This is it – years of competition betwixt the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the SF Weekly will culminate at a free-for-all tomorrow morning in the Thunderdome that is the recording studio of KQED-FM.
KQED Forum host Michael Krasney will play the role of Aunty Entity (seeing as how Tina Turner is unavailable). Expect the bout to begin at 9:00 AM, Friday, January 8th, 2010 on 88.5 FM and online.
It’s on - Friday, Friday, Friday!
Two Alt-Weeklies Enter, One Alt-Weekly Leaves
UPDATE: On It Goes…
Oh how they’re mocking us in New York. Why? It’s ’cause of our stupid cell phone law (California Vehicle Code Section 23123), the one that’s not based on scientific study, the one that says there’s a great deal of difference between handsfree cell phone calls and regular old cell phone calls when driving. Are there powerful forces conspiring to prevent an outright ban on cell phone use for drivers? Yes.
Is the National Highway Safety Administration afraid to raise the issue of how it doesn’t matter if you use hands-free technology? Yes, pretty much.
You’re cold busted, legendary film producer Irwin Allen. After seeing this, my first impulse was to run up on you and do a Rambo, but then I realized that even if you had hands-free technology back in 1973, using it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway:
(Yes, this is a Rolls Royce. Thanks for asking!)
Would Maria Shriver be safer with a hands-free connection when she yaks away behind the wheel? No.
Oh well.
See those letters in solid-colored circles at the bottom of the Kaiser Permanente “thrive” bus stop ad near Geary and Gough? That just might earn Kaiser a cease and desist letter from Lester G. Freundlich, Senior Associate Counsel, Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Just check out beloved local website Muni Diaries here and here to learn of the metaphorical long-distance beat-down 40WithEgg recently received all the way from the Empire State.
The problem comes from using circled capital letters while referencing a transit theme.
Well let’s see dare ah, you’se got an “A,” in dare - what’s youse guys doin’ wit our freaking “A”? Click to expand:
Of course, you’d think that Kaiser would have looked at this issue already, but you never know.
These days, Joe Moore appears to be off of the thin ice for now, but who knows what the future will bring. Will he get sued by MUNI?
Possibly. Oh well.
Give those New Yawkers Hell, Joe. And Kaiser, you too.
Let’s close with a sample of a scary cease and desist letter. Cheers.
Your above store was selling through website www.Cafeshops.com a variety of T-shirts based upon Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s trademarks for various routes of the New York City subway system.
The symbols for the routes of the New York City subway system are MTA intellectual property which may not be used on products without a license from MTA. In the absence of a license for these products, you must immediately cease to sell the unlicensed products.
On the basis of the above, at MTA’s demand, www.cafeshops.com has removed your shop from its site.
This is to demand that, if you are manufacturing or selling these products through any other channel, you must cease and desist immediately.
Please respond immediately in writing to me at the address indicated below or by email at the address indicated below, by completing the applicable statements on page 2 and returning this letter to me.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Lester G. Freundlich
Senior Associate Counsel
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
Read all about the way these Obama as The Joker posters have been glued up all over the Financial District and the SoMA.
Or better yet, see the culprit, Joe or Kris, one of them, in action for yourself. (In this particular case, a woman is NOT the culprit. How refreshing!)
As seen on Mission Street:
I’d expect them to be all torn down by now…
The Pedestrianist today reminds us all that the temporary closure of 184 feet of Mason Street begins tomorrow, August 1, 2009. (And, as ususal, The Streetsblog can always get you up to speed on streets issues right quick.)
Check it. Can you see that tiny stretch of Mason between Lombard and Columbus? Imagine people lounging about (in the middle of the damn street!) for the next eight weeks or so.
Click to expand:
Here’s the mise-en-scene:
See the upper left corner? That little triangle is your possible future library location, pending NIMBY approval:
So if you ever experience congestion in North Beach or Chinatown or Fisherman’s Wharf, be sure to blame it on this tiny temporary plaza.
Will it be a “traffic nightmare“? The people at Save Mason Street think so.
Brace yourselves…
Let’s journey to insular, “secretive subdivision“ Westwood Highlands, on the slopes of Mount Davidson. Now whoever laid out and named the streets there must have had a sense of humor, because Hazelwood Avenue and Valdez Avenue are together forever, entwined through the ages.
Hazelwood, of course, was the captain of the oil-tanker Valdez when it spilled its guts all over Prince William Sound and beyond two decades ago. It was like the Cosco Busan oil spill excepting that it involved about 200 times as much petroleum.
Click to expand:
So that might be on your mind the next time you visit this small neighborhood of “minimal bungalows.”
Another thing that might strike you about Westwood Highlands was that it was one of the earliest planned residential communities in the United States, where property owners all would agree to be governed by a commons set of controls and restrictions. At the very least, that means “No Black People” is what that means.
Of course WestHigh wasn’t the only place in the world where this was the case, but it’s sort of funny when “born and raised in San Francisco” NIMBYs start talking about all the rules and customs they honor, they always leave this history out.
Here you go, this is typical. Just substitute “black people” for “in-law apartments” and “white people” for “single-family.”
IN-LAW UNIT AMNESTY
“Editor — Mayor Willie Brown’s recent re-election pledge to attempt to legalize the city’s illegal in-law apartments is unjust. Almost a hundred years ago many of San Francisco’s neighborhoods were designed and zoned for single-family use.
Our neighborhood, Westwood Highlands Homeowners, was so designated in 1924. Its status as such is further ensured by the mandatory covenants, controls and restrictions to which all Westwood Highlands residents must agree. Moreover, Proposition M, the voter mandate that states that the diversity of San Francisco’s neighborhoods be preserved, would be violated under this amnesty plan. People who move to single-family areas like ours because they enjoy the safety, convenience, parking and uncongested atmosphere that our single-family tracts have to offer have every right to do so.
In recent years, several city politicians have floated this illegal unit amnesty plan. In every case the plans have been abandoned. Mayor Brown should also give up on this unfair, unwise and unjust idea.
DAVID BISHO
President, Westwood Highlands Homeowners Association San Francisco”
You see? It’s the same argument. “My neighborhood was founded on the idea of ______, therefore it can never change.”
Little pink bungalo houses, for you and me and all the other pink people, and let’s keep it that way, for as long as we can, for as long as we can…
The thing you ought to know is that anytime San Francisco gets a little ink from a New Yorky dead tree publication such as the New York Times or Time magazine, it’s the talk of our little burg, population 799,000 (even after the “recount“), altitude 0, attitude 999,999+. We care oh so much about what people in NYC say – that’s why we’re as touchy as the Pace Picante Sauce cowboys.
So when we notice an obvious error in an otherwise excellent bit with nice photos, instead of sending off a friendly email to the author, we’ll pen this retort. (Although if we did email the author, he’d send a message to the boys in graphics in Bangalore or someplace and they’d fix it in about 10 minutes, something that happened in real life yesterday afternoon.) And when we see this excellent bit about the greater Upper Haight area complete with nice photos and useful insights, we’ll find a way to quibble. (Of course that author had a few errors as well, but they were cheerfully fixed with a correction appended to the first page.)
One of the real, genuine F-line cars, from the photostream of Telstar Logistics.
So, writers of New Yorkish dead tree publications, please don’t take offense from our provincial attitude. Deep down, we love you.
Y’all come back real soon, hear?
Well here it is, the Joseph Eichler Summit, a somewhat Republican condo building at triple-nine Green Street near Jones.
The obvious question is this: why is it so ugly?
Click to expand:
And from the San Francisco Chronicle’s John King, via Google Search, we get an answer:
“From the 24th on up, each floor flares out one foot beyond the one below.”
“…it has a tired look. A bumpy one, too, as many owners enclosed their balconies to gain a few more feet of living space.”
So there you have it. The Taipei 101-style flaring + the random enclosures = ugly.
This was the scene at 939 Market the other day when well-wishers sent so many celebratory balloons to Obama Biden HQ that there was trouble getting them all inside.
Such are the troubles of a front runner.
Click to expand:
Will you take today or tomorrow off from work to volunteer, as Barack asked you to?
Check out this video made by C-SPAN back in 1987. It shows ”a testy exchange in response to a question about his law school record from a man identified only as ‘Frank.””
“I think I probably have a higher IQ than you do, I suspect.”
Poor Frank! This vid got posted this morning just after news of Mr. Biden’s selection by Barack Obama. Slate.com’s Mickey Kaus predicted the surfacing of this material:
“Why Biden Would Be Bad: There’s a bit of C-SPAN tape that should surface quickly if he’s named. … Remember, it wasn’t Biden’s plagiarism that knocked him out of the 1988 race. It was “‘I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do”–a bizarre videotaped putdown that Biden immediately called into question with five (5) boasts about his academic record, four (4) of which turned out to be easily disproved B.S.”
This is what Joe looks like when he’s not in a testy mood:
from the photostream of World Econonomic Forum
Enjoy this video while you can, as it might get pulled soon.
Joe certainly is a smart guy and he was picked for a reason, but he’ll have to learn to count to ten before speaking when he gets into such a state.
UPDATE: Here’s a fuller version of the (stupid) question from Frank and the (ridiculous) response from Joe. If you cut out the first minute of the video and then stopped watching after 30 seconds or so, then you might think Joe gave a good answer.
