The San Francisco Citizen

Details are a little sketchy, but the San Francisco Bomb Squad has just picked up a “package” and is taking it on a slow tour through Golden Gate Park. [UPDATE: The whole affair ended “peacefully” per KGO-TV]

Why the scenic route? So if it goes kaboom, it won’t hurt you all.

This was the scene at 6:30 PM, near the de Young Museum. Click to expand:

The starting location on Carl between Frederick and Williard:

Sarge in the front, mortar in the back:

The sticker on the red metal bucket says: “I HEART EXPLOSIVES.” (Don’t we all.) From a couple hundred feet away:

A bald eagle, sticks of dynamite and the Golden Gate Bridge:

Keep up the good work, San Francisco Bomb Squad!

Only in Marin! That’s right, Marin County, the birthplace of mountain biking, and home to nuclear-tipped missiles, endangered deer, and marauding mountain lions (nee cougars), can’t abide you people building your own single-track MTB trails.

Michael Philip More is getting a ten-day jail sentence for illegally building a quarter-mile trail at the end of Robinhood Drive in San Rafael.    

Click to expand:

Possible path of the trail, the white line is a quarter-mile long

Does Michael More wish there were more singletrack MTB trails in Marin? Given that MTBers are mostly confined to fire roads in Marin County, signs point to yes.

The Presidio of San Francisco, on the northern waterfront to the left of the newly upscale Ghirardelli Square, hasn’t seen this much action since they filmed The Presidio, starring Sean Connery. It appears that a mounted member of the United States Park Police briefly detained a Google Maps camera car for some sort of driving infraction this morning. Oh noes! Don’t impede this car - it’s gone to some interesting places. It’s not scary at all, right?

[Update: National Park Service employee and Commenter #67 Motorcop_2000 disputes any account that has the Googler getting a ticket. MC_2K indicates that this driver merely got lost and was trying to get “back to the Avenues” (meaning the Richmond or the Sunset districts). Bad driving and Toyota Priuseses seem to go together, so this story rings true.]

So the photo below shows how the magic of Google Street View happens - you can see their method all laid out. In this case, Google is using a brand-spanking-new Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid (wouldn’t a 50-state VW Jetta TDI diesel get better mileage?) and a rather tall metal mast with mad cameras, GPSes and SICK laser range finders. Click to expand:

Courtesy of damianspain of the San Francisco Bay area. Thanks Damian! Check out his flickrstream for lots of great shots of San Francisco, including a rare blue sky at the North Beach Festival.

(Normally, the Presidio is a quiet place, except for people feuding over the location of the new CAMP museum and the occasional coyote attack. And Hooverball - the kids these days make all sorts of noise throwing their old school medicine balls around.)

Keep up the good work, Google Street View drivers. Just make sure to watch out for The Man (as well as all those sexy pedestrians trying to catch your attention).

Yesterday’s Haight Ashbury Street Fair in San Francisco came with sunny skies and lots of attendees.

The alcohol ban of recent years has changed the character of this event somewhat. These days, the boozy Union Street Festival might have an edge in the number of inebriated. No matter, a good time was had by all in the Haight.

So, dig the colors of David Yu and look at a bunch of photos from SFWeekly. 

A mass of humanity:

 Could this man with marijuana garland be famous artist Harry Shearer trying out a new character?  

Hookahs! Get your hookahs! Hookahs.com was in the house:

A dancing baby grooving on Haight Street:

Cindy Sheehan had more than a few acolytes gathering signatures for Cindy’s windmill-tilting House campaign against Nancy Pelosi:

See you next year!

Be careful when attending the alcohol-free (really?) Haight Ashbury Street Fair today, as parole agents are on the scene. That’s not too crunchy.

Cheese it, the cops!

Well, it appears this will be how B2b 2008 will be remembered:

“It’s often called the world’s longest party, but this year’s Bay to Breakers race through San Francisco was anything but fun for the residents, cops and public workers who bore the brunt of the drunken young “runners” who staggered around Golden Gate Park and the city’s west side, relieving themselves wherever it proved convenient.”

Imagine that!

Turkeybot ably captured a fine moment:

The Golden Gate Park Panhandle had far more than ten portajohns set up and waiting to go the night before the big race. But, Matier & Ross report that there were only ten there on the big day. Mmmm, how did that happen?

Speaking of the Panhandle, the half million dollar bathroom in the Panhandle was closed and surrounded by yellow police tape while racers were passing by during the early part of the day. Why was that?

This might have been the only place in Golden Gate park where people weren’t urinating. That’s all part of the Good, Bad, and Ugly of the longtime footrace. Most people had fun though, purported MUNI Meltdown or no.

See you next year!

You already know about the Good of B2B 2008. A good time was had by all.

But what about the Bad? Muni didn’t appear to be working very well north of Golden Gate Park in the afternoon following the big race. It wasn’t like all the buses were packed with people, it was like there didn’t seem to be any buses around at all throughout the Richmond. Must be tough to get drivers working on a Sunday.

And finally, the Ugly. Garbage everywhere, and more so than usual. Check the Flickr to see Drunken Douchebags Trash the Panhandle. Reopening Fell Street was such a chore that the DPW’s Mohammad Nuru called the cops to get some help.

Heading back uphill to the acme of the race course in Golden Gate Park (which is no where near Hayes Street Hill, the purported highest point on the race route): 

The cold dawn of day reveals a lot of trash still out there on the Streets of San Francisco. Maybe the people from Dutch financial institution and B2B sponsor ING could come down from their aerodynamic house and lend a hand with the cleanup? Just asking.

Hopefully, things will go more smoothly next year. Speaking of which… 

See you next year!

[The Panhandle is much cleaner now around 11:00 AM Monday morning. Yay.]

Let’s compare two recent events in San Francisco. This was the plan for the San Francisco Jewish Community Center the other day, but here was the result: Protests mark Israel’s 60th Anniversary at San Francisco Jewish Community Center.

Here’s what it looked like when people got hauled away. This was the scene a little later with dozens of cops settling in for the afternoon:

Management at the JCC was still uptight after the arrests, actually sending a security guard to threaten to call the cops on a photojournalist standing 25 yards away across the street. Bad form.

Compare that with the mellow Nabka at 60 Years, Free Palestine Peace and Solidarity Festival in Civic Center yesterday:

Things were just getting started, but it looked to be more like a street festival what with the smooth jazz stylings of Steely Dan on the P.A.

This more open approach would appear to be superior, if your goal is to get your point across to the general population. 

You, a concerned citizen, can always check out CrimeMaps to see what your “neighborhood crime trend” is like in San Francisco. But some people don’t like this online tool, and for good reason.

Supervisor Tom Ammiano wonders why homicides don’t show up on the system. Interesting question. Well, the SFPD is working on it and they’ll have something to say about software and hardware updates tonight at a Police Commission meeting starting at 5:00 PM.

But wouldn’t it be nice to have access to an ”Incident Report & Analysis Tool” (it works, just give it a little time for the video to load) from UniversalMind or something? Click to enlarge:

You’ve seen the video, now it’s time to play with a demo yourself. What you’ll see is crime incident data, as you’d expect. The data is a little out of date, but this it’s just a demo.

In this orderly universe of mayhem you’ll see the expected constellations of crime, but also planetes asteres, wandering stars. Click on these dots to start playing.

It’s a live video feed from the Crown Vic of Officer Heinz! Hear him as he comes under automatic weapons fire and uses salty language. Oh no! Wonder what’s in his weapons cache? A .40 caliber Smith & Wesson, 9mm Luger, and .45 Colt. Natch.

(But wouldn’t he be better off trading in his PR-24 Nightstick for an enchanted Heavy Gnoll War Club or similar two-handed mace? And how much gold does he have?)

This future of live crime reporting will get here when it gets here, but fixing CrimeMaps should be something doable in 2008, dontcha think?

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?

Let’s be careful out there.