Posts Tagged ‘newspaper’
Monday, March 8th, 2010
Not too often you see regular military fighter jets above San Francisco these days, you know, just flying around on some mission as opposed to performing an airshow. Last time for me seeing something like that was when a pair of U.S. Air Force F-15’s roared low and fast over the Western Addition about a half-decade ago.
Here’s the view from Haight Ashbury yesterday, through the Blue Gum Eucalyptus trees. Don’t bother looking at the misfocused photo ’cause you probably won’t be able to see them, but KPIX / CBS5 has some footage from Oakland International Airport yesterday. There they are lined up next to the King Airs and whatnot at OAK.
Speaking of airshows, remember this alarmist headline from a few years back: “Blue Angel Kills Thousands in SF crash”
Of course, no spectator has died at an airshow in San Francisco ever, I don’t think. And actually, no airshow accident has killed or injured a spectator in America in the past half-century or so that writer Tim Redmond has been alive. (Let’s not talk about Russia or Ukraine – spectators die all the time in those places.)
And of course, a crash like that one in San Diego wouldn’t kill anybody in San Francisco because the Blue Angels would react differently to a sudden loss of power. And if there were a crash for other reasons, it would be simply unpossible for that to kill “thousands.”
Anyway, if you ever want to say that you don’t like the Blue Angels, it’ll be up to you to just say that you don’t like the Blue Angels or, instead, to make a blog post going, “Blue Angel Kills Thousands in SF crash.”
Your choice.
Anyway again, this “Military Aircraft operation” might have brought a nuclear aircraft carrier to the waters of the Farallones, who knows.
Look to the skies! They are ever changing.
Suit and tie comes up to me
His face red
Like a rose on a thorn bush
Like all the colours of a royal flush
And he’s peeling off those dollars bills
Slapping them down, one hundred, two hundred,
And I can see those fighter planes
And I can see the fighter planes
Across the mud huts as the children sleep
Through the alleys of a quiet city street
Up the staircase to the first floor
We turn the key and slowly unlock the door
A man breathes deep into saxophone
Through the walls we hear the city groan
Outside is America
Outside is America
Tags: 1000's, 18, ab, accident, air show, aircraft, airplane, airport, arishow, attack, Bay, bay guardian, Blue Angel, Blue Angel.Blue Angels, blue angels, carrier, cd, crash, cvn, f-18, f/a, f18, fa-18, fighter, guardian, haight Ashbury, hornet, international, KPIX, military, newspaper, nuclear, oak, Oakland, pilot, San Francisco, SFO, super hornet, thousands, tim redmond, TV, u.s. navy, United States, usmc. marines
Posted in aircraft, military | 3 Comments »
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
Remember back in the day, back when Bay Areans could espy the straight-outta-Redwood-City $200-million Sea Shadow stealth ship bobbing about in San Francisco Bay? Check this video from down Fun Diego way over at Telstar Logistics to see this baby in action.
Say it aloud: Super-Secret Sea Shadow Stealth Ship, Super-Secret Sea Shadow Stealth Ship, Super-Secret Sea Shadow Stealth Ship! This project was so secret that it didn’t make the Bay Area newspapers, excepting for 1999 when this boat was identified as an airplane three times by the San Francisco Examiner.*
This is what she looked like, coming out in the daytime when she was no longer so very supr sekrt:
Guess what, the U.S. Navy wants to give her away for free! The problem is that there are no takers as of yet, so the ex Sea Shadow just sits around in the mothballed Ghost Fleet of the East Bay. Check out these recent photos from Amy Heiden. Pretty boss, huh?
Now the first time the Navy tried to give away this historic boat, in 2006, they had all sorts of rules. Then they tried again in 2009 with more flexible rules. But the problem is that you can’t just take the Shadow, you also have to take the Hughes Mining Barge (HMB-1), a floating drydock boat that was developed as part of Project Jennifer. (That was the semi-successful, top-secret effort mounted by the Central Intelligence Agency to salvage the remains of the Soviet submarine K-129 from the ocean floor.)
Here’s a shot of them together, ignore the two conventional warships in the background:
But wait, there’s more. Here’s how the Sea Shadow is laid out on the inside:
The bridge of Grant Imahara’s future evil lair. (Boy, talk about a glass cockpit, huh?)
And here’s how she looks from the outside:
You want. Why don’t you start up a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and take these things off of the Navy’s hands? Otherwise an important piece of Bay Area military history (and film history what with it inspiring the bad guys’ floating lair in Tomorrow Never Dies) is a gonna get scrapped.
Here’s what came next, after the Shadow got mothballed – it’s the all-aluminum Sea Fighter, as seen back in 2006:
via Telstar Logistics
The point being is that the aging Sea Shadow is the ur-ship, the JetFire of the stealth boat world. Won’t you save her?
O.K., first things first. Check out the owner’s manuals and start writing your business plan. (And, oh yes, while you’re at it, scrape up some cash. Lots and lots and lots o’ cash.)
Happy sailing!
The Navy’s announcement, after the jump.
*From 1999: “The combined Navy-Marine exercise included overflights of the Bay Area by the Sea Shadow, the Navy equivalent of the stealth bomber.” No, this thing can’t fly, it just floats. Veteran SF Chronicle writer Henry K. Lee got that right but others did not. Nevertheless, SFGate.com, San Francisco’s online newspaper, remains an invaluable resource.
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Tags: (HMB-1, 007, adopt, Amy Heiden, Bay, bay area, Central Intelligence Agency, chronicle, Contra Costa, county, donate, east bay, ex, ex sea shadow, Examiner, fighter, fleet, fsf-1, g row, ghost, Golden Gate Bridge, Henry K. Lee, Hughes Mining Barge, ix-529, james bond, Lockheed, marines, mothball, National Defense Reserve Fleet, navy, newspaper, Project Jennifer, radar, redwood city, San Francisco, san francisoc's online newspaper, san francsico, Sea Fighter, sea shadow, secret, ship, stealth, suisun, susuin, Tomorrow Never Dies, u.s. navy, United States
Posted in bay area, vessels | No Comments »
Monday, January 25th, 2010
Our neighbors in the Great Sand Waste* of the Outside Lands are having a little trouble with the partial collapse of the Great Highway near Sloat, so there’ll be a meeting tonight at 7:00 PM:
“A community meeting is being held on Monday, January 25th at 7:00 PM at the Park Chalet (located behind the Beach Chalet at 1000 Great Highway just south of Fulton in San Francisco) to discuss the proposed actions at Sloat Boulevard. The DPW Project Manager, Frank Filice will be there to discuss the emergency declaration, the short-term strategy, and a process for a long-term solution. Everyone who has an interest in the preservation and the future of Ocean Beach is encouraged to attend. The emergency declaration will go before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for ratification the following day, Tuesday, January 26th.”
Will San Francisco “armor the beach“ or something? Stay tuned…
by k. riccitiello
If that doesn’t float your boat, there’s always, this:
“The Park Chalet will be offering $2 pints and extending their $5 happy hour menu of appetizers all night for the event.”
See you there.
*Look at this – snark from 160 years ago: The True Story of How San Francisco Received Its Name:
“San Francisco – this is a derivative word from sand and Francisco. In the early settlement of this country it was the custom of an old monk of the interior, by the name of Jeremiah Francisco, to perform a pilgrimage to this place every month, to visit the tomb of a brother of the order whose remains he had here interred. The wind “blew like mad” here, and upon his return he was usually so covered with the dust and sand, that his neighbors were unable to recognize him; hence they soon began to call him sand Francisco.
On one of his pilgrimages he happened, by mistake, to die here, and the place ever after was called by his name. From the difficulty of enunciating the d, it was usually called SAN FRANCISCO, and has so continued to this day. The present popular notion that the place was named after the St. Francis Hotel is an error!
California Weekly Courier
August 1, 1850″
Tags: beach, beer, board of supervisors, california, California Weekly Courier, chalet, coalition, collapse, declaration, department of public works, district, dpw, emergency, Erosion, fog, Frank Filice, great highway, Great Sand Waste, Great Sand Waste of the Outside Lands, media, meeting, newspaper, ocean, ocean beach, Ocean Beach Task Force, outer, outside lands, park chalet, parkside, Project Manager, rain, restaurant, richmond, san francsico, sand, sand Francisco, save the waves, Sloat, snark, surf, surfers, surfing, susnet, town hall, waves, Weekly Courier, zoo
Posted in parks | No Comments »
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
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…
Tags: +3, 2010, 885.fm, 8th, alt weekly, Aunty Entity, bay area, bay guardian, benjamin, Benjamin Wachs, beyond, big, blog, City, debate, editor, Eskenazi, fm, forum, gavin newsom, iii, january, Joe, Joe Eskenazi, kqed, kqed-fm, krasney, mad max, Mayor, Michael, Michael Krasney, mike, newspaper, One Alt-Weekly Leaves, one man enter, one man leaves, politics, radio, redmond, San Francisco, sf weekly, sfbg, snitch, thunderdome, tim redmond, Tina Turner, Two Alt-Weeklies Enter, United States, Wachs, weekly, worst-run, wrter
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, January 4th, 2010
San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist Don Asmussen’s latest effort is a doozy.
Shouldn’t he be Cartoonist of the Decade, or something?
The first panel of GAVATAR:
Gaia bless Don Assmussen.
Tags: Asmussen, avatar, bad reporter, Cartoon, chronicle, Dan Asmussen, don, Don Asmussen, donald, film, gavatar, gavin newsom, Mayor, newspaper, political, San Francisco, sfgate
Posted in media | No Comments »
Monday, December 14th, 2009
Well, our famous local ad agency, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners at 720 California in the Nob Hill / Chinatown area, has just earned the title of Ad Agency of the Decade from AdWeekMedia’s Best of the 2000s.
(IMO, they had this award in the bag solely due to the tail end of the Budweiser Frog, Lizard and Ferret TV campaign stretching into The Aughts. Ah, memories.)
Congratulations to the hundreds of people at Goodby Silverstein!
Deets after the jump.
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Tags: 720 california, ad, Ad Agency of the Decade, advertising, adweek, adweek media, adweekmedia, agency, beer, best of the 2000s, Bud, Budweiser, commercial, decade, ferret, frogs, goodby, Grant, jeff, lizards, magazine, media, newspaper, rich, San Francisco, silverstein, Silverstein & Partners, stockton, street, TV
Posted in advertising | No Comments »
Monday, December 14th, 2009
This is how the Holiday Tree in front of San Francisco City Hall was lit at night last year:
Via Steve Rhodes, who, like Visa, is Everywhere You Want To Be.
But all that color in Civic Center offended certain WASP-y type people. People like Thurston Howell III et ux Lovey:
So here are the expensive new lights for 2009, or some of them anyway. These colorless lights cost $13,500, per City Insder Rachel Gordon.
That ought to placate the richers for a while.
But couldn’t Rec and Park have put this matter to a vote, maybe online using that social media and whatnot? A penniless blogger could throw up a voting system in about five minutes – can’t Rec and Park do the same? This isn’t a matter of health or safety, right? So it seems appropriate that the Gilligans, Professors and the Mary Anns should have a say as well. Why do we seem to only listen to the Howells?
Oh well.
For 2009 anyway, enjoy your boring, WASPy-white, star-free Christmas Tree, San Francisco. But don’t give up Hope for Change (is that a “traditional” train ’round the tree R&P?) next year.
Tags: 13, 2008, 2009, 500, Blue, christmas tree, chronicle, City Hall, city insider, civic center, colored, department, dept., general manager, green, haze, holiday, led, lights, newspaper, parks, Phil Ginsburg, plaza, purple, rachel gordon, rec, recreation, Recreation and Park Department, red, San Francisco, sfgate, strand, tree christmas, trees, wasp, waspy, white, white anglo saxon protestant, white house
Posted in government | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Remember what newpaper racks used to look like? Sure you do, because they’re all over the less-populated parts of town. But the Great PedMount Invasion of the Aughts this past decade is firmly entrenched on Market Street near Union Square, and the Castro, and other places.
San Francisco’s ridiculous News Rack Ordinance mandates these glorious pieces of “Street Furniture.” Does this program cause problems for the Bay Times newspaper and other free publications? Yes. Should we double the cost the producers of the publications have to pay again? Why not? Would San Francisco’s Quimby-esque mayors, past and present, such as Willie Brown, have numerous motives to support this kind of scheme? Oh yes.
Oh well.
(Did publishers at the time band together to fight? Sort of.)
So, this photo on the Boing Boing was kind of misleading, of course, but what’s the point of having 20+ completely empty news boxes mounted on six pedestals in front of the Abercrombie at Fifth and Market?
How about using them as bike racks when others aren’t available and you are tasked to buy 100ml of Fierce cologne for $70(!) after work? (Girlfriend, Abercrombie cologne costing $3000/gallon is just about the last thing he wants from you this Christmas, just saying.) The green metal handles are perfect for even the heartiest of U-locks. See?
Click to expand
Dead and wounded on either side/
You know it’s only a matter of time:
Who can afford to pay the fees? Spammers, mostly.
A tombstone, of sorts. Here lies AsianWeek. Here lies Where Magazine…
If your vocabulary includes terms like “streetscape” and “street furniture,” and you don’t like the media and/or you don’t like what the media says about you, you ought to consider starting a News Rack Ordinance in your town. Why not? Feel free to call the resulting Fail Whale a “huge improvement.”
Tags: "street furniture, abercrombie, bay times, fees, fifth, first amendment, fitch, gavin newsom, market, Mayor, media, news, news rack, newspaper, ordinance, paper, pedmount, racks, San Francisco, street, streetscape, union square, wilie brown
Posted in bikes, media | 1 Comment »
Thursday, November 5th, 2009
OMG it’s here, it’s finally here! On the heels of the new Bay Area Blog and Bay Area Edition from the New York Times comes the Wall Street Journal ’s expanded entry into the San Francisco Bay Area market.
Let’s see here, bay areans now have our own webpage at wsj.com and we also have OneSpot - “San Francisco Stories from Around the Web.” And those pages point you to local content, such as this outrageous, 900+ pixel wide photo essay about Haight Ashbury. (Dig the crazy colors, man.)
Give us More, I say. Hang those who talk of less.
All right. Expect good things.
Bon courage, WSJ!
Tags: bay area, new york times, newspaper, nyt, onespot, online, San Francisco, san francisco bay area, San Francisco Stories from Around the Web, wall street journal, wsj
Posted in media | 1 Comment »
