Why’s that?
You’d think a “drug free” area would be bereft of scoring opportunities, but that doesn’t appear to be the case around Hippy Hill in the Haight Ashbury section of San Francisco.
Just saying…
Here was the scene this morning during the A.M. drive - a cyclist getting ticketed by a motorcycle officer. Don’t know the details of this particular incident, but it wouldn’t be hard for you to find cyclists blowing stop signs or red lights at any intersection in San Francisco.
Individual officers sometimes get on a kick and issue tickets for the same type of infraction over and over all day. If you get cops acting together, as sometimes happens, then you’d call it an enforcement action. They could go after drivers who roll through stop signs, or pedestrians who jaywalk - you never know.
Harley Davidson of a bitch! Yet another ticket from a Dudley Perkins-motosickle-riding buckethead.
Some would like to see Page become the Page St. Bicycle Boulevard - this would allow cyclists to maintain speed. Traffic circles were tried before, but those things proved unpopular.
Leave us turn to Idaho for the answer - stop signs mean “stop” for drivers but mean “yield” for cyclists:
TITLE 49
MOTOR VEHICLES
CHAPTER 7
PEDESTRIANS AND BICYCLES
49-720. STOPPING — TURN AND STOP SIGNALS. (1) A person operating a
bicycle or human-powered vehicle approaching a stop sign shall slow down and,
if required for safety, stop before entering the intersection.
What’s wrong with California having a similar law?
Those foot patrols certainly can’t handle everything as it took cops from at least three Ford Crown Victorias last night to handle the lengthy detention of this Fly Yellow (Ferrari Light Yellow aka Giallo Modena) 355 Spyder and its driver near Ashbury Street in the Upper Haight section of San Francisco.
The driver looked exactly like Michael Schumacher what with his red Ferrari racing shirt (complete with logos from Marlboro, Shell, Vodafone, Bridgestone and Puma), red Ferrari baseball cap (that Schumi himself wears only after just winning a race) and, of course, Puma driving shoes.
Cold and windy Haight Ashbury gets less than its fair share of V8 “almost a Ferrari” convertibles driving around, so it’s not the greatest place to imitate the best living race car driver in world. We’ll just have to wait for the newsletter to see what the fuss was all about.
Zoom zoom.
Back on the Haight Ashbury beat:
Newly promoted Capt. Teresa Barrett is keeping in touch with those in the area served by the SFPD’s (Golden Gate) Park Station in Haight Ashbury. At yesterday’s meeting of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council she covered a variety of issues, including traffic enforcement.
Is it possible to hand out 56 citations to motorists for failing to yield to pedestrians crossing the street in just four hours at one intersection? Apparently it is. Perhaps around Masonic and Grove.
Keep in touch with things in the hood by reading the newsletter. Be sure to check out the story of the guy who sold his Playstation through craigslist for counterfeit money. Let’s be careful out there.
