Read all about it here.
Whoops, maybe not. What happened?
Well then, read all about it here, below.
Poor Sandra! Poor Kristy!
[UPDATE, APRIL 30, 2013: Pulled. Come back May 1 for details, if you want.]
[UPDATE, May 1, 2013: Oh, you're back! Well, you know, the same basic info has been posted here by SideCar and it pays off on the headline of cars getting impounded. So I guess that's that, for now. Thank you, drive through,]
California registration? No thanks, that’s not for me. I prefer to use license plates from the Land of Enchantment and the Empire State.
But have you seen the urban snorkel (camera left, near the windshield) on my G-Wagen?
Breaking Bad:
Click to expand
Sometimes I just don’t know.
Via Monika Bauerlein comes this take-down of Uber Cab, and Lyft and Side Car and the like as well, I suppose.
A quote of a quote:
Matt Kochman… served as Uber’s founding general manager in New York before he left last year. Kochman left Uber to do consulting for transportation brands and startups, fed up with Uber’s irreverent attitude toward regulators. “Discounting the rules and regulations as a whole, just because you want to launch a product and you have a certain vision for things, that’s just irresponsible,” Kochman said.
Yep, pretty much.
That proposed CityPlace mall has a new name and they’ve just started working on getting it built.
See?
“…its name has been changed to Market Street Place, reflecting how even this blighted part of San Francisco’s main thoroughfare...”
And see?
Click to expand
This is all new. The whitewash went up on Monday, I think, and now we have the ads what say SHOPPING PLACE and whatnot.
This is what it will look like, without the homeless and the criminals and the iPhone fences and the drug dealers milling around out front:
More photorealistic:
Reverse angle:
The mall has it all. Actually, it’s a mall like any other from Anytown, USA. (Boy, John King is going to looooooove this, huh?)
All right, now let’s all thank the Carlyle Group for helping us out:
“The following is a list of both current and former employees and advisors.
Well, here it is:
Click to expand
All the deets:
“Mitsubishi Motors Makes First Fleet Delivery of the 2012 Mitsubishi i-MiEV (Mitsubishi innovative Electric Vehicle) to Bay Area’s City CarShare
SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 8, 2011 – Representatives from Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc., (MMNA), along with San Rafael Mitsubishi, conducted the very first fleet delivery of the all-new 100% electric-powered 2012 Mitsubishi i to the California Bay Area’s City CarShare in a special ceremony held at the Green Vehicle Showcase located in front of San Francisco City Hall Plaza on Thursday, December 8 at 9:00 a.m.
City CarShare is a Bay Area nonprofit organization founded in 2001 with the help of several other local nonprofits and the cities of San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland. Their mission is to promote innovative mobility options to improve the environment and the quality of life in the Bay Area. By providing short-term access to cars City CarShare is reducing traffic congestion, parking problems and dependence on oil while promoting cleaner air and quieter streets.
“We are very pleased to introduce the all electric Mitsubishi i into our fleet. This vehicle brings us one step closer toward our goal of having 50% of our fleet run on alternative fuel as part of our mission to decrease carbon emissions in the Bay Area,” said Rick Hutchinson, CEO, City CarShare.
Numerous fleet orders have already been placed for the innovative, environmentally-friendly and fun-to-drive Mitsubishi i by a wide variety of organizations – multinational corporations, municipalities large and small, major utilities and nonprofit organizations – from New York to Hawaii.
“We thank the Bay Area’s City CarShare for being the first fleet recipient of our innovative 100% electric-powered vehicle,” said Yoichi Yokozawa, President and CEO of Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc. (MMNA). “City CarShare’s stated goals are to help promote modes of personal transportation that help improve the environment while reducing noise pollution as well as fossil fuel dependence, so the 2012 Mitsubishi i is the perfect vehicle to help achieve this nonprofit’s ambitious mission.”
The 2012 Mitsubishi i is the first of several new advanced, alternative-fuel production vehicles that the Japanese auto manufacturer plans on bringing to the North American market in the next few years.
For more information about the 2012 Mitsubishi i, please visit media.mitsubishicars.com and i.mitsubishicars.com; for fleet sales information on Mitsubishi’s electric vehicle please log on to mitsubishicars.com/iMiEVfleet.
More information on the Bay Area’s City CarShare can be found at citycarshare.org.
SOURCE Mitsubishi Motors North America, Inc.”
I don’t know, I think this is going to be it, here’s the best media smackdown for 2011.
So there I was on the Twitter and I saw this from John Birdsall:
“RT @jonkauffman: The Chron and the GGRA seem to be going after food trucks. What’s wrong with this story? http://t.co/WhjP1GLX“
Intriguing, non? So I click on over to read “The Chronicle and the GGRA Go After Food Trucks“
So then I’m all like yes, yes, yes, that’s exactly right, Jonathan Kauffman!
Go ahead, check it out, the “flawed” piece in the Chron: ”Restaurants want to put brakes on food trucks.”
OK then.
To Tempest Bar’s Tony Cooney:
Uh, gee, maybe your place isn’t so hot for lunch. Why not work on that instead of crying like a baby? Perhaps you should shut down or move?
To “San Francisco merchants, property managers and restaurant owners”:
This is America, Land of the Free, right? (Cough, you’re just a bunch of rent seekers, cough)
To “opponents [who] complain that the law doesn’t limit the number of food trucks that can operate in a specific location”:
Tough cookies!
To Rob Black, “a lawyer and executive director of Golden Gate Restaurant Association”:
Lo-ser! (You gotta say that one the right way, as if harrasing Darryl Strawberry from the bleachers. I mean, c’mon, do you think that a nerdy, downtown-backed lawyer out of U.C. Hastings College of Law would ever have a prayer of becoming Supervisor of District Six?)
To “those motherfuckers at the Golden Gate Restaurant Association“:
FUCK YOU. Oh, wait a second, that’s not my line, that’s a direct quote from Chris Daly’s wife back in 2006. And at the time I thought, “Gee, what an odd thing to say.” But I’m starting to understand what she was talking about.
For example, Chris Daly wanted letter grades from the health department posted outside of San Francisco restaurants but the GGRA put the kibosh on that. Mmmm. Now, let’s take the time to explore this.
“An overwhelming 83% of San Francisco surveyors say they agree that restaurants should be required to conspicuously post a letter grade reflecting the results of their health department inspection (as recently passed in NYC, taking a cue from LA).”
Consumers want this, but the GGRA doesn’t so guess what, we don’t have it. You know what GGRA? The bottom 20% of your members shouldn’t even be in business, so why do you spend so much time defending them?
Hey, let’s see what Stanford Economist Phil Leslie has to say about letter grading:
“Sales at restaurants receiving an A grade rose 5.7 percent, or about $15,000 a year. B-level restaurant sales increased 0.7 percent, and sales at C-level establishments decreased 1 percent.”
So you don’t want that* for your members, huh, GGRA?
I don’t know why restaurant owners in San Francisco expect so much. I don’t know why they don’t expect to ever have any competition.
Remember this earlier in the year, when a struggling restaurateur went apeshit and starting parking her SUV specifically to block a food truck?
I’ll put a credit in if you want, but I don’t think you do. She’s still out there.
Oh, different day, different street, different truck, different obstructionist but the same purpose of parking vehicles in spaces to kick food trucks out of San Francisco.
I’ll put a credit in if you want, but I don’t think you do. That owner is still out there.
Struggling restaurateurs go after food trucks for the same reason they go after Yelp, IMO.
Speaking of which, maybe this is the kind of thing what fuels the wrath of legacy restaurant owners?
“This review is completely devoid of the passion associated with the Japanese Curry truck fiasco.
Foodwise: Salads = 3 stars, (Mixt Greens / Working Girls/ Sellers Mkt and even Portico or Lee’s are better though). Sandwiches = 1 star (this has become an office joke. $8+ for two pieces of meat, 1 teaspoon of sourkraut, and 1 piece of cheese. Not prepared to order, sitting in a cooler behind the counter!
Service: meh.
Atmosphere: Awkward flow from left to right , pleasant enough tables outside
Price: Crap. My salad was smaller than any of the choices above but cost more. And I went simple.”
Could be.
In closing, let’s all give thanks to SFoodie Jonathan Kauffman.
Congratulations, JK, on winning MSM Media Smackdown of the Year, 2011.
*”This study examines the effect of an increase in product quality information to consumers on firms’choices of product quality. In 1998, Los Angeles County introduced hygiene quality grade cards to bedisplayed in restaurant windows. We show that the grade cards cause (i) restaurant health inspection scores to increase, (ii) consumer demand to become sensitive to changes in restaurants’ hygiene quality,and (iii) the number of foodborne illness hospitalizations to decrease. We also provide evidence thatthis improvement in health outcomes is not fully explained by consumers substituting from poor hygiene restaurants to good hygiene restaurants. These results imply the grade cards cause restaurants to make hygiene quality improvements”
Sometimes, I just don’t know.
Let’s see here, “controlled demolition,” “Building 7,” “just asking questions,” “Architects & Engineers” – nothing’s changed since 2001.
But fresh lingo from 2011? Check.
“September 11, 2001 - the day our country was hijacked and a permanent war was launched that will not end in our lifetime unless we the 99% stop it.
Building 7, which most people don’t know about, came crashing to the ground at 5:20pm on September 11th. Today, millions of citizens and 1,600 courageous architects and engineers are demanding an investigation into the suspect destruction of this skyscraper.
The government’s absurd story that “normal office fires” felled this 47-story skyscraper is only the tip of the iceberg of the anomalies and inconsistencies we’ve been given about 9/11.
Today we are taking our country back. We will not rest until those responsible for the death of 3,000 innocent people on 9/11 are brought to justice, and the war dollars are brought home.”
Enjoy your religion, Truthers.
After 9/11, FEMA needed somebody to go up in a chopper every day for nine months to document recovery and removal. A certain Mr. Brown was the man for the job.
Check it, from the NYT, via Todd Lapin:
“Do you do aerial photography?” the caller asked.
“Sure,” Mr. Brown said. “If you have a plane or a helicopter.”
“We have planes and helicopters,” the caller replied.
But, “The truth was, he had never done aerial work.” Uh oh.
Nevertheless, it was all good, and the rest is history.
From before the time the telephone book industry got demolished by the Internet:
Cameras sure were big back then, huh?
World-famous ballerina Maria Kochetkova is down in Mexico City these days, but she’ll be back to our world-class San Francisco Ballet for the 2012 Season soon enough.
This one is simply entitled, “Me Dancing.”
Hey, speaking of ballet, here’s a recent announcement about why you always see gaggles of ballet students congregating around Civic Center every summer:
SAN FRANCISCO BALLET SCHOOL ANNOUNCES - NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL AUDITION TOURS
SAN FRANCISCO –San Francisco Ballet School, the official school of San Francisco Ballet, has announced the schedule for its first-ever International Audition Tour. The School has also announced the dates for its 2012 National Audition Tour. Over the course of three months, hundreds of teenage girls and boys from across Europe and the U.S. will audition for an invitation to attend one of two Summer Sessions offered by San Francisco Ballet School. These include Program 1, a three-week program for intermediate students, and Program 2, a four-week program designed for advanced and pre-professional students. Program 1 will be held this summer from June 11–29; Program 2 will be held July 9–August 3.
The 2012 International Audition Tour is scheduled to visit 4 European cities: London; Madrid; Marseille, France and Florence, Italy. These auditions will be held for advanced and pre-professional students, only.
The 2012 National Audition Tour is scheduled to visit 11 U.S. cities: Boca Raton, FL; Boston; Chicago; Dallas/Ft. Worth; Irvine, CA; New York; San Francisco; Santa Monica, CA; Seattle; Washington, D.C. and Winston-Salem, NC.
“There are many talented young dancers throughout Europe who are well-suited to participate in our training programs,” said Lola de Avila, associate director of the San Francisco Ballet School. “For the first time ever, San Francisco Ballet School is thrilled to hold international auditions, offering prospective students the chance to receive the highest-caliber training.”
Nearly 1,500 intermediate and advanced-level students are expected to audition on the tour, vying for approximately 125 positions for each of the School’s Summer Session programs. The Summer Sessions will include intensive classes in classical ballet technique, pointe work, batterie, dance history, repertoire, character, and Pilates. Students must attend a Summer Session in order to be considered for admittance to the School’s regular school year program.
About San Francisco Ballet School
San Francisco Ballet School, the country’s oldest classical academy, is directed by San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director and Choreographer Helgi Tomasson and Associate Director Lola de Avila. Now, over 75 years after its founding, the School boasts a distinguished international staff, a Trainee Program for advanced-level students, a dedicated student residence, and an extensive scholarship program. San Francisco Ballet School attracts students from around the world, training approximately 350 annually. In addition to filling the ranks of San Francisco Ballet, graduates have gone on to join distinguished ballet companies throughout the world.
For more information on San Francisco Ballet School’s Summer Sessions, visit: www.sfballet.org/school/summer_session.
Well this is different. Legacy bay area media institution KNTV is is actually adding investigative reporters to the payroll.
Get all the deets below.
I’ll tell you, I’m getting a Dan Noyes, quasi-in-yo-face vibe from both these newcomers.
Here’s Tony Kovaleski, on the left, going after a purported “Guido” executive at Pebble Beach:
And here’s lovely Jenna Susko – oh man, she’s not afraid to ask questions as this highlight reel amply demonstrates:
Bon Courage, Tony Kovaleski!
Bon Courage, Jenna Susko!
All the deets:
“NBC Bay Area Expands Investigative Reporting Capabilities - Award-Winning Investigative Reporter Tony Kovaleski To Lead New Investigative Team - Jenna Susko Joins Station As Investigative Reporter
SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 11, 2011 — NBC Bay Area today announced that it has added two investigative reporters to the station’s news staff, significantly increasing the station’s investigative reporting capabilities in advance of launching a new unit early next year.
Bay Area native Tony Kovaleski joins NBC Bay Area to lead the station’s investigative team after working at television stations in Phoenix, Houston and Denver. While in Denver, Kovaleski exposed problems with emergency services at Denver’s airport and uncovered inappropriate gifts given to government appointees. Kovaleski’s reports resulted in significant changes in airport operations and in tighter regulations governing gifts and travel. As the winner of the prestigious Alfred I. DuPont-Columbia award in 2010, the national Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Journalism, the Sigma Delta Chi award, the National Headliner award and more than 26 Emmy Awards including this year’s Emmy for Investigative Journalism, he is considered one of the country’s premiere investigative reporters. Kovaleski is a graduate of San Jose State University with a degree in Journalism.
Investigative reporter Jenna Susko comes to NBC Bay Area after working at television stations in the southeastern United States. She has built a reputation for quality investigative reporting with stories about poor oversight of FEMA funds across the Gulf Coast, mismanagement in a court system allowing criminals to easily get cases dismissed and security flaws at a local school system. Susko has a degree from Florida State University in Communications and English Literature.
“As we increase our investment in high-quality local journalism, we are very pleased to welcome these two investigative journalists to the Bay Area and into our newsroom,” said Richard Cerussi, President and General Manager of NBC Bay Area. ”Tony and Jenna are the first of many new team members who will allow us to bring Bay Area viewers more of the kind of in-depth investigations that result in positive change.”
About NBC Owned Television Stations
NBC Owned Television Stations is the division of NBCUniversal that includes 10 local television stations and their digital channels and websites, as well as a group of out-of-home properties and a production company. The 10 stations produce and deliver compelling and unique local news, information and entertainment programming to viewers in the communities they serve, which include New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, Dallas-Fort Worth, Washington, D.C., Miami, San Diego and Connecticut, with a goal of connecting to their audiences anytime and anywhere.”
