Look at this guy – see all the stickers he has from San Francisco’s ridiculous residential parking permit program?
He’s probably paid, all by himself, for two or three day’s worth of retirement benefits for a Parking Control Officer.
Hurray!
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And look, he bought a bunch of parking permits the right way, you know, one after the other.
Unlike some other people:
Danielle Steel’s “Parking Orgy“
Remember, Transit First (except for participants of the Residential Parking Program).
And please remember, “Use your key now 6/13/12″
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The newly-arrived Twitter people are already calling this place “Hotel Chasing the Dragon.”
“Chasing the dragon” (a slang phrase of Cantonese origin from Hong Kong, Traditional Chinese: 追龍, Simplified Chinese: 追龙, Cantonese Jyutping: zeoi1 lung4, pinyin: zhuī lóng) refers to inhaling the vapor from heated morphine, heroin, oxycodone or opium that has been placed on a piece of foil. The ‘chasing’ occurs as the user gingerly keeps the liquid moving in order to keep it from coalescing into a single, unmanageable mass.[1] Another more metaphorical use of the term “chasing the dragon” refers to the elusive pursuit of the ultimate high in the usage of some particular drug.”
Well this is the view you can get from Buena Vista Park in the middle of San Francisco.
That’s world-famous* Candlestick Park, Home of the 49ers and the Gold Rush, in the foreground, and in the background camera left is the City of San Jose, California’s third-largest and the Capitol of the Bay Area:
Click to expand, of course
Now I know what you’re thinking, you’re thinking, “Enhance that image.”
Well here you go, it’s downtown San Jose with all those tall buildings. See? It’s San Jose City Hall, “The 88″ residential building (which is actually only 87 meters high but let’s not dwell** on that), the Bank of America Building (nee Bank of Italy) from 1926, and the “Knight Ridder Building” (per Google Earth, I don’t know what they call it these days).
Oh, and somewhere in the mix there’s also Mineta San José International Airport – Silicon Valley’s Airport and the San Mateo Bridge and the Dumbarton Bridge.***
Anyway, I didn’t know San Jose had a skyline what you can see from the 415.
But don’t look for it to get any easier to spot in the future owing to the fact that that SJC international airstrip is right in the middle of it all and there’s a height limit of 87 meters (I think?) in the area.
So, San Joser has a big, domed City Hall and a tall Bank of America Building and whatnot. They’re just like us!
(Oh, and speaking of the Niners, enjoy our winning football team(s), Santa Clara County.)
*No, not “world-class.”
**Check it:
Eighty-eight (88) symbolizes fortune and good luck since the word 8 sounds similar to the word Fā (发, which implies 发财, or wealth, in Mandarin). The number 8 is considered to be the luckiest number of all in Chinese culture and prices in Chinese supermarkets can often be found containing many 8′s (see numbers in Chinese culture). The Chinese government has even been auctioning auto license plates containing many 8s for tens of thousands of dollars. The 2008 Beijing Olympics opened on 8/8/08 at 8 p.m. The shape of the Chinese character for 8 (八) also implies that a person will have a great, wide future as the character starts narrow and gets wider toward the bottom. 88 is used to mean “bye bye”; found in Chinese-language chat, text, SMS, IM. 88 is pronounced in Chinese Mandarin language as “ba ba” (“bā bā” to be precise), simulating the sound of the English language farewell “bye bye”.
And there’s this:
Eighty-eight is used as code among Neo-Nazis to identify each other. H is the 8th letter of the alphabet, so 88 is taken to stand for HH which in turn means Heil Hitler.For example, the number is used in the song “88 rock’n'roll band” by the neo-Nazi group Landser. The late convictedOrder terrorist David Lane wrote “Fourteen Words” and 88 Precepts, and the numbers are often found in combination (1488, 14/88, etc.). This form of the number has inspired the naming of the groups Column 88, Unit 88, White Legion 88 and Barselc88. Holocaust museum shooter James von Brunn often signed his writings as “JVB-88.”
***Both of which were featured in the 1992 Robert Redford movie Sneakers. Hurray!
“Redford tries to describe to Strathairn, who is blind, what he heard while in the trunk of a car. He remembers going across a bridge and being in San Francisco it means one of four possible bridges: Golden Gate, Bay Bridge, San Mateo, and the Dumbarton. They rule out the first two and then narrow it down to San Mateo based on the sound and frequency of the seams in the concrete.”
Well, here it is, the 2200 block of Octavia Street betwixt Washington and Jackson in San Francisco’s tony Specific Whites District right near writer Danielle Steel’s large white mansion and just up the hill from our 3.5-star Yelp-rated German Consulate.*
See? It’s got a brick surface and it’s curvy, sort of:
There it is on the left. (How many of the cars you can see are owned by Ms. Steel? She used to have 26(!) residential parking permits, you know…)
Fake Lombard Street is a big FAIL, IMO.
Oh well.
Why is it here? Who built it? I know not.
*”Gee honey, do you think we should go to the consulate after getting those deportation notices?” “I don’t know, Cupcake. Let’s check Yelp first…”
[UPDATE: Popular Curbed SF weighs in here. I don't know, the way the sign is now, everybody who doesn't have an "A" neighborhood parking decal is defined as a "visitor." That means "tourist" of course. Now, didn't people living on the twisty part of Lombard want to put up a gate? That's kind of the same thing (although there's no MUNI bus that goes down that part of Lombard.) Anyway, I've never seen a zero time limit in a neighborhood parking area - that's a first. Just getting rid of the spaces up there would seem to solve the problem of waiting-for-parking congestion. Explore the issue of privatising street parking in of San Francisco here.]
It’s not immediately obvious that it’s against the rules for tourists to drop people off at the top of Telegraph Hill, but it’s not suggested as an idea – check out this recently-installed sign.
Perhaps it’s time to scratch Coit Tower off the list of official points of interest for the 49 Mile Drive?
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I don’t know, if the purpose of San Francisco’s absurd neighborhood parking program is to “reduce unnecessary personal motor vehicle travel” why don’t we just pull out those 29 parking spaces up there and then the richers of Telegraph Hill could walk or ride bus #39 along with the rest of us “visitors,”,you know, with the little people.
“The preferential residential parking permit (RPP) was established in 1976 to preserve neighborhood living within a major urban center. It is designed to promote the safety, health and welfare of all San Francisco residents by reducing unnecessary personal motor vehicle travel, noise and pollution, and by promoting improvements in air quality, convenience and attractiveness of urban residential living, and increased use of public mass transit.”
Or alternatively, Dennis Herrera Throws Down: Accurate Census Endangered by Postal Service SRO Policy – that was going to be the title originally. Anyway, the second-largest civilian employer in the United States, your U.S. Postal Service, apparently doesn’t have enough people to deliver the mail to the 19,000 San Franciscans residing in Single Room Occupancy units.
So, what letter carriers do is just dump the mail in a big pile in the lobby, let’s say in a big building with 100 units, and then split. The Post Office treats people living for years in the same place as if they’re hotel guests. Of course a lot of SROs don’t have lockable residential mailboxes, but the reason for that is that the PO just ignores them - it maintains a mail dump policy irregardless.
This could pose a problem for the upcoming 2010 Census, right? Check it:
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That’s what was on display today down at 688 Commercial in the Financh / Chinatown area. It’s hard to figure where U.S. Census forms should go to get to the right people.
And here’s a scene from today’s presser from San Francisco City Attorney Dennis J. Herrera and Chinatown Community Development Center Deputy Director Norman Fong.
There’s a legal process going on right now that’s taking some time to resolve. Get all the deets on San Francisco’s action against the USPS here. (Let’s see, the PO’s motion to dismiss was denied and there’s been a couple of stabs at mediation so far.)
Herrera railed about the “incredibly irresponsible” postal service while Fong looked forward to “a day when everyone will get their mail.”
Oh yes, here’s another from Herrera:
“Someone in an SRO should have the same service as someone living in a condo in the St. Regis.”
(The only person I can think of who lives at the Reeg there on Third Street / Willie Way is former Mayor Willie Brown. Mmmmm.)
This is the building discussed today:
Inside, U.S. Census worker Jade Wu is not pleased that these census forms still haven’t gotten to the intended recipients:
And here’s an attempt at a residential mailbox:
Sure seems odd that one federal agency is getting impeded by another, however independent it is.
And it’s not just the census, it’s everything else you should be getting in the mail
Do Americans have a right to mail delivery?
We’ll see.
Counting SRO Tenants in the 2010 Census. Difficulties highlight discriminatory mail delivery policies being challenged by City Attorney’s lawsuit against U.S. Postal Service
SAN FRANCISCO (March 25, 2010)—City Attorney Dennis Herrera will join Chinatown Community Development Center representatives and tenants of single-room occupancy residential hotels, or SROs, to discuss the difficulties of assuring a complete count of every San Franciscan in the 2010 Census. Among the most daunting challenges facing those who do outreach to communities at-risk of being undercounted is a policy by the U.S. Postal Service’s postmaster in San Francisco that treats SROs like tourist hotels—refusing individual mail delivery, and directing local letter carriers to drop unsecured mail bundles near building entryways and at front desks. The discriminatory mail delivery policy is at the core of a federal lawsuit Herrera filed last May. To date, attorneys for the postal service have been unwilling to discuss policy changes that would treat residents of SROs like other residents.
That big residential solar project in the Lower Haight / Western Addition / Hayes Valley from SunWheel Energy Partners just went live. The juice, she is flowing.
See all the deets in this 15 minute video - it’s just like being there.
San Francisco Assessor-Recorder Phil “The Thrill” Ting was there for the ribbon-cutting…
…as was District 5 Supervisor Ross “The Boss” Mirkarimi:
San Francisco Affordable Housing Sites Power On Solar Energy
Federal, State and Local Officials, Site Residents and Community Members Celebrate Green Energy and New Jobs at Western Addition Ribbon Cutting Ceremony
San Francisco, CA, January 26, 2010 – On Monday, January 25, 2010, Sunwheel Energy Partners, which provides turnkey solar energy systems for urban and community partners, celebrated the commissioning of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems at three affordable housing community sites in San Francisco’s Western Addition and Hayes Valley neighborhoods — bringing solar power, green jobs and financial relief to residents and owners. The ribbon cutting ceremony at Plaza East Apartments was widely attended by a notable group of federal, state and local officials as well as the site’s residents and community members who were hired to install the solar panels.
Dignitaries in attendance included Henry Alvarez, Executive Director, San Francisco Housing Authority; Timothy Alan Simon, CPUC Commissioner; Phil Ting, SF Assessor-Recorder; David Rubin, Director of Service Analysis, PG&E; Michael Carlin, SFPUC Deputy General Manager; Neola Gans, Vice President, SF Housing Authority Commission; Caroline Krewson, Deputy Regional Director, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; Stephen Schneller, Director, San Francisco Office of Public Housing; Ross Mirkarimi, San Francisco Supervisor; and representatives of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer’s offices. Senator Mark Leno issued a proclamation commending the site.
Even more deets, after the jump
I’m not sure who would think that One Rincon Hill isn’t the tallest residential high-rise in San Francisco, but apparently, that’s what some people are thinking, per Curbed SF.
Here’s how 1RH stacks up against The Infinity Towers (home of ridiculous “Secret Millionaire” Gurbaksh “G” Chahal).
And the Millennium? I’m not even sure where it is, frankly – that’s how stubby it is.
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Cameras don’t lie, of course.
