The San Francisco Citizen

The latest chapter in the long story of San Francisco’s Bicycle Plan began today with this filing from the office of San Francsico City Attorney Dennis Herrera. (Earlier chapters of this tale dealt with local social gadlfly and self-confessed JFK conspiracy theory crank Robert “Crazy Rob” Anderson and his successful efforts to get the city to do an environmental impact study.)

It seems that certain areas just can’t wait for the bureaucratic gears to grind, so a judge is being asked to give the city and county permission to get started sooner rather than later.  

Dennis J. Herrera, San Francisco’s happy warrior:

What areas are those? Well, how about Market and Octavia for starters. But there are other problem areas as well. Try these on for size:

Polk Street between Beach and Market Streets, where 73 motor vehicle-bicycle collisions have been reported since 2003.

The length of Valencia Street, where the 65 motor vehicle-bicycle collisions reported since 2003 include a large proportion of “dooring” incidents.

The Third Street Corridor, where the 32 collisions involving cyclists and motorists reported since 2003 include one fatality of a bicyclist struck by a truck at Third and Marin Streets.

Folsom Street between 13th Street and the Embarcadero, where 52 bicycle-related injury accidents have been reported in the last five years.

Lower Market Street, from 8th Street to the Embarcadero.  Some 179 bicycle injury collisions have occurred along the entire length of Market Street, from Castro Street to the Embarcadero (including the Market and Octavia intersection) over the past five years.

What will Judge Peter J. Busch make of this? We’ll have an inkling by the end of the month.

Today’s filing certainly seems like a well-tailored request…

Well, it’s on SFGate so it must be true: “Thousands of demonstrators” gathered in front of San Francisco City Hall this morning to voice their beef with Prop 8. That’s a big improvement over coverage from the MSM from just a week ago.

Famous blogger Phil Bronstein now makes light of the erroneous estimate of 1000 souls from the Chronicle / SFGate / the Associated Press at last week’s march down Market Street. Apparently, being off by an order of magnitude or two on crowd estimates is par for the course in the mainstream media. (Be careful, else you’ll wind up on the “Gay Enemies List,” and you don’t want to be there.)

Count for yourself:

What’s interesting is that there appears to be no effort to figure out what went wrong with the 1000 person estimate. It was a mistake made by one person that didn’t get caught by the vaunted multi-layer vetting process that separates newspapers from the Internets. Oh well.  

Watch ABC News play it safe here:

One of the largest rallies was on the steps of San Francisco City Hall, considered ground zero in the battle for same sex marriage. Lesbian activist Carole Migden whipped the crowd up as she declared, “They hate us. Let’s just acknowledge it.” Then she pushed the crowd “to turn our rage into action.”

A partial speakers list:

Senator Carole Migden
Senator-Elect Mark Leno
Assembly Member-Elect Tom Ammiano
Amos Brown
Stuart Gaffney and John Lewis; Plaintiffs in the California marriage case
Mark Oliver and Clark Pingree; Representing “Mormons for Marriage”
Rev. Dr. Penny Nixon
Rev. Dr. Dorsey Blake

And speaking of SFGate, let’s take a look at a charming comment contained therein:

thechamp1 11/15/2008 12:27:51 PM FIRST COMMENT : EAT SH** AND DIE FAG*S

Oh well.  

Off the protesters went up Market Street.

To be continued…

This was the scene on Haight Street the other day - four urban youths inside of one AMC Pacer. This thing was advertised as the “first wide small car,” and maybe it was. Back in the day, certainly, it was wide enough for the Sandwich King. And these days, a Pacer is good enough to get you into the Nor Cal AMC Club.

Perhaps Google could start using these cars to carry their Street View equipment around? Compared to brand-new, bright red hybrid Priuseses, a fleet of old Pacers might attract less attention from John Law.

Click to expand:

They loved it in France, for some reason.

Let’s say au revoir to les hipsters de Haight Street. Pretty soon, everybody will have one.

Headrests are for squares of course.  Stay safe in your two-ton fishbowl!

A Symphony Towers advertisement stationed at Market and Octavia. If you lived here, you’d be home by now.

Just in: ®®®REALTORS®®®®®®®®®®® all agree that, as of [insert today's date here], ”it’s a good time to buy“, so that’s worth blocking any number of bike lanes, don’t you think?

Look at what you can see rolling down Market Street during these days of four-dollar gasoline - E-Glide Electric Skateboards.

The problem with riding around on your regular old-fashioned skateboard is that it burns calories. That causes you to expel extra carbon dioxide into the air. Instead, you should take it easy and let your E-Glide do all the work.

Zero-emissions, sort of.