Posts Tagged ‘pt’
Monday, February 4th, 2013
I’ll tell you, some of the people from the (former?) Ultra Motors company or whatever just hate my guts ’cause I don’t put on my old high school cheerleading uniform (it still fits! can you believe it?) and wave my pom-poms for the overweight, overexpensive, overstyled A2B electric bike-scooter things being made the past half-decade.
I think they had an HQ office in San Francisco once.
Anyway, these days you can buy an A2B on craigslist for like $1000-something and there is a subculture of users out there.
(Somebody should interview these people about the pros and cons of commuting on an overly-expensive, high maintenance A2B…)
Like this guy, I see him on McAllister a lot:
Click to expand
Now that personal transporter contraption from Segway was supposed to create a transportation revolution or something, but it didn’t. There are still a handful of people around town who use them, or fantasize about using them to get to work ‘n stuff.
IMO, the Segway people would be better off using an A2B bike for commuting.
Just saying…
Tags: 2013, a2b, bay area, bike, california, commuting, electric, Ltd, motor, motors, pt, San Francisco, segway, ULTRA
Posted in bikes | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 29th, 2011
Tags: beach, black, blood, blood clot, bottle, bottles, California Academy of Sciences, camera, clot, coastodian, coastodian.org, county, Custodian, Custodian.Org, dead, Driftwood, head, headlands, images, killed, killer, Killer Whale, male, marin, Marin County, marine mammal center, McClure's, national, orca, Orcinus, Orcinus orca, photo, photography, photos, pictures, plastic, point, point reyes, pt, Pt. Reyes National Seashore, reyes, Richard James, seashore, the coastodian, The Custodian, Tomales, Tomales Point, touran, trauma, Washed Up, website, whale, white
Posted in Animals | No Comments »
Friday, November 26th, 2010
Remember back in the day, back when you could visit the Pt. Bonita Lighthouse? Well, bide your time, cause you’ll be able to go there once again come 2012 after the mini suspension bridge gets fixed.
Actually, the commitment to being back in bidness is sort of a half-assed promise and it’s coming from the Feds, so give them half a decade or so.
Click to expand, it’ll get big. Five people max on the bridge. And that’s the town of Muir Beach in the background:
Take note:
“NOTE: The tunnel to the suspension bridge/lighthouse is open Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays from 12:30 – 3:30 pm. However the lighthouse is not accessible due to the suspension bridge closure. Currently the bridge is due to be replaced and open to the public in the Spring of 2012.”
Hey Feds, why not put in a mini Golden Gate Bridge if we have to wait for so long? Thusly:
Oh well. At least they’ll let you walk through the tunnel, occasionally.
Tags: 2010, 2011, 2012, bay area, bonita, bridge, closed, county, ggra, Golden Gate Bridge, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, light house, lighthouse, marin, new, point, point bonita, pt, pt bonita, San Francisco, tunnel
Posted in parks | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
Market Street’s most famous Segway rider is still at it, after all these years.
What drives him so?
The encounter. Before…
…during…
…and after:
Move aside/
and let the man go through/
Let the man go through
Tags: 2010, architecture, award, bay area, Berkeley, Boulevards, california, commuting, crash, dean kamen, department of public works, design, Design of Multiway Boulevards, dpw, electric, evolution, freeway, gm, gob, golden gate park, History, human, Human Transporter, i2, illegal, legal, market, offramp, pacifica, personal, ponytail, pt, rental, San Francisco, scooter, segway, sidewalks, silver, street, suit, traffic, transporter, university, x2
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010
This is certainly a creative use of some of the Mapplethorpe-style seaweed that you encounter on the beaches up in Marin County.
Scary, scary Nereocystis luetkeana, aka Mermaid’s bladder:
Click to expand
Tags: 2010, bay area, Bull Whip, california, county, glen, Kelp, luetkeana, marin, mermaid's bladder, Nereocystis, point, pt, reyes, San Francisco, seaweed, Trail
Posted in flora, parks | No Comments »
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
Now I’m sure that other people are out there on the Streets of San Francisco (™, a Quinn Martin Production) commuting to work on a Segway scooter, but this guy, this guy*, he’s the man. Why? Staying power, baby. He’s been doing it for while. With style.
Note the black suit, black gloves, stick-it-to-the-Man lawyer’s ponytail(?), saddlebag, auxilliary lighting – it’s got to be the same dude I used to see years ago on Market Street. Apparently, he has a safe and convenient way of storing his rig at home and at work, and he’s worked out a good-enough system for safekeeping while performing errands. Good for him.
Click to expand. On Market crossing problematic Octavia Boulevard, San Francisco’s Greatest Public Policy Disaster of the 21st Century**
You see, he’s not riding on the sidewalk, not tromping on the grass, not riding on the train tracks, not clowning around in Golden Gate Park like Lily, not skylarking himself into a painful (at the very least – that poor, poor woman) faceplant, not killing himself at 5 MPH, not playing soulja boy, and not wearing a tuxedo while escorting a high-heeled woman(!) to the exclusive Black and White Ball.
In short, the man has his dignity.
Quite unlike Gob, for another example:
Truth be told, the San Francisco man you see in the first photo is using the cleverly-designed Segway exactly as it was meant to be used. (There was some issue before about allowing Segways on sidewalks, but all the effort by a bunch of lobbyists failed. So, the street is where these things belong, apparently.)
The problem Segway Inc. has is that there was no way IT (a former name, along with “Ginger”) could possibly live up to the hype that came from Segway Inc. and Various Famous People.
But that’s ancient history now. What’s the future of the Seqway PT? Only Time Will Tell.
*Note the use of a Canon 135mm 2.0 lens avec full-frame digital camera. The key is to use this combo wide-open, so you use either Aperture Priority or Manual Mode to set the lens to f/stop 2.0. (That’s the full Clockwork Orange setting, no squinting allowed.) You end up with a diffuse, fuzzy background (depending on geometry of where you’re standing, etc.) and clear view of whatever you focused upon, assuming the not-so-hot auto focus feature of your Canon 5D (Mark II or Mark I) got the job done. This special kind of look is why some people get digital SLR cameras.)
**So far. The NIMBYs of Hayes Valley have nine decades left to top themselves.
Tags: accident, accidents, Allan, Allan Jacobs, Allan B. Jacobs, architecture, award, Berkeley, blvd., boulevard, Boulevard Book, Boulevards, california, central, commuting, crash, dean kamen, department of public works, design, Design of Multiway Boulevards, dpw, electric, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Macdonald, evolution, freeway, general motors, gm, gob, golden gate park, hayes valley, History, human, Human Transporter, i2, illegal, Jacobs, legal, Macdonald, market, movement, Multiway, night, nimbies, nimby, nimbys, octavia, octavia boulevard, offramp, onramp, pacifica, personal, ponytail, pt, rental, Rofé, San Francisco, scooter, segway, sidewalks, silver, street, suit, The Boulevard Book: History, traffic, transporter, university, x2, Yodan, Yodan Rofé
Posted in transit | Comments Off
Monday, July 20th, 2009
What can you see here looking north from the 17th hole of the inexpensive and much-discussed Lincoln Park Golf Club (aka “Stinkin’ Lincoln”)? Well, there’s the teeing area, of course, but you can also see the Golden Gate and the Point Bonita Lighthouse, as well the houses of Muir Beach City and a good chunk of western Marin County.
Click to expand:
And when you get to the green, you get a nice view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Not too shabby for just $1-something per hole, huh?
“Until the 1840s the strait was called the “Boca del Puerto de San Francisco” (Mouth of the Port of San Francisco). On 1 July 1846, before the discovery of gold in California, the entrance acquired a new name. In his memoirs, John C. Frémont wrote, “To this Gate I gave the name of “Chrysopylae”, or “Golden Gate“; for the same reasons that the harbor of Byzantium was called Chrysoceras, or Golden Horn”
Tags: 2, beach, boca, bonita, Chrysopylae, City, club, county, course, discovery, district, gold, golden gate, Golden Gate Bridge, golf, golf club, golf course, golfcourse, headlands, John Fremont, John C. Frémont, lighthouse, lincoln, Lincoln Park Golf Club, links, linocln park, marin, muir beach, municipal, park, point, pt, richmond, San Francisco, stinkin, stinking lincoln, west, western
Posted in bay area | 1 Comment »
Monday, March 16th, 2009
Don’t you just hate walking on the grass when you visit Golden Gate Park? Wouldn’t a stroll be so much better on a Segway Human Transporter? Of course.
This guy has it right – his “4WD” version of the Segway has big tires. All the better for riding on turf.
He’s a regular Segway Cowboy Outlaw:
Ballad of the Segway Cowboy Outlaw
Its all the same, only the names will change
Everyday it seems were wasting away
Another place where the faces are so cold
I’d Segway all night just to get back home
Im a cowboy, on a Segway I ride
Im wanted dead or alive
Wanted dead or alive
Sometimes I charge, sometimes its not for days
And the people I meet always go their separate ways
Sometimes you tell the day by the bottle that you drink
And times when youre all alone all you do is think
I roll these streets, a loaded NiCad on my rack
I play for keeps, cause I might not make it back
I’ve rolled everywhere, still Im standing tall
I’ve seen a million faces smack into the wall
Im a cowboy, on a Segway I ride
Im wanted dead or alive
Im a cowboy, I got the night on my side
Im wanted dead or alive
Wanted dead or alive
Tags: cowboy, gob, golden gate park, grass, ht, human, outlaw, personal, pt, San Francisco, segway, sidewalk, transporter
Posted in parks, Uncategorized | Comments Off
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
You know those Segway scooters, right? Have you seen the latest crash footage, like the Sex in the City faceplant? (Ouch, it hoits to even watch.) Of course you have, you’ve even seen Japanese chimpanzees riding the things.
Nowadays, the best place to see a Segway is in Golden Gate Park. They’re all over the place. On the roads, the paths, the sidewalks, all over.
Does this Segway rental experience look like a good use of $90? Click to expand:
Maybe there are better places for these things? The Marina District? Sonoma? On stage with Lil Wayne?
Now back in the day, Segways were supposed to change the world. They were the Tesla Roadsters of their day:
“When it was launched in December 2001 the annual sales target was 40,000 units, and the company expected to sell 50,000 to 100,000 units in the first 13 months. Segway Inc’s investors were optimistic. Inventor Dean Kamen predicted that the Segway “will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy.” John Doerr, a venture capitalist who invested in the company, predicted that Segway, Inc. would be the fastest company to reach $1 billion in sales. In fact only about 30,000 Segways were sold from 2001 to 2007. Critics point to Segway Inc’s silence over its financial performance as an indication that the company is still not profitable, as about $100 million was spent developing the Segway.”
Oh well.
Tags: accident, crash, dean kamen, electric, golden gate park, illegal, legal, pacifica, pt, rental, San Francisco, scooter, segway, sidwalks
Posted in parks | Comments Off
