh, what’s the LEED rating? It’s Gold, baby. And oh, we’ve got choppers - a helipad is baked into the cake. Moving on…)
Putting cancer /women’s / children’s medicine in Mission Bay will free-up UCSF Medical Center at Parnassus Heights to do other things. It will:
“…transition into focusing on high-end adult surgical and medical services, including emergency medicine.”
(So you Inner Sunset / Cole Valley NIMBYs now have been warned. Let’s hope the increase in wailing sirens won’t disturb your lives too much…)
Anyway, turn up your speakers waaaaay loud (you’ll soon discover why) to see this short video from UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann and UCSF Medical Center CEO Mark Laret, if you want.
And here’s the Mission Bay renderporn. Radar O’Reilly can already hear the choppers:
Click to expand
Here’s what the 183-bed UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital might look like. For the record, the naming rights went for $100,000,000:
You can see it on the right here:
All the deets:
The University of California Board of Regents today unanimously approved funding plans for the new UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay. The board’s action is the final endorsement for the project, clearing the way for UCSF to break ground on a world-class hospital complex for children, women and cancer patients in the Mission Bay neighborhood, south of downtown San Francisco.
“The Regents’ approval is a major milestone for UCSF and for our family of supporters throughout the community,” said UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann. “It is hard to overstate the importance of the new medical center at Mission Bay, which will reinforce UCSF and the entire Bay Area as a hub of innovation, biotechnology and premier health care.”
After nearly a decade of planning, site preparations are underway on the 14.5-acre parcel of land. Construction of the 878,000-gross-square-foot hospital complex will begin on schedule in December 2010, shortly after required state permits are expected to be issued. Upon completion in 2014, the 289-bed facility will set a new standard for patient- and family-centered health care, safety, sustainability and translational medicine.
“Ten years ago, the UCSF Medical Center at Mission Bay was a dream, but we are now ready to break ground and bring this vision to reality,” said Mark R. Laret, CEO of UCSF Medical Center and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital. “The greatest legacy of the Regents’ decision to approve this new medical center will be the thousands of patient lives that are saved or improved because of the cutting-edge medical care that will be provided in these facilities.”
Ever more deets, after the jump
Lovely “Helicopter Hero” Aimee Garcia had a mishap a few days back in San Francisco while filming a scene for new (and improved?) Trauma.
As she recently related to NBC’s Natalie Morales:
“I was doing a scene where my ex-military boyfriend gets in a fight, and it was scripted that I just stand there … I just got involved. I pulled one actor off of another and they loved it. They said, ‘Keep doing it.’ We did it 12 times and I didn’t realize on the first take I broke my finger.”
Here’s the video from the Today Show.
A finger mishap always makes for good TV of course, especially when you don’t lie about it.
Let’s hope Aimee can get her left hand back on that giant twirlypopper’s collective control sooner rather than later.
Courage.
Take a look for yourself to see dude just drive off the Bay Bridge due to a moment’s inattention in last night’s episode of NBC’s Trauma serial. (Do you think you’d survive after falling so far inside a Jeep Cherokee Classic? I don’t think it’d be possible, but maybe the breast implants inside the car softened the jolt or something.)
Yesterday’s relaunch, debuting the first new ep since November 2009, earned ratings of 1.4/3, which are 22% lower than last year’s average for the show.
Shooting in North Beach as it looked last year near the top of Kearny Street, the most-filmed block on any street in Northern California:
Anyway the bad ratings add up to trouble, according to The Wrap:
“The problem started at 9 p.m., with the previously sorta-canceled “Trauma” (1.4/3) returning from the grave as a Nielsen zombie. It hit its lowest rating yet, falling 22 percent from its fall average and 13 percent from its last original. It wouldn’t be shocking if NBC decided to quickly replace “Trauma” in the timeslot. That’s because “Trauma” tainted “L&O,” which managed a third-place 1.5/4 at 10 p.m. — down 25 percent from last week, when NBC aired a double dose of the drama from 9-11 p.m. Worse, “L&O” was actually off 6 percent from what “The Jay Leno Show” had been averaging at 10 p.m. Mondays.
“NBC — which actually did quite well last week, given the fact that it had to fill 5 hours of primetime post-Jay– does not want to see any negative Leno-to-scripted comparisons at 10 p.m. Period.”
Not saying I would or could do a better job, but maybe the whole concept of shooting this kind of old-school TV show on location on the Streets of San Francisco was a bad idea? Is that possible?
On It Goes. How much longer will this Great San Francisco Nielsen Zombie last?
Why, it’s almost as if the people behind NBC’s Trauma serial have figured out a thing or two. Comes now Cliff Curtis, the New Zealand star who plays “cocky” helicopter pilot Rabbit, to say:
“The characters weren’t developed properly at first.
We took a lot of creative license, but learned from it.
We listened to the audience and to critics, and were able to satisfy a lot of complaints about the characters.
We improved the humor and the action on the front line.”
It’s almost like they’re shooting a whole new show! Good on you, Rabbit. Remember how excited people were when gorgeous Jennifer Siebel Newsom was in the pilot episode? Maybe we can get some of that back.
NBC/Universal
Now, while we’re remembering last autumn, wasn’t that the time when co-star Aimee Garcia was spinning this tale?
Conan O’Brien’s trauma, that whole deal where he’s losing his Tonight Show gig, is helping to keep NBC’s horrible Trauma serial a few paces ahead of the grim reaper. News just came out about how NBC is ordering four more shows to help fill the prime-time hole left by Jay Leno moving from 10:00 PM back to 11:35 PM.
That means that Season One will end up with 20 episodes at the very least.
Will there be a Season Two for Trauma? Only Time Will Tell.
Rest assured, twirlypopper pilot / couch potato Aimee Garcia will still maintain her official website regardless of when Trauma gets cancelled.
Click to expand
Look for more filming around town soon. You’ll have ten fresh episodes available on your idiot panel after the 2010 Olympics end.
If you can tell the difference between the helipad-hating “Neighbors of SFGH” vs. the Stop the Helipad haters, well, then you’re one up on me. What they are, they’re a bunch of NIMBYs on a hill who don’t care how many people have died, and how many more will die, due to the lack of a helipad at San Francisco General Hospital. Anyway…
These hill-folk richers just had a party to raise money for their fight. [Oh, man, I've just discovered that writer Sajid Farooq yesterday posted "$100 Dinner Could Ground Pesky Lifesaving Helicopters*" over at NBC Bay Area, saving me the trouble of crafting a more complete post. Thanks, MSM! Click on over there for the deets.]
An artist’s conception of the “Neighbors” of San Francisco General Hospital having their high-rent lifestyles impinged upon by EMS flights buzzing about:
Lovey and Winston are not happy.
Read on to see the fruits of the labors of the Stop the Helipad people:
“A head-on collision on the Golden Gate Bridge in May threw the evening commute into chaos and drew immediate cries for new safety measures. Lost in the flurry of traffic reports and debate about possible barriers, however, was the aftermath of the crash for the most seriously hurt victim. Dr. Grace M. Dammann had to be transported by helicopter about 25 miles to John Muir Hospital in Walnut Creek because San Francisco General Hospital lacks a helipad for its acclaimed Level 1 Trauma Center.”
Mmmm. According to an American College of Surgeons Consultation Survey of San Francisco General Hospital’s Trauma Program:
“The lack of a helipad and helicopter service is a major deficiency in providing optimal trauma care for San Francisco General Hospital and San Francisco. It is difficult to understand why a city the size of San Francisco does not have any medical air transport. The congested roads and bridges with the surrounding water make helicopter service an essential medical support service.”
Oh well, here’s another artist’s conception of what the next Neighbors of SFGH fun-raiser might look like, maybe down by the chopper-free Warm Water Cove off of 24th. I think Gilligan is the webmaster:
(Note Mary Ann in pigtails and high heels, you don’t see that look much these days.)
Obviously, NIMBYs are people too, and their concerns should be amplified and paid ‘tention to. But they go to far when they tell doctors how to save lives. We’re getting a pad at UCSF Mission Bay and we’ll, eventually, get another pad at the new and improved, earthquake-safe SFGH.
How many will die unecessarily until then?
*”Pesky Lifesaving Helicopters” – Pwned! I’m still laughing.
