“Skateboard Group Condemns Supervisor for Criticism of Free Civic Center Event
The San Francisco Skateboarding Association had strong words for a San Francisco Supervisor critical of the skateboard and BMX contest held in the Civic Center Plaza this weekend. The event is free and open to the public.
“By publicly condemning the Mountain Dew Tour in their inaugural year in SF, Supervisor John Avalos continued a practice perfected by our parents’ generation of elected leaders: bash skateboarders and deny us access to public spaces in San Francisco,” said Bryan Hornbeck, President of the SF Skateboard Association.
In the mid-80’s San Francisco became the birthplace of a worldwide phenomenon known as “streetstyle” skateboarding, where skaters utilize man made structures to express themselves* in ways no architect ever imagined. The Dew Tour brings professional athletes from around the world to compete in a world-class skatepark. Local riders also get to participate. On Sunday, the skatepark will be open to the public for a community skate session.
San Francisco is also home to Thrasher Magazine, an internationally recognized skateboard publication and several high profile skateboard companies and retail establishments. The Dew Tour at Civic Center is seen as an economic boon to the San Francisco skateboard industry that employs hundreds of people, mostly under the age of 30.
“To us, this is the Super Bowl of skateboarding. Our store has seen a huge amount of traffic for the past two weeks because of the Dew Tour. This helps our business, which in turn helps our employees. Maybe Supervisor Avalos is upset that they took away his parking space in front of City Hall, but it’s a small price to pay for promoting our industry to the world,” said Kent Uyehara, owner of FTC Skateboard Shop on Haight St.
Organizers of the event say that thousands of hotel rooms have been booked for the participants and their families and that the event is being streamed and broadcast on network television to millions worldwide.
The S.F.S.A. seeks to advocate for skateboarders of San Francisco through organized representation and community action. The S.F.S.A. wants to improve the public’s perception of skateboarders through education, information distribution and community outreach with a focus on the creation of public skateboard parks for the youth of our great city. http://sfskateboarding.wordpress.com/”
OK fine.
Oh, what’t this, Central Freeway skate park? Rly? Hey, what about a Central Subway skate park – I’d like to see that.
*Now I’ll tell you, I don’t know if the BOMA people would approve of this…
“USF School of Law Celebrates 100 Years in San Francisco - Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to Speak at Convocation
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 17, 2012 – Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will kick off a year-long celebration at the University of San Francisco School of Law, which is commemorating its 100(th) birthday and a century of providing a premiere legal education at the city’s first university.
Kennedy will deliver a keynote address during the public convocation on Wed., Sept. 19 at 5 p.m. inside St. Ignatius Church on the USF campus. Kennedy is a professor of environmental law at Pace University and co-director of that school’s Environmental Litigation Clinic. He was named one of Time magazine’s “Heroes for the Planet” for his success in helping restore New York’s Hudson River.
“Our centennial celebration is about far more than longevity,” said Jeffrey Brand, dean of the USF School of Law. “It’s about one hundred years of offering an education with a conscience, and graduating top attorneys who empower the powerless and help change a world plagued by injustice. As we begin our second century in this magnificent city, we rededicate ourselves to our vital mission of educating for justice.”
Social justice is a cornerstone of the school’s identity. In 2011-12 alone, USF law students provided 22,000 hours of pro-bono legal work to underserved communities, and the school-sponsored seven free law clinics, including the Investor Justice Clinic where students represent investors in actions involving allegations of wrongdoing by securities firms or their employees, and the Child Advocacy Law Clinic in which students receive training and, under the supervision of the clinic director, represent abused, neglected, or abandoned children in child welfare proceedings.
The USF School of Law began on Sept. 18, 1912 on the corner of Market and 7(th) Streets in downtown San Francisco with three faculty and 39 students. Today, it has 40 influential legal scholars who teach 700 students on the USF Law School campus near Golden Gate Park. The school is proud to be one of the nation’s most diverse with nearly half of its law students identifying themselves as ethnic minorities, and 53% are women.
The USF School of Law is sponsoring a number of notable events during its year-long centennial celebration, including:
— Sept. 27: Presentation by Clarence B. Jones, former speechwriter, attorney, and advisor to the late Martin Luther King Jr.: “Pivotal Legal and Leadership Policy Decisions Faced by Martin Luther King.”
– Nov. 9: Public Interest Law Foundation Annual Auction and Award Ceremony honoring David Boies, chairman of the law firm Boies, Schiller & Flexner. This is a fundraiser to provide grants to law students working in unpaid public interest law jobs during summer break.
– Feb. 7: Centennial Gala Dinner, San Francisco City Hall.
About the University of San Francisco School of Law
The University of San Francisco School of Law is located in the heart of one of the world’s most innovative and diverse cities. The law school pursues excellence in a humane, diverse, and intellectually vibrant learning community of outstanding teachers and scholars dedicated to training ethical professionals. Its diverse student body enjoys direct access to faculty, small classes, and innovative programming that educates students to be skilled and effective lawyers ready to practice law. Now celebrating its centennial year, the USF School of Law is ranked as one of the “Top 170 Law Schools” by Princeton Review and the 10(th) most ethnically diverse law school in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. For more information, please visit www.usfca.edu/law.
Journalists interested in covering the Sept. 19 convocation, or any other centennial event, must register in advance by contacting Anne-Marie Devine at (415) 422-2697 or abdevine@usfca.edu.
SOURCE University of San Francisco, School of Law”
Back in the day down there betwixt San Francisco’s Financial District and the Golden Gateway Apartments, tourists would come along and just hold their hands out, with astonishing results.
But now it’s all like this. (Gee, should I get a Chinese character inked on my Europid skin and be a laughingstock for the rest of my life or should I get something cool like this instead? Mmmm, decisions, decisions…)
Man, the people inside the consulate went berserk over this one. They ended up going to the roof to cut her down. (Lucky for her she was just 15 feet above a balcony – if she had fallen to the sidewalk below, it could have been fatal.) And then they blocked the SFFD from taking her to SF General to get her leg injuries treated. (You know, back then, the PRC was kind of a pariah nation.)
Anywho, my point is that the Chinese Communist Party can’t abide** protest, even little ones about proper dress codes, so it will be interesting to see what happens when Democracy finally finds its way to China. Perhaps the CCP would end up the winner in a fair election. Who knows.
But little things, like “underground” performance art protests, have a tendency to turn into bigger things.
Sometimes.
We’ll see.
*I mean I don’t think you should ever broach the topic of the SFMTAMUNIDPT without saying up front that MUNI sucks, that MUNI has lots and lots of room for improvement. This kind of constructive criticism displays the fact that you don’t think that MUNI is the Best Darn Agency in the World or something like that.So you could say, “Of course MUNI sucks, but I think that we should keep on building that horrible Central Subway.” That would be interesting, huh? That would show at least that you acknowledge reality and also that you feel that paying the Feds back their $200,000,000 or so would be a burden on the City and County. And then somebody else might counter with, “Yeah, we should make a deal with the Feds not to spend good money after bad - maybe let’s just forget the whole thing and let’s not require repayment of the money back to the US Treasury. That would be a win-win for San Francisco and all the taxpayers of America.” Or something like that. Now you’re on the trolley!
**Hey, now let’s hear from Mayor Ed Lee “advisor” / Chinese Consulate “advisor” Chinatown “Power Broker” Rose Pak, you know, from back in the day, after she descended from her taxpayer-financed, below-market condo penthouse in District Six:
“When asked what message she would like to convey to the Chinese government, Pak said, ‘On what moral ground do we have as United States citizens lecturing what China should do when our own President would drum up falsehoods and bomb Iraq back to the stone-age, killing several hundred thousand innocent Iraqis. Look at all the problems in the world, (they) are all created by Western countries with their phony-baloney moral standards,’ Pak added.”
Take a look at this segment created by the “Strava Community” of troubled Strava, Inc. owners, managers, and/or users.
See? This is a bike trip down Nob Hill through the Tenderloin to the Mid Market:
Click to expand
Note the innocuous-sounding title: Hyde/Market st.
But also note the URL up there. The name of this segment used to be “Hyde Street Bomb!” But that doesn’t look so hot when you’re in the national news for getting sued.
Oh, here it is, have a go on the YouTube – will the cyclist beat all those cagers in Priuseses what stop for red lights? Hells yes:
Now, do you think that the “Strava Community” might have had an effect on the behavior of this cyclist?
You Make The Call.
And oh, here’s how that Strava webpage looked before, was it just a day ago? Two days ago? I don’t know. But this is quite a recent change. Alls I know is that somebody in the “Strava Community,” be it an owner, manager, legal advisor, person following instructions from a legal advisor, cyclist, or, really, anybody in the entire world, created this segment and/or edited it.
The people at Strava, Inc. aren’t what you call transparent, so it’s hard to tell.
Anyway, here’s your Hyde Street Bomb!
Does registering for Strava and racing down Nob Hill in this fashion make you an “athlete?”
