The San Francisco Citizen

 Here’s how it went today for voters opting for the touch screen system. Bright, easy-to-read graphics on your screen - what could be nicer?

Here’s what you’re thinking - what about the paper trail, dude? Well, San Francisoco’s got you covered as they print it all out so you can check for yourself. No hanging chads and no butterfly ballots in the 415 this year. Is City Attorney Dennis Herrera still working on this issue? Think so.

Welcome to the future!

This photo in no way shows the humongousness of the 2008 Union Street Festival (aka Eco-Urban Festival) in San Francisco.

Be sure to check out the ginourmous house party at 1760 Union - it’s huge. Here’s the back entrance on Filbert.  

These four kids from the south bay are shotgunning together in the backyard of the house party. Movie maven James Lipton is an idol to all bay area youth, so of course they love to emulate his naughty behavior.

The beer gardens are filling up, the sun is shining, and the Republican Party is recruiting (srsly, at Webster Street), so what’s holding you back?

See you there!

All the participants, after the jump

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The 9th Annual How Weird Street Faire yesterday.

Maybe sunglasses CAN get bigger. Here’s proof:

DJ BayBey, fresh from Ibiza, getting a ride to his next gig:

A couple more, after the jump.

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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.

It’s a sign of the times…

Another arresting image from cactusthesaint, via Flickr

After last night’s Earth Hour of partial darkness from 8:00-9:00 PM, the lights on the “architectural necklace” of the western span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge came back to life on the north side first. (Unfortunately, didn’t get a look at the troubled eastern span last night - it was probably darkened also.) 

You can get the idea of the effect of Earth Hour 2008 in San Francisco by looking at these before and after shots of the Ferry Building taken by talented local photographer Mona Brooks.  

The lights on the suspension cables of the western span of one of the busiest bridges in the world are just for decoration, not for navigation safety or whatever. Pretty. They sure make a big difference to the look of San Francisco at night when they are turned off.

Question: Turning off these decorative lights for an hour saves enough electricity to power Al Gore’s house (his actual house, not his San Francisco condo in SOMA that’s visible on the right) for how many minutes?

Answer: About 13 minutes. Let’s work on that math, after the jump.

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On another pleasant day…

News comes from Dave Eggers in the New York Times.

“In 418,000 copies of the April 4 edition of The San Francisco Chronicle, subscribers will get a placard that on one side explains the connections between China and the genocide in Sudan, and on the other side says, “China: Extinguish the Flames of Genocide in Darfur.” How’s that for an early morning jolt?”

These placards are going to look a little something like this:

Will people need to register in advance in order to hold up these signs along the torch route? Will people need to be herded into “free speech zones,” like these pens used in Boston a while back, before they are allowed to hold up these signs?

Only time will tell.

Routine stop on Market Street in San Francisco, March 20, 2008. Click to enlarge.

“The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), commonly known in the United States as “Homeland Security”, is a Cabinet department of the federal government of the United States with the responsibility of protecting the territory of the United States from terrorist attacks and responding to natural disasters.”

Or, improvised incendiary weapon, if you prefer.

Not much damage at all. Here’s a detail of the metal door. Click for a better view.

It looks like somebody’s paw prints got onto the door post-fire. Assuming that the video cameras were operational, investigators will have a pretty good idea of what occurred pretty soon.