The San Francisco Citizen

When you’re visiting San Francisco, you should always remember that you shouldn’t commit assault and/or battery on a woman in broad daylight near a busy intersection such as Van Ness and McAllister. Now, maybe you didn’t hit her but you touched her and chased her and she yelled out, so that’s going to start a chain of events that inevitably winds up with you being in the hands of the SFPD in about three minutes.

Passersby don’t really care if you have a domestic dispute, a business dispute, or any other kind of dispute with the woman wearing boots and a sundress. They’re all going to call 911 ASAP. What are you thinking, dude?    

The detention and makeshift interrogation begins. “Are you high?” Click to expand:

WHO: You, the dude in the suit.

WHAT: Attempting to detain somebody against her will on the sidewalk.  

WHY: Doesn’t matter.

WHERE: Across the street from San Francisco City Hall.

WHEN: The morning of a huge Anti-Prop 8 protest at City Hall.

That’s your lesson for the day.

You can tell by the number of people waiting at the corner of Fillmore and McAllister during one recent morning that it’s been a while since an inbound #5 Fulton has come down the street.

The futility comes from the fact that the next bus that comes will be full, because if these people here have been waiting for a long time so has everybody else upstream. One option would be to use your two good legs (which most of of the people shown certainly have) and hoof it downstream towards Gough or Van Ness, where a significant number of people get off, leaving you with room to get on no matter how full the bus is.

Click to expand.

Some people just crane their necks and stare up the street as a coping strategy. That technique will work as well, but it takes a while sometimes.

Oh well.

(Things will only get busier around here when the Western Addition Obama Phone Bank (they prefer it if you B.Y.O.C. Bring Your Own Cellie) gets cooking at the West Bay Conference Center on 1290 Fillmore near Eddy.)

A couple hundred people flowed through the doors of UC Hastings College of Law over the weekend to take advantage of the free Citizenship Workshop put on by the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

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There were lots of reporters on hand, so the Speaker spoke out on the issue of the day:

“The government must stabilize the financial system because if we don’t, it will have a tremendous impact on American consumers, homeowners, taxpayers and the rest.” But, she added, “We cannot deal with this unless this bailout helps families stay in their homes.”

Look forward to more convenient one-day workshops similar to this from our Representative in Congress.

Well the concrete slabs are starting to stack up in the Civic Center - it’s a parking garage/retail space project. The 1200 students at vaunted UC Hastings School of Law (the oldest and largest law school west of St. Louis, or something) have enjoyed discounted parking at the Civic Center Garage for years.

Changes are afoot in front of historic McAllister Tower:

It’s nice to see these kids will be pulling their own weight soon. The whole idea is to make the place more “student friendly.” 

We’ll see.

Fiat justitia