Posts Tagged ‘inner’

Rec and Park Approves New Fees at Strybing Arboretum: $16 for Families, $7 for Individuals

Friday, March 5th, 2010

That’s the news of last night from City Hall. Get up to speed on the issues here.

The next step is to see what happens at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. (How much lobbying do you get when you spend five figures on a lobbyist? We’ll soon see.)

This speaker was no fan of the new fees at the San Francisco Botanical Garden. Certainly, he was outnumbered last night:

What if the fees get approved and things don’t work out? Then down will come the pay kiosks and then other options, possibly a ”tasteful sponsorship” (such as the “Chuck Schwab Co. Australia Garden*” or something) could generate a little money.

We’ll Find Out Soon Enough.

*Words from a Commissioner last night, they didn’t make the transcript.

“What Kind of Protest is This?” The Fight Over Charging $7 at Strybing Arboretum

Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010

[UPDATE: Let's see here, you can discover what some local celebrities think about this idea here at Manatease's YouTube Channel and, well, here's an uncredited single-panel comic on the subject discovered by LocalColorist, see comment.]

This was the scene the other day near Golden Gate Park’s Strybing Arboretum, aka San Francisco Botanical Garden. These protesters were politely picketing San Francisco’s semi-public, semi-photo-op Budget Town Hall at the County Fair Building when an elected official walked up and asked, “What kind of protest is this?”  

Indeed. These picketers, called the “Society people” by their opponents, support the idea of charging non-residents $7 to get into Strybing. Why? So there’s enough money around such that three Strybing-dedicated gardeners won’t get laid off during our Great Recession.

This gaggle of self-described “plant people” certainly are timely, as the Board of the Recreation and Park Department (RPD) will decide this auslander admission issue on Thursday, March 4th at City Hall. The question after that would be how the San Francisco Board of Supervisors will react.

Now, unlike last year, RPD isn’t having any big meetings to air out public concerns, probably because RPD knows how they would go – 250 San Franciscans would show up and the bulk of them would be strongly opposed to the charging of any fee to any one at any time

AFAIK, the 2010 plan is similar to the more recent of the two 2009 plans in that only people who reside outside of the City and County of San Francisco would be charged. The Big Question is how many nonresidents would show up to pony up some cash and how much the program would cost to implement. After this program is up and running, the Next Obvious Step would be to charge San Francisco residents as well. Would that next step come in a matter of weeks, months, or years? There are no promises from anyone on that score.

The Save the Botanical Garden people are saying that not charging $7 would amount to ”depriving community residents of a tranquil place to visit.” Does Strybing need to become a “world class arboretum” in order to remain a “tranquil place” to visit? It would be easy to argue with the Society on this point.

Now, let’s have a go at the official FAQ:

“Isn’t a non-resident fee the first step toward a fee for everyone?”

The answer is yes. Hells yes, obviously.

“Isn’t the fee taking the Botanical Garden a step closer to privatization?”

No. This is a red herring, from the Sierra Club, for one, I think.

“Won’t setting up the booths to collect the fee and bringing in new workers just cost more than you’ll collect? Won’t setting up the booths to collect the fee and bringing in new workers just cost more than you’ll collect?”

Almost certainly not. The older “Cadillac Plan” of spending vast sums on infrastructure to enable the charging of fees might have had that risk, but there’s no reason that a well-run program, particularly one that makes the use of volunteers, wouldn’t net at least a little money.

“Why doesn’t the SF Botanical Garden Society just do more?”

Good question. The Garden Society, and  they’re by no means alone on this, want to spend Other People’s Money on their pet projects. Some of them figure that Strybing needs 16 dedicated gardeners to become “world-class” and that they’ll never ever get the funding for that many from the City of San Francisco, recession or no recession. 

Here’s the thing – “saving the botanical garden” will have the effect of excluding hundreds of thousands of people from Strybing. If you are a “plant person” then this is a small price to pay. And actually, plant people might even prefer to keep out the riff-raff. So, charging admission is a double win – more plants and fewer people.

If you’re a people person, you might prefer the “Keep the Arboretum Free” point of view. I guarantee you that the average person motivated enough to attend the public meetings last year would strongly favor having fewer gardeners around if maintaining the current crew meant throwing up a pay wall by installing checkpoints Charlie.

We’ll see how it goes.

Now, was this a grass roots movement in front of the Budget Town Hall? You know, this group of Society people and the P.R. volk with their identical signs and their unsigned petitions

 

You Make The Call.

The Revived Plan to Charge $7 at Strybing – Antietam at the Arboretum II

Thursday, February 25th, 2010

The civil war between those who call our Strybing Arboretum (home to orange hummingbirds, violet blue jayspurple flowers, red foxes, blue herons, pink berries and yellow poppies) ”Strybing Arboretum” and those who call it “San Francisco Botanical Garden” is hotting up again in 2010. Now, leave us travel all the way back to ought-nine, when the trial balloon of charging $7 admission to those residing outside of San Francsico County got shot down with extreme prejudice

Well, maybe not prejudice extreme enough, ’cause the plan is back. There might be some differences, like having volunteers staffing the entrances to charge admission instead of hiring an expensive crew per last year’s proposal, but they’re similar ideas. 

Check it out for yourself at this San Francisco Botanical Garden Society webpage, where you can also “sign” a petition to support the idea of charging yourself money to get in. They have a FAQ as well.  

The next big meeting will be at City Hall on March 4th, 2010, and there’s also Mayor Gavin Newsom’s “in-person” town hall meeting at the County Fair Building near Ninth and Lincoln Saturday morning – the Charge $7 to Auslanders at Strybing crowd will be there starting at 8:30 AM to promote their cause.

I’ll tell you, the average person that goes to Strybing doesn’t care if it’s a “world class” facility or not so if a gardener or two or three or four were laid off, they wouldn’t really care. It’ll be interesting to see how this one works out.  

Let’s ask a Strybing hummingbird what s/he thinks of the new proposal:

O.K., fair enough.

Tonight: Inner Sunset Town Hall Featuring Gascon, Mirkarimi, and Elsbernd

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Via the N Judah Chronicles and the Inner Sunset Neighborhood Group comes news of tonght’s Inner Sunset Town Hall:

“The Inner Sunset will have a Town Hall Meeting with Supervisors Sean Elsbernd and Ross Mirkarimi, and SFPD Chief Gascon at 7pm in the County Fair building in Golden Gate Park, located just past the park entrance at 9th and Lincoln.”

The Inner Sunset District: King of All the Sunsets:

Overcast weather and overhead wires – the Inner Sunset has it all:

See you at the meeting tonight.

From Mission Mission Comes the UPTOWN ALMANAC, San Francisco’s Newest Group Blog

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Some people behind San Francisco’s beloved Mission Mission blog are now branching out to cover the entire City of San Francisco plus the Sunset District – it’s called UPTOWN ALMANAC and it looks great.

Here are the deets from Kevin Montgomery.

So why not subscribe now? It’s free.

Bon Courage Uptown Almanac!   

“The blog is made up of a few pendejos (who mostly live in the Mission but whatever):

  • Bailey Genine: Lived in a broke-ass Tahoe house for three years.  Watched a toilet bowl freeze in her house and has puked off of ski-lifts.  ’nuff said.  Tumblr + Twitter.
  • Brizz: The mind behind The Tens.  He also spends too much time in L.A.
  • Jim Chaney: Author of a generally decent tumbleblog and twitter account.  Hails from the alright state of Ohio.
  • Kate Horton: Enjoys Urkel-Os cereal.  If that isn’t enough qualification, I don’t know what is. Twitter + Tumblr.
  • Kevin Montgomery: Some guy that used to write most of the entries for Mission Mission in late 2009.  He thinks he’s funny, but he’s not.  Twitter + Tumblr.
  • Laura Beck: This girl writes for so many publications that there is no way in hell you’d have the attention span to read about them all.  Most notably, she’s the lead for Vegansaurus!, which is basically a Grocery Eats for white people.  Twitter.
  • Serg: He’s been writing Beer and Rap before most of us lived in the Mission District.  He also writes Grocery Eats, which is basically a vegansaurus! for meat-eaters/people who hate white-people’s cooking.  Twitter.

Does the Inner Sunset’s Ninth Avenue Have Enough Wires Overhead, Do You Think?

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

How many overhead wires do we need?

Heading south, from Lincoln.

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Click to expand

Graffiti the Subject of Eric Mar’s Richmond District Town Hall Meeting Tonight at 5:30 PM

Monday, October 26th, 2009

Tonight’s Richmond District Town Hall meeting hosted by Supervisor Eric Mar starts at 5:30 PM.

(Levi’s “Obey X” Shepard Fairey “Paint and Destroy” garb not allowed.)

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It’ll look a little something like this:

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See you there!

Dear Neighbors,

Please join us at a Town Hall Meeting on Street Cleanliness and Graffiti
tonight at 5:30 pm

Richmond Recreation Center
251 18th Avenue

For more information, please go to:
http://www.sfbos.org/Modules/ShowDocument.aspx?documentid=34870

(NOTE: previous notices may have listed a different time, the meeting
starts at 5:30 pm)

Regards,
Lin-Shao
Legislative Assistant, Supervisor Eric Mar

It’s Back! The Antique Paper Show Returns to Golden Gate Park

Saturday, August 8th, 2009

Find out just what an Antique Paper Faire is all about at the Hall of Flowers in GGP tomorrow, if you want.

It’s sort of a part of the first Sunday Streets on the West si-iiiide, aka Ocean Beach.

See you there!

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Specialties

The Vintage Paper Fair is a large exhibition and sale that offers an array of antique paper items for collectors of all kinds. Serious collectors come and know exactly what they want, but it is also a welcome environment for first-time collectors to come in and discover the history and art that is found in this hobby.

Among the 50 + vendors there, you will find postcards, trade cards, stereoviews, photography, Victorian-era items, pin-ups, sports memorabilla, labels (beer, fruit crate etc.) brochures, transportation related (vintage cars etc.) and many more types of interesting and beautiful antique paper. Most items for sale date back to the early 20th century, some are more modern, some older. There are boxes of 25 cent postcards as well as rare and expensive museum-quality pieces.

Our location is unique as well, situated in the heart of Golden Gate Park, near the Botanical Gardens, Academy of Sciences, De Young Museum as well many great restaurants.

History

Established in 2006

We are the only antique paper fair in the city of San Francisco, and thought a new show would contribute to the culture and collecting hobby here!

Meet the Business Owner: Hal L.

Hal Lutsky has been in the antique paper business since 1996, and a show promoter since 2001.

Arrest #49 for Local Burglar – Baited Car in Golden Gate Park Proves Irresistable

Friday, July 31st, 2009

What items tempt you the most when you scan parked cars for Objects in Plain View  - would it be a laptop computer, an iPod, maybe a backpack? Well, be careful, cause when the SFPD baits cars for sting operations in Golden Gate Park, they sometimes use all three. (It’s almost like entrapment, or something. So tempting these parcels are, next thing you know, it’s smashy smashy!)

From the Richmond District Blog comes a sneak peek of Richmond Station Police Captain Richard Corriea’s next weekly update for the Richmond District Police Community Police Forum. Read an entire entry below.

Is this a parking lot, a freeway, or Golden Gate Park’s MLK Drive near the Inner Sunset on a recent Friday? Click to expand:

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Yes, it’s MLK near the Friend Gate of Strybing Arboretum. Perhaps the cars huddle together for safety?

Here’s why:

“On July 25, 2009 Richmond [District] officers working in plain clothes staked out a car at Middle Drive and Bowling Green Drive in Golden Gate Park. There were several items of value in the car, including, a backpack, computer and an IPOD. The officers knew from experience that an auto burglar would find the car an appealing target. Indeed, several hours into the stakeout an individual burglarized the car, and he was immediately arrested. A subsequent search of the suspect turned up evidence from a theft committed nearby earlier in the day and narcotics. The suspect, who has been arrested forty-nine times, including thirty-one times for felonies, was booked for burglary, possession of stolen property, theft and a narcotics violation. This individual is likely responsible for several auto burglaries daily.”

How many car windows do you have to break to get a rap sheet this long - hundreds, thousands?

On It Goes…

Bus Rapid Transit is Coming to Geary, Whether You Like It Or Not!

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Last night’s meeting on the proposed Geary Corridor Bus Rapid Transit Project was co-hosted by District One Supervisor Mar and the San Francisco Country Transportation Authority. Lots of people showed up, including at least one blogger – read all about the meeting here at the Richmond District Blog.

They’re still working on some major details, so it’s not too late for citizens such as yourself to get involved. Just saying.

San Francisco Country Transportation Authority Principal Transportation Planner and Geary BRT QB Zabe Bent taking questions along with Eric Mar:

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Yes, this event WAS well-attended, with about seventy-something souls at the Rec Center on 18th Avenue. Some of them didn’t look or sound too happy. Crossed arms was the order of the day:

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So, the long-running BRT Battle continues. Read all aboot it here, courtesy of “Don’t Call Him Crazy” Rob Anderson, and here, courtesy of Rescue Muni, and you might as well get up to speed with all the deets of this project here, from the Official FAQ.

As they say, Go Geary!