As San Francisco moves closer to a decision on a new sit-lie ordinance that proponents say would facilitate the SFPD's clearing of unsavory elements off of sidewalks in neighborhoods like the Haight, resistance is building, and several organizers have called for a day of sidewalk action on Saturday March 27, from 10 am to 5 pm. I sat down recently with Nate Miller, one of the people who decided that they weren’t going to watch the City succumb to yet another pandering campaign of fear mongering without standing up to say no.

The sit-lie campaign has been orchestrated from behind the scenes for the past few months, trying to appear as a spontaneous grassroots effort by residents of the Haight-Ashbury. But as Miller tells it, there is strong evidence of coordination between “grassroots activists,” the Chronicle’s resident suburban attack dog C.W. Nevius, Mayor Newsom and Chief of Police Gascon. Together, they are using the decades-long presence of impoverished and annoying “gutter punks” on Haight Street to push a law criminalizing anyone who is sitting or lying on a sidewalk anywhere in San Francisco. Gabriel Haaland wrote an intelligent editorial in last week's Bay Guardian calling for a new approach to actual conflicts (greatly exaggerated in this case), rather than expanding the definition of so-called criminal behavior.

Here’s Nate in his own words: 

I grew up in San Francisco and lived here my whole life. For the past few months the Chronicle has been publishing really inflammatory articles talking about “thugs and bullies” in the Haight who are making it a living hell for residents, shoppers, and business people to exist there. The police have been talking about how this is a grassroots effort of the neighborhood, but the timing shows that is false. First the Chronicle starts drumming up all this stuff. Then they have the Mayor walk down the street when he’s supposedly undecided about this. He walks down the street with his baby, and supposedly sees a man sitting on the sidewalk smoking crack. Obviously it’s already illegal to smoke crack (and you can do it standing up!). He uses this to announce that we need to make it illegal to have people sitting on the sidewalk. Two days later he introduces legislation to the Board of Supervisors, already vetted by the City Attorney. He proposes two separate pieces of legislation. If you do anything in politics, you know that’s impossible [to get this done so quickly]. The Mayor must have been working on this since a long time ago.

The same day the Chamber of Commerce/Committee on Jobs does a poll that they claim shows there’s 71% support for a law outlawing sitting on the sidewalks. The question that they asked was not simply if you support a law that will make it illegal to sit or lie down on a sidewalk. It asked if you support a law that would arrest people who were harassing you. I’d support a law like that! I don’t want to be harassed. There are already laws against that. There’re laws against aggressive panhandling, against panhandling, against blocking the sidewalk, against smoking crack.

They say this is “a tool.” Supposedly “the police will use their discretion to use it appropriately.” Public Defender Jeff Adachi pointed out in a hearing that there were a lot of people that could be subjected to this law—tourists sitting on their luggage, students sitting on a sidewalk, homeless people—and all these people would be subject to $100 fine the first time, while repeat offenders could do 30 days in jail. The Chronicle’s Nevius said “that’s ridiculous, the cops would never arrest a tourist for sitting on their bag,” but the law states that it would be illegal to do that.

The argument made by Nevius and other Sit-Lie Law supporters is that the police can be trusted to implement this sweeping legal mandate in a reasonable manner. But the law defines a normal behavior, sitting on a sidewalk, as a crime!

Here’s Nate again:

Obviously the law will be used against the most vulnerable people. It’s a biological fact that some time during the day you’re going to need to rest. If you don’t have a home to do that in and you’re homeless you’ll have to sit on the sidewalk. I like sitting on the sidewalk! I just went to Vietnam and Cambodia to experience the vibrant, amazing things that go on in the streets. People are out there all day and it’s just a much better feeling. I feel a lot safer with a lot of people on the streets.

I think it’s a two-pronged approach. One is to scare people when they’re on Haight Street—just go shopping, minimize engagement with other people … (forget about people watching or anything else). This is also a serious effort by the Chamber of Commerce and conservative politicians to create a wedge issue for the November elections. That’s already playing out. You see people like Scott Weiner who is running for Supervisor in the Castro campaigning by saying “I support Sit and Lie because I care about public safety.” He can now run, playing to people’s fears that have been created by the Chronicle through all this fabrication, and make them feel safe.

There’s a lot of routes you can go besides this idea of “pre-crime,” that you can just make totally normal behavior illegal and then give the cops the discretion to punish people based on how they look or anything. Because if they’re not doing anything else illegal you are just arresting someone for sitting on the ground.

A few other people started talking about the broader implications of this law, that it is going to make it illegal to sit anywhere on the sidewalk. The first response was a very defensive one: hey, we’re under attack. But then we started talking about what we could do with this. What kind of conversations can we have?

Dangerous use of public space! Let's do it! (Photo: Kurt Bank)

Public space is important. On one hand there’s all these greening initiatives going on, but at the same time we’re trying to make it illegal to exist in public space, setting a really horrible precedent. We thought about Park(ing) Days, where people voluntarily occupy parking places and make them parks for a day, and people really enjoy it. We thought, why don’t we bring that on to the sidewalks for a day? We need to be encouraging more people to enjoy public space, to talk to each other, enjoying our vibrant and exciting city. Through talking about that we decided we were going to reach out to people who were interested in that. The basic idea is that anyone can bring out a table, or lawn chairs, or a mat, and do whatever you want, because it’s completely normal.

Bring yourselves and anything you like out to the street, and just relax. You can do whatever you want, argue with your family, party with your friends, make coffee for people. Some people are reclaiming the tea party idea and having a huge tea party. There’s going to be all kinds of fun things for people to go and see and engage with. We want people to contact us through the website we’re developing, or FB or email. Send us a location, a street corner where you will be situated. What time you’re going to be there, and a couple of sentences about what you think you’ll be doing. Afterward, we’re asking everyone to document it with a photo or a video, even a cellphone picture, and send it back to us. We’re creating a Google Map and hopefully there will be dozens or hundreds of locations where people were doing things. It will be a lot more cohesive after that.

Later on Saturday, March 27, everyone is going to Market and Castro to the new plaza there. By going there we want to connect to a bit of local history. In the 1970s Castro, they passed a similar law to target hippies that were laying around smoking pot or staring at the wall on acid or whatever, but what they really used it for was to target gay men who were flocking to the city to see this exciting new scene that was growing. There was this group called the Castro 14, guys who got put in jail for sitting on the streets. Harvey Milk was a huge opponent of this, and it eventually got repealed after he died because it was totally ridiculous and unfair and it was destroying part of the culture of the Castro.

It’s important that people contact us because we want to provide them with some basic infrastructure to make it a bit more focus and pointed. It’s unusual to do this kind of street activism when something is just being voted on at the Board of Supervisors. It’s going to go on the ballot this November regardless of how it’s voted on by the Board. We have this problem with Ross Mirikarimi and David Chiu who are basically bending to political pressure. They haven’t committed either way, but we’re going to send documents to everyone who contacts us with fact sheets and contact information to organize our opposition. Write us at info@standagainstsitlie.org and you’ll be getting good information, not spam, from us.

Another activity on the way to criminalization? (Photo: Kurt Bank)

July 2009, Critical Mass circles Union Square

In the following months, the ride grew steadily, hitting a couple of hundred by February 1993, and still there was no police presence. I think there may have been one motorcycle cop who came upon us during those months and just rode on. In April 1993 it changed though. The ride had grown to several hundred cyclists, and those of us who were publishing the monthly "Critical Mass Missives" and preparing proposed routes with maps, writing flyers, handing out stickers (all under the happy neologism of "Xerocracy") were already worried about the culture of the ride. Too many people were bleating that Orwellian chant "Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad!" and admonishing motorists in an entirely unpleasant self-righteous moralistic tone.

Behaviorally, we already had identified the "Testosterone Brigade" as a problem, young men who seemed to be looking for confrontation, perhaps exercising unresolved anger with their parents by taunting motorists or deliberately riding into oncoming traffic. Another group was dubbed the "snails" because no matter how often we stopped at the front to give everyone a chance to "mass up," a bunch of folks would just dawdle way at the back and never catch up. This led to long stretches of thinly-occupied streets, where just a few cyclists were noodling along. In April 1993 in just this kind of scenario, a motorist tried to cross Market to Guerrero and when cyclists surged in front to block him, he hit one girl. Her bike was totaled, ending up under his car, which careened into a hydrant on the corner while he was trying to escape. The girl was not physically harmed luckily, but her boyfriend, not knowing that she wasn't under the car, reached in and took the keys out of the ignition. The cops came up and arrested the girl and her boyfriend and let the motorist go, treating him as the victim, even though it was widely felt by all present, including bystanders on the street, that he had behaved with homicidal intent.

The 16th birthday ride in Sept. 2008, here on Polk Street.

In June 1997, rumor has it Mayor Willie Brown got stuck in his limo during Critical Mass. He was soon fulminating in the press about how something had to be done! He tried to bring Critical Mass representatives into a meeting (I was invited and refused to go) and managed to get some SF Bike Coalition board members to show up. His pet supervisor at the time was Michael Yaki, and it was Yaki who appeared on the steps of City Hall after the meeting impersonating Neville Chamberlain in 1938 ("peace in our time!"), waving a piece of paper which he claimed was an agreement with Critical Mass (impossible by definition) about how the ride would proceed on the following Friday.

What happened was beautifully documented in Ted White's documentary "We Are Traffic!" which you can see online. The police and Mayor Brown put up a sound system and stage and had the gall to welcome the riders to our own event. They were roundly booed. Brown, realizing that he had not managed to co-opt Critical Mass, decided to unleash the police. They were happy to oblige and a mini-riot took place in mid-Market where several cyclists were arbitrarily pushed to the ground, violently arrested, and their bikes impounded. Critical Mass had split into dozens of groups roaming the city's streets for hours, in what was probably one of the most chaotic evenings in Critical Mass history. The police could not get a handle on things, in spite of their license to repress, and it wasn't until very late that night that they corralled one of the mini-masses still riding, surrounding them in the financial district and arresting them all. The day after the Chronicle's false headline was "250 cyclists arrested!" The actual number was about 112, and most of them had been in the illegal roundup. Howard Besser, one of the arrestees, filed a suit against the police and won, and won a second time when the city appealed, and was awarded about $1,000 in damages. No one was ever convicted of any crimes that occured that night, because there had been no crimes!

The following month, August 1997, after a month of torrid bad press, online flame wars (much like you we still see on the SFGate) denouncing all bicyclists, and a remarkably one-sided representation of what had happened (no mention of Mayor Brown's land-swap shenanigans with the Transbay terminal property that was going on behind the scenes during the same summer), about 5,000 bicyclists showed up in defiant celebration at their own monthly gathering. This time, anticipating a very heavy-handed police presence, the plan was to follow the Good Soldier Schweik approach, that is, ride to rule. Each cyclist would ride as if it were a motor vehicle, obeying all laws, stopping at every light and sign, signaling every turn, etc. That held for the first hour or so, and the traffic downtown was MUCH WORSE than it had ever been before. Thousands of cyclists filling the streets, obeying the traffic laws, turned out to be much more disruptive than following the safe and predictable method of Critical Mass that had evolved over time. 

From that time forward, a kind of truce developed with the police. The ebb and flow of policing over the ensuing years has been unpredictable, going back and forth between angry belligerence and benign tolerance. Sometimes a bunch of bicycling cops joined us, sometimes there were hardly any police at all, and sometimes a whole bunch of motorcycle cops and paddy wagons would come. They've never made any mass arrests, but they do ticket riders on occasion, usually in a somewhat punitive fashion if they see someone they particularly want to inconvenience (it's generally for running red lights, or impeding traffic, or other normal Critical Mass behaviors). When they do, like a few months ago on Broadway coming east out of the tunnel, it led to a half hour traffic jam blocking the streets. Critical Mass riders don't always stop in solidarity with every rider who gets hassled by the cops, but when they do, it raises the costs to the city in terms of traffic blocked and the number of officers who gather to secure the area while a traffic infraction ticket is written.

It is a useful reminder to all that the best approach (usually the one taken by the cops when they're being reasonable) is to facilitate the ride moving continuously through the city until it's finished.

Police repression, when it comes, is part of a larger culture war between those who think the American Way of Life is fundamentally about cars, business, and private property (almost always a strong bias of individual police) and the growing movement to shift into a new way of organizing our lives, based on ecological principles, reduced resource use, and a more convivial, publicly-oriented cityscape. Most of us riding in Critical Mass are not out to break the law or antagonize anyone, but we do feel strongly that we have to demonstrate firmly and directly a different way of life. To those of us committed to a life with a greater sense of conviviality and a commitment to a public sphere, the childish and antagonistic behavior that a few cyclists bring to the ride has been dismaying.

Unfortunately, the old xerocracy mostly died out (with the notable exception of the 10th anniversary ride in 2002--four different beautiful posters were made and put all around town, dozens of stickers and flyers were distributed at the ride, a book was published). Once or twice a year someone shows up with a flyer addressing the culture of the ride, or prepares a suggested route, but in general, cultural production, once so essential to the experience, went into hibernation. After more than a decade the transmission of the culture from oldtimers to newbies has broken down. People riding in Critical Mass these days might have been infants when we started it 18 years ago!

Sadly, some people show up because they believe all the media lies about this big anarchistic confrontational experience, though they are tiny in number. Still, when they behave badly they get an inordinate amount of attention, not just in the media when it deigns to address this ongoing cultural phenomenon, but weirdly, from other cyclists. There's a mentality that has been shaped by our profit-driven media: when it bleeds, it leads. I'm afraid all too many people on all sides of Critical Mass tend to fall into this same mental trap, focusing their attention on the tiny few who behave like jerks, rather than the overwhelming thousands (and not just here, but across the planet in over 300 cities worldwide) who manage things well, extend courtesy and kindness to bystanders, have joyful interchanges with people briefly stuck in buses and cars, and are greeted exuberantly from neighbors in their windows as we roll through central city neighborhoods.

Now the police seem to be threatening Critical Mass again, but to what end?

It's a small thing, lasting 2-3 hours a month, inconveniencing lots of people for a short time, but keeping an important cultural space open. In that space, a different kind of life is in gestation, where new friends and networks continually discover one another, where we experience radical direct democracy, rolling through the streets. And it is available to all comers. Historically it's been self-managed, and recently a new website and discussion list have been started to remedy the fact that the culture hasn't been handed down well between generations of riders.

As for what could work, I'd suggest that Chief Gascon start by removing all motorized vehicles from accompanying the ride, send whatever police he deems necessary on bicycles, and reiterate that Critical Mass is a cultural fact of life in San Francisco. Anything else is likely to make things worse and cost the city a lot more money over the long haul.

Photo: Matthew Roth

Democracy in action, I suppose. Long-time bicycle advocates from the East Bay and San Francisco converged on this meeting, hoping to convince the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) to support using some of the new tolls ($5 on all bridges as of July 1, with $6 congestion pricing on the Bay Bridge during rush hour, and for the first time, a half-price toll for carpoolers) to fund a new west-span bicycle/pedestrian/maintenance/safety lane to make the bridge safer, and to finish the transbay route for bicyclists and pedestrians too, not just motorized vehicles. But that effort was bureaucratically sidetracked before this meeting even started.

Surrounding the MTC hearing room were bicycle advocates from around the region. Photo: Chris Carlsson.

The BATA's legal advice from a prior meeting was that they have no authority to allocate toll monies toward this new path, in spite of language in the law that allows for maintenance and safety improvements, which the new path unambiguously represents.

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates has asked for a second legal opinion from the State Legislative Counsel, which he said will take 2-3 months to get. Moreover, he followed the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) chair's admonition to the assembled cycling advocates to save their comments for another time (since the question of funding and building a new west-span side path would not be addressed in this meeting), by stressing that the fight was no longer at BATA or the MTC but had moved to the state Legislature in Sacramento.

It's hardly a surprise that the MTC wanted to duck this issue and pass the buck to Sacramento. The 15-member MTC is a lopsided status-quo minded entity. That was revealed again today when San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, responding to several public commenters who were casual carpoolers and feared the new toll would wipe out the phenomenon, proposed the $2.50 carpool toll be reduced to $2.00. A roll-call vote went 13-3 against the proposal, only Daly, Tom Bates, and Bay Conservation and Development Commissioner Ann Halstedt voting for it.

One comment from an employee of the Bay Area Air Quality Control District pointed out that casual carpooling reduces congestion, saves money for those who do it, AND builds community, but the majority of the commissioners were not inclined to tinker with their staff's proposed new toll schedule. Nor did any of them choose to question the formula by which truckers have new tolls phased in over 3 years, denying the bridge budget $60 million according to their own calculations (recreational vehicle owners also showed up to challenge their being classified as trucks for purposes of bridge tolls, which will raise their bridge-crossing costs by 150%).

There is a long and charming local history of bicycle advocates who have pushed BART, Caltrain, the Golden Gate Bridge, and local bus systems for greater accommodation for bicycles and cyclists. It's a thankless, Sisyphean task, and we can all be thankful for those folks who have stuck with it.

That said, I've always been astonished at the eager sincerity a lot of people bring to these governmental processes. As far as I can tell the system is deeply broken. The inordinate emphasis, even at this very late date, on automobiles, freeways, "level of service," etc., seems to always trump common sense efforts to promote the incredibly modest beginnings of a new infrastructure. After all, there are state laws mandating major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. How is that going to be achieved without an alternative as obvious as a Bay Bridge bike path?

It was Jason Meggs and some stalwart friends a decade ago who rode bikes across the Bay Bridge to dramatize the absurdity of denying access to a central transportation artery. But most of the energy these days goes into attending these hearings with homemade signs, with earnest behind-the-scenes message making so as not to offend the commissioners, or become unseemly or too aggressive.

The urgency of altering how we live day to day gets quite lost in these processes. The moods of commissioners, the technical language in obscure appropriations bills, the muscle-bound lobbying strength of corporate behemoths, together become the focus of political action, rather than the terrain of our daily lives. I like the slogan "Bridge the Gap" just fine, but I couldn't help but feel that the real gap needing bridging at today's hearing was between the building trades workers out front clamoring for "jobs" and the bicycling advocates inside who were firmly but cautiously seeking support for a maintenance lane to be added to the west span.

I wondered if anyone had spoken with the building trades folks about supporting the bike/ped/etc. lane? Or has thought to propose a much broader alliance on local projects? (And what is it with union workers and their leaders that they always abdicate control over deciding what work is worth doing to those with the purse strings? Shouldn't workers be central deciders in how their work is employed in our communities?) What about a massive overhaul of local roads and bridges, adding Copenhagen-style bike lanes on every street and span? Think how much work that would be! Oh but we can't pay for it is the immediate rejoinder.

And if you accept the narrow constraints of institutional political reality as it is, then the argument is lost. But what about repealing Prop 13, at least as it applies to major corporations in California? What about ending the U.S. empire's military bases in over 100 countries around the world? Why is the U.S. spending as much on guns and bombs and death and mayhem as the rest of the world combined? Why did the federal government give away $1.5 trillion to the wealthiest owners of businesses instead of embarking on the much-promoted "Green New Deal" that if done honestly, might have provided resources for just this kind of drastic and dramatic reorganization and rebuilding of our urban physical infrastructure?

Common sense is trivialized and marginalized in the public process.

The west-span bike lane is a pipe dream for now. But by making it contingent on a massively expensive new lane being added to the existing bridge (and done under the design and control of the brazenly anti-bicycle Department of Highways, oops, I mean Caltrans), aren't we shooting ourselves in the foot?

A bike/ped/safety/maintenance lane could be put on the top deck of the Bay Bridge in two weeks if we had the political vision to do it. Here's how: Admit that traffic on the inbound west span rarely exceeds 30 mph and make that the new speed limit during rush hour. It's a pretty drive anyway, who cares if you have to go slower? And most of the time you can't get near 30 mph anyway, given the congested traffic. Narrow the five lanes from 12 feet to 10 feet, take the new 10 feet of space and barricade it with a cement railing. Voila! You have a bike/ped/safety/maintenance lane. The other five lanes are open during rush hour, but only 4 lanes are open the rest of the time, leaving a buffer lane next to the bike/etc. lane for additional safety. When traffic is light and only four lanes are open, the existing 50 mph speed limit can prevail... If we wanted to do it, we don't have to wait 3 months for a new legal opinion, and then another 2-plus years for another toll increase, and then 5-7 years for design and building of this new lane.

We could do it by March 1. Why not?

StreetUtopia is a new community organizing effort centered in North Beach. Launched by Hank Hyena and Phil Millenbah at an inaugural event in early January, they drew upwards of 150 people to an empty historic storefront at 1 Columbus Avenue, where they showed Streetfilms, had a small art exhibit, and conducted a survey of the folks who turned out. Hank Hyena explained his motivation in terms of European cities which are often greener, more bike-friendly, and with more pedestrian-centers than US cities. Along with several other parents of children at Yick Wo Public School, including co-instigator Phil Millenbah, a San Leandro city planner, they staged an inspiring evening of art, film, and conversation.

The questionnaire they handed out at the event started with a brief paragraph, assuming that we are on the cusp of a carbon-constrained transition to a future with far less cars:

The “modern” era brought television, automobiles and other technological changes. As part of this cultural transformation to the modern era and to support automobile use, society built millions of miles of paved roadway as both streets in urban areas and as highways connecting urban areas. The “postmodern” world is carbon constrained and the focus of transport is bus or rail and the old the roadway infrastructure is not needed in the same capacity. What should be done with the old infrastructure?

Then it asked a series of questions about whether or not Columbus Avenue should be closed to cars, if there should be “flex-streets,” if Washington Square should have a fountain, and what kinds of mixed-uses North Beach streets should have if cars weren’t the only priority?

Subsequently, I interviewed both Phil and Hank about StreetUtopia and their organizing, which you can read after the jump:

A hopeful vision of a future Grant Avenue.

Phil: Our idea was to create a place that was fun to share ideas of our visions of the city. Land use has gotten so contentious in San Francisco that we wanted to do something that was free of all of that. Instead of promulgating our opinions about how closing a street increases local business activity, we showed films from around the world where business owners told their stories of what great results came from closing a street.

There are two of us but there are others around who we talked with over time and the idea developed through these talks with others in the North Beach Community. Something we are also working on is quantifying the personal and cultural infrastructure of the community [with a] GIS database and series of maps for all of North Beach. We are going to go from building to building and note what happens at each place. We are also working with a senior group and mapping all of the seniors in North Beach. There is word that the COIT 39 bus is going away—a bus used by many seniors. We hope that our map would help us bring in a jitney service if needed and then we could route the service based on our mapping. This is all community internal stuff. We aren’t looking for press or anything, we just want to help the community. There is really an unintentional retirement community developing in North Beach—lots of people growing old in place—and they need special services, like having a place to meet and be social.

We found lots of people needing places to meet. Café Culture is nice but many people would just like to sit down and enjoy the day and not have to buy anything. We need a street farmers’ market or at least some more food sold on the streets. We would like to see more streets converted to pedestrian uses and we would like to see our local business people do well—and our residents have a great place to live.

Lower Columbus: an empty sea of asphalt, what a waste of space!

Hank, explaining some of the more than 100 responses to their questionnaire:

They did not want many things that I wanted, for example, they don't want a fountain in Washington Square. (I want one because kids like them, they are pretty, and in an Italian tradition) but the residents here really don't care for fountains. They see the water use as wasteful, plus it just attracts pigeons. The people surveyed were not interested in closing the main, touristy part of Columbus because they thought that would be detrimental to the tourist industry. However, they were interested in closing off lower Columbus, from Washington Street up to perhaps Broadway, making that section pedestrian-only. I am not sure why people suggested that—perhaps because it is a rather dead part of town and they thought pedestrian-only would liven it up. But they are amenable to making upper Grant auto-free. The main thing the survey revealed is that North Beach residents want more public space, park space, open space, places to mingle and gather.  There is interest in the "Poet's Plaza" space, closing off Vallejo to traffic, but there is impatience that it is taking so long. North Beach residents want things like more parks, community centers, and general open areas to gather and mingle, and this makes sense, because North Beach is very crowded with very little public space.

Phil: People seemed to like our “Flex-space” idea a lot. Flex space to us is space that is used at different times for different things. 25 percent of San Francisco is streets. People seem very open to closing some for human activities or what I call Postmodern street activities. I sold my car 3 years ago and am a full time pedestrian and transit user. I look at cars really differently now. I keep wondering who abandoned this big piece of metal on the street. Cars seem too wasteful and expensive and people keep putting a large share of their income into them. It is really self-indulgent that people expect to have a public place to move their big piece of metal around. We need that space for living life!

CC: By using the name StreetUtopia you probably inspire a lot of people to think more 'out-of-the-box' than they might otherwise. How has using the word/idea utopia helped or hindered you in your first public forays?

Hank: Phil and I are a good team, he is a city planner and he knows the nuts and bolts of enacting change, getting permits, paying fees, etc.  I am a futurist writer (for H+Magazine) and I promote notions like In-Vitro Meat, Nude Swimming for Longevity, and Robot Servants and SexBots. Utopia will be achieved one-step-at-a-time, and Phil is good at seeing the first step, while I am perhaps more interested in the year 2050. We are a mixture of pragmatism and imagination.

Phil: We want a happy place and some of these ideas are really axiomatic—they have been tried around the world and they work. I don’t see why there is this culture of unhappiness where so many people fight tried ideas for better spaces. Meanwhile our neighborhood is clogged with cars.

CC: You showed Streetfilms at your event, and had proposals floating to close all or parts of Grant Avenue to car traffic. What kind of responses did you get?

Hank: StreetFilms are great - the public really enjoyed the films! I think a lot of people were as shocked as I was to find out that cities like Bogota have more progressive urban planning than San Francisco.  Personally, I am interested in Grant because it is the oldest street in San Francisco; it has immense historical value and I believe we should honor and support the street, and work to revitalize it.

CC: How do bicycle boulevards and wider sidewalks fit in to StreetUtopia thinking? Are you inspired by Copenhagen or Barcelona or Paris or ...?

Phil: Barcelona inspired me. They have streets that are closed by the police in early evening with these nice, well-designed gates. Those streets are immediately full of people walking together and talking. Many mothers and children walking hand-in-hand, talking. Now that’s a good life! … I wish people would try more things. I remember Spiro Agnew said “I don’t believe in change for change’s sake.” I can’t make sense of that sentence, but I think that he is saying that he is afraid of new things, and many people are. I wish that we experimented more with our communities and if something didn’t work, fine, we do something else. But it almost seems like the outcome of an experience, such as the Mayor’s closing the Embarcadero a couple of times last year, needed to be determined before the approval was granted. I also think people need to focus more on design issues and not on just whether to approve or deny something.

Hank: I was very inspired by the "bike lifts' in Norway that took cyclists up hills, because many people often say that San Francisco can't be a bicyclist's town due to the hills.  Copenhagen is also very inspiring because they have inexpensive bikes that you can rent on the street and San Francisco should duplicate that. Honestly, I see North Beach as having more potential for pedestrians: it is very small and crowded and scenic.  There is a LOT of support for widening sidewalks because they are so crowded, almost impossible. I generally walk in the street, because there are so many dining tables and chairs on the sidewalks. North Beach also has many lovely interesting little alleys that should be developed for walkers, closed to traffic and beautified.

Telegraph Hill viewed from the Bay. High-rise apartments from an earlier era tower over Russian Hill further west.

He skirted Market Pond and made his way up to the Wiggle. Passing through a green arching gate he rolled along next to a long aging wall that had seen better days. On the other side of the wall used to be some kind of warehouse or big store. Now it was a grassy knoll sloping down to Market Pond.

On the crumbling 110-meter long wall was an old mural from the late 20th century. A clever mural within the mural showed the city, starting from a pre-deluge downtown full of cars and bikes and heading past itself to show Hayes River turning into a path to the west to the beach where a huge snake became a bicycle tire track. The mural was considered a civic treasure from the time before and a lot of trouble had been taken to save it after successive quakes and major storms.

At the end of the wall he went over the rushing creek and the high-arching Sans Souci Bridge, steering clear of oncoming cyclists. The veloway followed the winding course of the Hayes River, willow and laurel trees studding the banks, along with impatiens and lupine bushes. Many spots along the creek were open to the surrounding homes, mostly old Victorians that had elegantly stood along this waterway since it had been buried in cement culverts long ago. The lush gardens that filled the small valley gave off a wild variety of sweet and organic smells in the moonlight.

--from After the Deluge, A Novel of Post-Economic San Francisco (Full Enjoyment Books: 2004)

I wrote that passage in my novel a few years ago, set in San Francisco 150 years in the future. Imagine my pleasure when I found out that an ornamental portal to the Wiggle is the first project envisioned by some activists along our much-loved route. A week ago I sat down on the Wiggle at Bean There Café with Morgan Fitzgibbons, one of the instigators behind the new Wigg Party, whose mission is to have the folks who live and ride and eat along this route “become the leading community in America in the transformation to sustainability.” Recognizing what more and more people are coming to grips with, that we’re on the cusp of a dramatic change in how we live in cities, and on earth, the Wigglers want to lead the way, taking action one community at a time, anchored in place. Given the high mobility and transience of so many young San Franciscans, a focus on a local neighborhood as a site of transformation is immediately encouraging.

The incipient Wigg Party doesn’t yet have a website or an office, but about 15 people have come together after Fitzgibbons started some sustainable business consulting, and the ideas snowballed. It started to become a more comprehensive vision just this past July, as the group is organizing more consulting, an educational effort they’re calling the “Great Re-skilling,” a “Gateway to the Wiggle,” and a local currency effort (wigg-bucks? Tender wiggles?).

Why not turn whole streets into a City of Panhandles?

"I’ve read the Transition Handbook, Rob Hopkins’ work. I’m familiar with the movement. We’re not connected with them even though I should… I kind of disagree that we have these twin peaks of peak oil and climate change and that’s where it all comes from. I took the Permaculture Design course in the fall with Kevin Bayuk… "

Imagine a transformed Wiggle:

“An edible foodway, sculpture gardens at some spots, see if we can get people on the Wiggle to participate in window box programs, and if we can get the Panhandle recognized as part of it. Then we can put all sorts of things there. If we can get the whole roadway opened up for art, maybe stencils…We’re going to take a lot of inspiration from City Repair (in Portland)… Maybe we could get the entire Wiggle closed during Rush Hour!”

The Wiggle Valley, 1860s.

Unlike a long tradition of San Francisco radicalism, Fitzgibbons, sees his own agenda as compatible with the business world. I pressed him on this, skeptical as I am of any future for the buying and selling of human time. Perhaps he is representative of his generation of post-Left, post-neoliberal activists, or maybe his youthful optimism hasn’t yet been tempered by years of frustration with the stupidity of the modern work-a-day world.

“I come from a social entrepreneurial world in a way. I try to overcome these distinctions between nonprofit and for-profit. There’s this new model emerging, and the idea is to be able to turn a profit on a business that is performing a social good. Then we can bring in money for some of these other good projects we have… the profit businesses are a backyard garden business and a home audit business…”

To be sure, we’re all compelled to make compromises with respect to surviving in a capitalist economy, and there’s nothing new (or wrong) with taking the money we DO make at work and channeling it towards something more humane and worthwhile. I’ve done as much throughout my life. But I balk at the notion of profiting from doing social good, the bedrock concept of “social entrepreneurialism.” In my opinion, profit is derived from one of two sources: squeezing the paid employees, or externalizing costs to the greater public. If you are in a new market niche where there is little or no competition, you can charge high enough prices to escape the iron hand of the market for a while… but once competition enters, the path towards profitability and survival is invariably lowering labor costs and lowering costs of materials, waste, distribution, etc.—what gets called “efficiency” in capitalism, but is as often as not a brutal process of reducing people’s standards of living, and/or dumping costs (transit, waste, etc.) on to an acquiescent public sphere.

The success of the Reagan/Thatcher neoliberal transformation going back well over a generation was to discredit government and the public sphere, to the point that a concept like “social entrepreneurialism” can sound progressive. But it reinforces a society that frames owners of wealth as social/historical agents and the rest of us as the silly putty with which they attempt to achieve their goals. In any case, Fitzgibbons and his cohort are very well-intentioned, and certainly in tune with a rising social movement towards Transition and Resilient Communities. I’ll give him the last word:

“That’s really the whole game, is to get people to reorient their priorities and change the world… I’m a philosopher, and I have a new world view that allows for a new kind of faith that makes sense, based on evolutionary metaphysics. I think we’re in an evolutionary process. The question is where is it going, and more specifically what are we to do? And the answer is we don’t really know what the telos is. We don’t know the ultimate answer, so all we know is we have to create sustainable cultures, so the people can come behind us and have a better answer than we do.  And that gives our lives meaning, to create that culture, that’s what we have to do.”

Wigg Party meetings on 2nd Wednesdays, next: February 10, at 1571 Fulton Street, the “Sunshine Castle,” social 8:30, meeting 9… morganfitzgibbons@gmail.com

Bicycle traffic jams ahead on the Wiggle!

Well, no. We’ve had a great run in the 2000s. Averaging between 750 and 3000 riders on any given month, the birthplace of Critical Mass keeps going strong, in spite of the total lack of promotion or organizing during this past decade. But many of us long-time riders have been dismayed to see the persistence of silly, aggressive, and counter-productive behavior that makes the Critical Mass experience worse for our natural allies on buses, on foot, and even folks in cars who might join us in the future. Not to mention that it makes it worse for us cyclists too, to the point that many former regulars have stopped riding. Part of the frustration for us long-time riders is that we went through all these issues quite intensively back in the early-to-mid 1990s, and to see them cropping up again is a harsh reminder that we’ve done a piss-poor job of transmitting the culture, the lessons learned, from one generation to the next. Plenty of current Critical Massers were under 5 years old when we started it, and the ride’s culture has been more loudly and consistently transmitted by distorted representations in the mass media than it has by those of us who put our hearts and souls into it for years.

To address this, a few of us launched a new blog dedicated to San Francisco Critical Mass.

Online for only a couple of months, it has already reprinted a well-digested list of “do’s and don’t’s”, and a rumination from a long-time former Masser on the hard work it takes to keep a space like Critical Mass open and inviting and pleasurable, as well as a look at the Budapest, Hungary Critical Mass and an always provocative look at bike helmets. It’s a moderated blog with a limited number of contributors, but it’s open to a wide range of comments including some markedly negative ones, while it also seeks to keep the discussion constructive and insightful.

Critical Mass, Budapest, Hungary. (Photographer unknown)

When Critical Mass began in late 1992, over two dozen individuals spent a lot of time thinking and talking about this new experience, and the culture that was emerging with it. Part of those discussions involved how to spread the idea to other cyclists, and eventually to other cities. That led to a publication in those pre-World Wide Web days that was called “How to Make a Critical Mass", which went far and wide and probably had a bigger effect than we ever dreamed.

June 1996, Critical Mass heads west on Howard Street at 4th. (photo: Chris C.)

During a bit longer than the first two years, some of us published a monthly newsletter called “Critical Mass Missives,” but after April 1995 we ceased and more or less stopped being a “secret cabal” behind the tone and etiquette of the ride in San Francisco. Critical Mass was growing very large by then, reaching well over 1,000 riders, and by mid-summer 1996 the ride was drawing several thousand riders. Already in 1995 several of us early instigators had grown bored with the ride, feeling that it had lost some of its early vibrancy. The political space we had so jealously fought for and guarded seemed to wither away all by itself as hundreds and thousands of new riders joined in.

During late 1995-early 1996 one guy tried pretty hard to “take over” Critical Mass, doggedly printing hundreds of posters, promoting long rides that stretched out to the far western edges of the city, even inaugurating what became for a few years an “annual ride to Sausalito.” His preference for elaborate routes that went to hills and ridges all over the city, and required endurance and sometimes speed to keep up, seemed to many of us regulars to be an unwelcome departure from the convivial purposes of Critical Mass. It wasn’t meant to be a road race, an endurance test, or a contest to see who could ride the furthest or climb the most hills. It was supposed to be a place where we met once a month on bikes and “road home together,” enjoying a leisurely pace through town conducive to conversation, political and philosophical discussion, and meeting new people, usually ending in a park or a bar.

Happily, a newer group of riders coalesced with the purpose of overthrowing this lone nut’s temporary reign over Critical Mass route planning. Alternative routes began to appear. A concerted effort was made to steer the ride back to a friendlier and more celebratory experience, and redirect the emphasis towards the social and away from the athletic. This effort was largely successful and a series of rides with a rediscovered joie de vivre took place over the 1996-97 months, leading to the infamous confrontation engineered by then-Mayor Willie Brown in July 1997. (See Ted White’s documentary “We Are Traffic!" for a good account of it.) The following month saw thousands returning to ride in the “Good Soldier Schweik” ride, where we “rode to rule,” following as many traffic rules as we could, which predictably made downtown traffic MUCH worse. 

After that, the police mostly backed off, realizing that leaving us to conduct ourselves through the streets was a better crowd control strategy than confronting us and harassing us. Tickets were occasionally written, but in general, over the years that followed, a tacit truce has prevailed. In the decade since, the ride has percolated along, often quite euphoric and fun, but in the past two years or so, taking on a distinctively repetitive quality.

August 1999, Critical Mass huffs and puffs up Potrero Hill. (Photo: Chris C.)

August 2007, Stockton Street. (Photo: Chris C.)

Most of these dynamics can be altered by simple courtesy and smart behavior. Treat motorists with respect, thank them for waiting! They are people like us, and they might want to join us in the future if they are invited. Cars that get stuck in the Mass should be helped out to the right if possible. If Mass is fragmented and dispersed, organize a stop at a red light and regroup. People in the front are hugely responsible for stopping regularly, far more than feels comfortable, but it’s the only way to keep the Mass together. Don’t “cork” intersections where the Mass is broken and only a few bikes are trickling through. Better to stop the bikes on the red light and regroup. These are simple lessons we learned years ago to make for a better Critical Mass experience for everyone.

Halloween 2008, Broadway in North Beach, a party pause! (Photo: Eduardo Green)

You may not care if you’re winning hearts and minds, but overall, the point of Critical Mass is not a fraudulent “class war” between cars and bikes. We started Critical Mass to be a new kind of public space, and to help promote a different way of being together in city streets. Rolling along on bikes, tinkling bells, chatting and discussing, smelling an exhaust-free atmosphere, listening to humans instead of motors, and feeling the city’s geography in a wholly new way, is exhilarating and liberating—not just for us riding, but for the thousands of people we pass by. Our pleasure is infinitely more inspiring AND subversive than any amount of angry posturing, self-righteous taunting, or childish tantrums. Critical Mass is for adults of all ages, and encourages the brave young radicals who want to FSU to take it to the other side of town during Critical Mass, and don’t use us to hide behind as you work out your unresolved anger with your parents!

August 2008 in the Marina District. (Photo: Adam Aufdencamp)

For decades, planners and transportation specialists have debated how San Francisco's most important street could be re-visioned to  make it work better for transit, pedestrians, cyclists, shoppers, and those living on or near it. Now, as the Better Market Street Project moves forward with trial traffic diversions, the Art in Storefronts project, music and programming in public spaces, greening along sidewalks, and pedestrian safety improvements, San Francisco's political class is intent on revitalizing the street for the long haul. Though the concrete vision for what Market Street will eventually look like is some ways off, there is more effort now than in many years to improve the public realm and ensure the street lives up to its great potential.

With the rain falling in late November, and soggy unemployment statistics haunting our lives too, the idea of Depression lurks just below the surface. Depression has multiple meanings like so many concepts in the English language; in this case, I’m taking two of them: 1) mental depression that results from bad weather, personal trauma, emotional turbulence, etc., and 2) economic depression. I have a good coping mechanism for both kinds! It’s to take our local K2, i.e. Twin Peaks, by bike!

I was recently speaking with a close friend who is going through a break-up and gave her the advice that saved me the last time I faced a similar circumstance: develop a regular regime of walking or cycling every day. Get out of the house and out of your normal mental space and breathe the air, see the views, enjoy the beautiful city that is at your fingertips.

My trusty steed taking a break to graze on the way up Twin Peaks, January 2007.

Plenty of local cyclists are commuting and shopping these days, and there are those who tour the wide open spaces of the Bay Area in their free time. But I’m always astonished when I pass by the ubiquitous health clubs and gyms to see dozens of people huffing and puffing on treadmills and stationery cycles. We live in an incredible physical landscape, and instead of paying monthly club dues, you can just get out and walk and ride your bike and get as much of a workout as you want! If you’re facing a sudden drop in income, or perhaps you never had the dough to buy a health club membership in the first place, I want to recommend the Twin Peaks ride for your wallet AND your mental health.

View of South Peak from top of North Peak, Jan. 07.

I’ve been riding up to the top of Twin Peaks for about five years, trying to do it weekly but mostly making it twice a month. If I could I’d go every day, but like most people, I’m just too damned busy. Still, it only takes me about 30 minutes to get up there from my flat on Folsom in the Mission. I’ve tried every route from south and north. Straight up 24th Street leads to one of two routes from Hoffman and 24th: south to 25th and slalom up the very steep block to Grand View Avenue, cut further south to Clippper and take the bike lane to where it ends at upper Market. Alternately, an easier route is north on Hoffman until it intersects Grand View, then cut back south on Grand View to the circular ramp at Elizabeth, take it up to the first exit on the east side of upper Market, follow the sidewalk up and eventually cut across the street so you can zoom westward until you hit Twin Peaks Boulevard, close to where O’Shaughnessy Drive enters from the south.

This map shows several approaches from north and south.

One of the surprising treats in store on this route is when you’ve turned north on Twin Peaks Blvd., it takes a minute to pass the last residential intersection (Panorama) and then you enter a different zone. It’s as though you’ve taken off and are beginning to float above the city. Birds and bugs are the new soundscape, the wind and sun or fog greets you as you pass a cluster of invasive ivy and French broom, and continue the circuitous route around the hills to ascend to the South Peak. When I get to the southern end of the crazy eight/infinity ring road, I lock my bike to a sign post and hike up the100 feet to the top of the south peak where I’ve taken over a thousand photos of the city since I started doing this some years ago.

Once you've reached the top of Market Street this is how you leave the city below on Twin Peaks Blvd.

The other approaches from the east take a more northerly approach. Go to 17th and Castro and Market, have a coffee, and start riding up 17th. In a block or so, you’ll see Corbett Avenue leaving diagonally to the southwest, far more gradual than the vertical incline of 17th Street. Follow Corbett’s winding ascent until you hit Clayton, where you have two choices. You can take Clayton to the right (north) to where it hits the other end of Twin Peaks Boulevard a short ways up hill, but then you face a dauntingly steep climb to where Twin Peaks Blvd. leaves to the left, while the road you’ve been on continues straight ahead as Clarendon Blvd. (This is also a spot where you can take the wooden stairs to your right and pop out on to the top of Tank Hill, one of the city’s most treasured viewing spots.) From this intersection, the climb is steady but not horribly steep.

The other choice from Corbett and Clayton is to continue on Corbett, ascending slowly in a southerly direction, well above Market Street now, until you reach a steep short block called Hopkins Street to your right. Take that up to Burnett, turn right, and follow Burnett to the end where it intersects Twin Peaks Blvd. (it’s a bit steep towards the end of this ride too)… Now you follow Twin Peaks Blvd. as it winds up the northeast face of Twin Peaks and brings you to the north peak and/or a turn into the tourist-bus-filled parking lot with the typical views.

Red route is steeper, blue route meanders more, taking Corbett to Hopkins to Burnett before intersecting Twin Peaks Blvd.

Crystal clear view in Feburary 2007 from the South Peak.

It's always a bit odd to have a view like this a "routine" experience! But you can if you get to the top of Twin Peaks regularly.

I recommend locking up and hiking to the top of either peak, and sit and contemplate the city in all its grandeur. I find nothing clears my mind and calms my qualms like a bracing 20 minutes at the top of Twin Peaks. On clear days the views are spectacular in all directions, taking in the Pacific, the Golden Gate Bridge, downtown the bay as far south as you can see, San Bruno Mountain and Montara Mountain across the peninsula to the south, Mt. Davidson and even Lake Merced. Twin Peaks itself is part of what some are claiming as the San Miguel Hills Bio-reserve, which ultimately seeks to create open wild corridors connecting these hills with the Presidio to the north and San Bruno Mountain to the south. As a relatively isolated bit of San Francisco's natural ecology, Twin Peaks still provides habitat for a number of birds, butterflies and flowers.

Blooming lupine on Twin Peaks in March 2007, an important butterfly habitat.

Anise Swallowtail butterflies like the rocky summit of the south peak, seen here in October 2009.

Small mammals make this landscape their home, which in turn provides food for raptors and coyotes who also make regular appearances on Twin Peaks.

Swooping in for dinner, June 2009.

On the hunt in June 09.

Once you’ve burned all those calories and calmed all those nerves, you have the great pleasure of hurtling back down the hill on a route of your choice. All paths down are a blast, so get out there and enjoy one of San Francisco’s greatest assets, entirely free to use as often as you like!

Fog is often blocked at the summit of Twin Peaks, or so it seems from the eastern neighborhoods. Once up there, its embrace can be exciting and inspiring!

Sometimes there's nothing to do but give up to the elements... good for the brain and soul!

Photo: Matthew Roth

And who should they hang for granting variances permitting higher than 2:1 ratios, as happened last week when a two-unit home at 2626 Larkin Street in Russian Hill received permission from the San Francisco Planning Commission to build five parking spaces, one with a parking stacker for additional cars?

When these questions are asked of city planners and developers, like they were during the struggle to limit parking at 299 Valencia Street, advocates and political leaders are led to believe that it is impossible to finance new developments, particularly condos and non-rental properties, without the maximum parking ratio possible. Less parking, goes the developer refrain, banks will refuse to loan and the units will be impossible to re-sell.

Not all developers buy that argument, however, and some have buildings that disprove it.

"If you are doing a project next to BART or many buses, you really don't need to have a lot of cars," said Oz Erickson, Chairman of the Emerald Fund, Inc, a developer who has built more than 2,000 units in San Francisco. Emerald's newest development, a rental building at 333 Harrison Street in Rincon Hill, will be built with a .5:1 parking-to-unit ratio, even though the developer could appeal for a variance to build more parking.

Above all else, Erickson argued, a city should provide as much flexibility in developments as possible. "You really should be in a position where zoning laws do not require you to put in parking," he said.

Patrick Kennedy's Gaia Building in Berkeley has 91 units and only 35 parking spaces. Photo: jeremydw

Referring to cyclists and others who don't own cars: "I think it's important to provide them with an opportunity to live a car-free life if they choose to."

Photo: pbo31

As we documented on Streetsblog, over-reliance on LOS considerations by planners has traditionally led to widening intersections and roadways to improve the flow of automobile traffic at the expense of other modes. If the amendments made by Natural Resources stand and are formalized by January 1, 2010, the deadline for the changes, cities and counties around the state will have the flexibility to consider capacity metrics like LOS alongside other metrics that prioritize transit, pedestrians, and cyclists. The new rules would even allow city planners to walk away from LOS completely.

From the introduction to the proposed changes:

The intent of those amendments was to recognize a lead agency’s discretion to choose its own methodology for determining transportation-related impacts of a project while ensuring that all components of a circulation system are addressed in the analysis. The proposed revisions would refocus the question from the capacity of the circulation system to the performance of the circulation system as indicated in an applicable plan or ordinance. The proposed revisions also clarify and update language regarding safety considerations and other mass transit and non-motorized transportation issues.

In San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom's Office of Economic and Workforce Development and the City Attorney have been collaborating with the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) to replace LOS with a new metric for measuring the projected environmental impacts of a development or a project by the total number of new automobile trips it will generate (ATG). The city and county believe this new metric would move the focus away from how many cars move through a particular intersection to how many additional cars would be added to the total traffic picture. By default, this metric would prioritize transit improvements, bicycle infrastructure, and pedestrian safety measures, none of which would add automobile trips.

"This is a fantastic development with tremendous impact for transportation analysis in California," said TA Executive Director Jose Luis Moscovich in an email. "We are optimistic that, after two rounds of hearings and comments, the CEQA guidelines will drop references to congestion and automobile LOS. The Authority is proud to have worked hard with our partners at the Mayor's office and City Attorney's office to bring about this exciting reform."

Bicycle advocates in San Francisco, who have been waiting three years for the lifting of an injunction preventing the city to build any new bicycle infrastructure, in part because of LOS concerns, were equally enthusiastic.

"Together with SB 375... and other state-level direction for plan/ordinance/policy-based transportation evaluation, this checklist language puts us in a much better place for nurturing bikeways and livable neighborhoods in San Francisco and across California," said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Program Director Andy Thornley, who also noted that the important shift from capacity measurements to overall performance of a transportation network would by necessity prioritize transit and other modes in a network, not just cars.

In Oakland, LOS thresholds have been raised to thwart proposals for bicycle lanes on key corridors linking the bicycle network to BART and other transit nodes. "The most critical proposed change in the Transportation Guidelines is the removal of the word 'capacity,'" said East Bay Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Robert Raburn. "The concept of capacity has acted to guard and promote automobile traffic to the detriment of any other mode of travel. In place of this unhealthy fixation, we can look forward to an inclusive consideration of 'the performance of the circulation system, taking into account all modes....'"

In San Jose, where officials adopted a policy in 2005 that ignored auto LOS impacts [PDF] in sections of the city where they wanted to encourage transit ridership, increased cycling, pedestrian safety, and livable neighborhoods, the CEQA revisions validated the city's position.

"It is not a coincidence that the state's policy mirrors San Jose's flexible approach to reforming outdated, auto-centric LOS policies," said Hans Larsen, Acting Director of San Jose's Department of Transportation. "These proposed state policy guidelines give every city in California the opportunity to follow the progressive 'smart growth' direction that San Jose adopted in 2005."

Parking Availability Under CEQA

Another significant revision to the transportation guidelines is the elimination from the environmental checklist of the guarantee that a project provides "adequate parking capacity," a rule that has made transit oriented development more difficult and has increased the supply of parking generally. Although a 2002 lawsuit against the City of San Francisco and the developers of the Westfield Mall clarified that the supply of parking is a social impact not an environmental impact, the CEQA guidelines had not been updated to reflect the ruling.

From San Franciscans Upholding the Downtown Plan v. City and County of San Francisco, "The social inconvenience of having to hunt for scarce parking spaces is not an environmental impact; the secondary effect of scarce parking on traffic and air quality is. Under CEQA, a project's social impacts need not be treated as significant impacts on the environment. An EIR need only address the secondary physical impacts that could be triggered by a social impact."

UCLA Professor Donald Shoup elaborated on the point in a letter to be submitted to Natural Resources:

No one knows how much parking is “adequate.” Adequate for what? Does “adequate” mean enough parking spaces so that everyone can drive to the project and park free when they get there? Providing so much parking that no one can say a project has “inadequate” parking capacity has done great damage in California.... In effect, urban planners treat free parking as an entitlement, and they consider the resulting demand for free parking a “need” that must be met. Off-street parking requirements create an abundance of parking spaces, drive the market price of parking to zero, and thus explain why drivers can park free for 99 percent of their trips. Off-street parking requirements are a fertility drug for cars.



Cities require off-street parking spaces because the market supposedly fails to provide enough of them. But the market fails to provide many things at a price everyone can afford. It fails to provide affordable housing for many families, for instance, and those who argue for affordable housing usually find themselves in an uphill battle. But cities have without a second thought imposed planning requirements to ensure affordable parking. Rather than charge fair market prices for on-street parking, cities require ample off-street parking for every land use. As a result, most of us drive almost everywhere we go.



CEQA’s parking policy makes this bad situation even worse. Rather than try to force up the parking supply and automobile trips, CEQA should focus on reducing automobile trips, or should at least not have a policy that will increase automobile trips.

Public comment on the proposed amendments to the CEQA guidelines closes on November 10, 2009.

POST UPDATED: 5:30 pm

Proposed CEQA Transportation Changes in Detail:

A generation ago, nearly half of all U.S. kids walked or bicycled to school. Today, less than fifteen percent do, with the majority arriving at school in private automobiles. It’s no coincidence, then, that studies show more than a quarter of San Francisco’s children are overweight. But a new program hopes to change that trend, while reducing greenhouse gas pollution and increasing fun.

With the help of a $500,000 grant from the federal government, San Francisco has launched its own “Safe Routes to Schools” program, aimed at encouraging students and parents to walk or bike to school.

At Longfellow Elementary last Wednesday, October 7th, students joined parents on a “walking school bus.” Although the date was part of International Walk to School Day, organizers plan group walks to school every Wednesday—with the ultimate goal of walking to school every day.

Stephen O'Brien has been coaxing an oasis out of a most unlikely environment for a long time: the small green patches at either end of the ground level Mission Street frontage of the Transbay Terminal. He started back in 1958, when the old Key System train tracks that used to bring East Bay electric streetcars to the Transbay Terminal were being torn out. The Transbay Terminal in those days was a crucial commuter hub, bringing passengers from all over the East Bay. If you've ever ridden the F bus from Berkeley to San Francisco, you've ridden on the descendant of the same-lettered streetcar that once transported you from downtown Berkeley to downtown San Francisco just a minute longer than BART does today!

O'Brien is having his last day working his gardens at the Transbay Terminal today. His company's contract with Caltrans has ended, and he has been transferred to the State Building or the PUC building grounds. He's almost 80 years old and if he doesn't like his new posting, he'll probably retire soon. It'll be hard to match the half century he's spent cultivating the quiet, almost invisible oases at the Transbay Terminal. I heard about O'Brien from my friend Susanne Zago:

"Every morning I step out of the Transbay Terminal, one of the ugliest places I've ever been, and I notice this small green space as I leave. Sometimes it was completely trashed, but the next day I'd look in and it would be restored to its pristine condition. I looked at the trees, surprisingly mature, wondering what was planned for them as they build the new Transbay Center. I started asking around, and no one knew. One day I met this man who was in the space and it turned out to be Stephen."

July 20, 1953, Key System train awaits on platform in Transbay Terminal. (Photo courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library.)

Passengers boarding Key System train, June 8, 1948.

A natural oasis at 1st and Mission.

Beneath this 45-year-old pine lies a hidden patch of nature, nurtured for a half century by Stephen O'Brien.

A garden flourishes in a forgotten corner.

Stephen O'Brien knows what's going to happen. His 52 years of nurturing these garden spots will be bulldozed with the rest of the old 1939 Terminal, making way for the new tallest building in San Francisco and a multi-billion dollar transit center. The project has been gestating for years. I once had an office at 37 Clementina, which is only about a block away, and I remember the original plan in the late 1980s to bring Caltrain into the city center at 1st and Mission in order to connect to BART and MUNI, establishing a true regional transit hub. The Caltrain extension was deep-sixed by transit planners. Years went by, during which BART was extended to the airport and MUNI extended its N-Judah by building waterfront tracks around to 4th and Townsend (massively subsidizing the Giants' "privately financed" stadium). Now they've resuscitated the Caltrain extension, in order to bring High-Speed Rail into the center of downtown. The profligate waste of resources is breathtaking. But as long as engineering firms and contractors and building trades workers are all keeping busy, it's good for the economy right?

Anyway, as we go through our daily lives it's easy to not see the little patches of nature struggling to gain a foothold in the aptly named concrete jungle. I spoke to O'Brien on Wednesday and learned a bit about his long service at this deeply layered historical site. He told me when he showed up in 1958 there were just brown patches where today there is dense foliage and tall trees. I went to look for old photos at the Main Library's online collection, and as you can see from these pictures, the spots that Stephen has been maintaining have always been "green," albeit nothing like what he's helped them become.

In this December 27, 1939 photo taken in the first year of the Transbay Terminal's operation, you can see the two garden spots laid out from the beginning. (Photo courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library.)

By August 10, 1964, Stephen O'Brien had been watering and attending this garden for almost six years. (Photo courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library.)

October 8, 2009, just months before demolition.

O'Brien has an interesting history himself. He's got an Irish name but on his mother's side of the family, he has an English grandfather and a German grandmother. His English grandfather once owned a dairy ranch on the western slopes of Mt. Tamalpais before selling it off for $500! O'Brien grew up in Tomales Bay, and as a young man he jumped at the chance to purchase a lot in the newly subdivided Inverness back in the 1940s: $25 down and $25 a month until he'd paid off the $1,000 price. Today his lot is the only one left in Inverness that hasn't had a house built on it.

He told me about the barber who used to have his business inside the Terminal. After helping him sink his plumbing O'Brien got free haircuts for a long time. There used to be three different restaurants inside too, including the James Gray Company restaurant, and shoeshine and shoe repair were also thriving businesses there. Continental Trailways bus service once used the station in competition with Greyhound, just as other train lines once ran across the Bay Bridge along with the Key System, until the Bay Bridge was converted to motorized vehicles only.

O'Brien was in the basement a few years ago and saw that the vast underground space was still as good as new. Nevertheless, it's all coming down soon. He noted that the rebuilding of the Fremont Street ramps from the Bay Bridge had probably saved his gardens for an extra seven or eight years. The gnarly pine tree closest to First Street was saved from a nearby State Building, when O'Brien transplanted it from a discarded planter. It's grown to be 20 feet tall and while it's oddly shaped there's no denying that is seems to be thriving with its roots in the ground! The twin pines at either end of the Terminal were planted more than 45 years ago and though they've grown rather tall, they're dwarfed by the skyscrapers that have continued the southward march from downtown. O'Brien told me about the various birds, LBB's, gulls, hawks, and pigeons that have made this mini-habitat a resting spot. Varieties of butterflies have found a home here too.

The eastern end of the Terminal plaza.

The Millennium tower dwarfing the 45-year-old pine tree at Fremont and Mission.

To the west, this ungainly monster dominates a hearty pine tree that was saved from a discarded planter by Stephen O'Brien.

Who remembers that the highrise in the photo above was built on the site of the old arcade known as "Fun Terminal"? The same "Fun Terminal" that gave its name to the seminal album by local rockers The Mutants back in the early 1980s?...

Fun Terminal! Right across 1st Street from O'Brien's Garden back in the 1970s-80s.

Stephen was philosophical about losing his half-century's work. It makes him sad, of course. O'Brien's gardens have survived in surprised juxtaposition to the changing neighborhood that surround them. Easy to overlook, his gardens are larger examples of the persistence of nature even in a highly built environment. For those of us who haven't noticed the garden spots as we've scurried by, preoccupied with the day's work or the domestic dramas ahead, their imminent disappearance (they will no longer be maintained, but should stand for a few months more at least) might serve as a cautionary note. Shouldn't we stop and smell the flowers? And shouldn't we honor the essential work of the invisible toilers in our midst, people like Stephen O'Brien who has selflessly and without ulterior motive kept these little patches of urban greenery flourishing for decades? Stop by today and say thanks to Stephen O'Brien!

In 1953, pigeons had the roost of the lawn... (Photo courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library)

Going, going, ...

November 1965 view looking southeast over the Transbay Terminal. (Photo courtesy San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library.)

Terminal History

San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal was built in 1939 at 1st and Mission Streets as a California Toll Bridge Authority facility in order to facilitate commuter rail travel across the lower portion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.  It was paid for by Bay Bridge tolls, which were then 50 cents per automobile.  At the time, the lower deck of the Bay Bridge was not only used for automobile travel, but also hosted two rail tracks on the south side. The rail portion was run principally through the Key System.

The Terminal was designed to handle as many as 35 million people annually with a peak 20-minute rate of 17,000 commuters that were transported in 10-car trains at headways of 63.5 seconds. In its heyday at the end of World War II, the terminal’s rail system was transporting 26 million passengers annually. After the war ended and gas rationing was eliminated, the Terminal’s use began to steadily decline to a rate of four to five million people traveling by rail per year. In 1958, the lower deck of the Bay Bridge was converted to automobile traffic only, the Key System was dismantled, and by 1959, the inter-modal Transbay Terminal was converted into a bus-only facility, which it currently is today.  (from the Transbay Center website)

Flickr photo: pbo31

The signs, two of seven the MTA plans to install around the city, are part of the SFgo program that will upgrade traffic signals on Oak and Fell by interconnecting them with fiber optic cables and controlling them by central computer. The MTA staff at the meeting presented the plan as part of the city's transit-first policy, but they acknowledged that the choice of Oak and Fell Streets makes that claim look less than sincere. They also offered little in the way of optimism that the new signals and signs might prevent last week's tragedy, when a motorist sped around a stopped car on Fell Street at Broderick and drove into Melissa Dennison, killing her instantly.

The tragedy prompted City Traffic Engineer Jack Lucero Fleck to join his staffer Cathal Hennessy at the neighborhood meeting. He was compassionate, echoing the sentiments of SFBC Program Manager Marc Caswell in pointing out that it's illegal and dangerous to move around a stopped car at an intersection and that a green light does not mean you have the right of way but rather that you may proceed if the intersection is free of pedestrians and other traffic. Police Lieutenant Lon Ramlan, on the other hand, was irresponsible, implicitly exonerating the motorist by stressing that "it's an accident" and asking people to be careful when they cross the street because there might be a car passing that stopped car.

Since the tragedy and the meeting, conversation in the neighborhood has centered around what can be done on Fell and Oak Streets to calm traffic and restore some of the safety and civility that the neighborhood knew before the last half century of work by traffic engineers to cram more and more cars through the neighborhood. Based on conversations with many local leaders, Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi who represents the district, and transportation professionals, here are some ideas that might provide a consensus.

1. Forget the signs. They make the street look more like a freeway and less like a quiet neighborhood street that it once was and could be again. The Fell Street has the bona fide benefit of telling motorists when the Concourse garage is full (which frequently occurs on weekends) and directing them to the mammoth (and empty) garages at UCSF (which should have been used in lieu of the Concourse Garage in the first place, but that's another story). The Oak Street sign has no benefit, even for motorists.

2. Slow speeds to 18 mph or less. While state law prevents the city from reducing the speed limit to less than 25 mph (except on alleys), it does not prevent the city from timing its lights for very slow speeds. Arguably this would do more for pedestrian safety than restoring the streets to two-way operation, and it would almost certainly do more for neighborhood livability as slower speeds result in much quieter traffic. Portland, Oregon times its lights on certain downtown one-way streets for speeds as slow as 12 mph.

3. Use pricing at the freeway on- and off-ramps to reduce congestion at peak hours. The Transportation Authority's congestion pricing study was focused on preventing downtown congestion, when a fairer and probably more effective focus would be a citywide pricing scheme focused on the freeway on- and off-ramps.

4. Admit that even with pricing, and certainly before pricing takes effect, car congestion is a fact of life in San Francisco (and any city worth living in) and seek to manage it smartly. This is in contrast to dealing with it by increasing capacity at choke points, which just has the effect of moving the problem elsewhere. In the case of Fell and Oak Streets, this means different things for the morning and afternoon commute periods.

In the morning, the choke point is Octavia Boulevard, and backed-up cars on Oak Street divert to Haight and Page Street, important bicycle and transit streets. Using the signals to reduce capacity before it gets near the freeway will spread out the congestion and ease the movement onto the freeway at Octavia. This ought to be coupled with measures to reduce through automobile traffic on Page and Haight Street.

In the afternoon, the congestion takes place mostly on the freeway itself, out of the way of city streets. The problem occurs when motorists enjoy the wide-open expanse of Fell Street after Octavia Boulevard, and especially adjacent to the park. Why does Fell Street need four lanes next to Golden Gate Park when only three lanes feed it? Fell Street along the Panhandle would be a perfect location for a cycle track. It would reduce the lanes to three, still plenty, and take fast-moving cyclists off the crowded mixed-use path on the Panhandle. Doing the same treatment on Oak Street would help the morning congestion problem, for that matter.

The SFgo program as originally conceived is definitely a product of the old Department of Parking (Lots) and Traffic (Congestion), and much of its focus now seems like the last gasp of the DPT, whose logo adorned the informational placard Hennessy brought to show the neighborhood audience. The technology could be used to promote safety and the city's transit-first policy as its proponents currently claim it does, but so far on Oak and Fell Street there is little evidence it is being used that way.

Famously, we live on a crack in the earth. The San Andreas Fault gets most of our attention, followed not too far behind these days by the equally ominous Hayward Fault. A major earthquake on either of these could alter local landscapes forever, and will certainly damage or destroy freeways, bridges, and the water system. That's one of our catastrophes waiting in the wings, and it's good think about preparing for such eventualities.

Less obvious, but just as much a part of our local natural landscape (largely obscured by asphalt and buildings), are the old waterways on which the city is built. The evidence for these underground waterways is in plain view as well as being represented in various public documents. Joel Pomerantz wrote "San Francisco's Clean Little Secret" a few years ago (first appearing in a book I edited "The Political Edge" City Lights: 2004) wherein he found in SF Water Dept. official reports the saga of the "Mighty Hayes River." Starting deep underground somewhere near Lone Mountain, the subterranean river flows southeast under Civic Center, and as you can see on this map, once surfaced around 7th and Mission.

1852 U.S. Coastal Survey Map of San Francisco, from Yerba Buena Cove at upper right to Mission Bay on right. Mission Plank Road is the long diagonal that clips the edge of the swampy wetlands at apx. today's 7th and Mission.

"With a hydromorphology not unlike Florida’s everglades, [the Hayes River] broadsides Market Street, encountering a long concrete subway tunnel that interrupts its gait. So copious are the waters of the Hayes that, to protect their investment from damage, BART runs “de-watering” pumps day and night in the Powell Street BART station. Removing, each week, 2.5 million gallons of tested, high-quality, potable groundwater (into the sewer!) the transit agency keeps the Hayes from flooding the tracks."

It's not far to the obvious subsidence at Natoma Alley just west of 7th where the street level falls at least 5 feet from the grade on the larger 7th Street.

Natoma Street, easterly, just west of 7th.

Same intersection of Natoma and 7th looking from east to west.

On Howard Street, a hundred or so feet south, two warehouses have been slowly sinking into the underlying marsh. Several efforts to cosmetically disguise what's happening have been implemented in recent years, but this latest version, painting the horizontal red boxes, seems to emphasize the effect.

Sinking warehouses on Howard Street opposite Langton Alley. Note the red horizontal boxes painted on the front of the darker warehouse... the second one noticeably angles downward. Note too how the stripes in the road indicate the dip.

Same warehouse straight on.

Extreme Pizza brick building on Folsom near Russ Street. Cracks in the facade have been patched, but there's no denying the building is slumping to the right, sinking into the marsh!

Just around the corner from the Pizza brick building, on Russ Alley, these cars highlight a sinking spot.

These buildings on Folsom between 6th and 5th show signs of subsidence too. The older ones are tipping back from the street, as the rear of the structures are sinking. Before a lot of new lofts were built in the 1990s in this area, many old warehouses were obviously sinking after the 1989 earthquake, on Folsom, Harrison and the alleys in between.

In an 1878 history by J.S. Hittell (History of the City of San Francisco and Incidentally of the State of California, cited in Nancy Olmsted’s Vanished Waters: A History of San Francisco’s Mission Bay. San Francisco: Mission Creek Conservancy, 1986) the 80-100 foot deep marshes presented a significant barrier to surface transportation. The first road to cross them was the Mission Plank tollroad, but there engineering problems right away.

“Mission Bay’s slender connection to Gold Rush San Francisco is the Mission Plank Road. (today’s Mission Street), which opened as a toll road in 1851. Its three-and-a-quarter-mile length ran into trouble for the contractors where it crossed the line of Seventh Street (shown but not named on the map).

Here they projected a bridge built on pilings, “but that plan had to be abandoned, to the astonishment and dismay of the contractor; the first pile, forty feet long, at the first blow of the pile driver sank out of sight, indicating that there was no bottom within forty feet to support a bridge. One pile having disappeared, the contractor hoisted another immediately over the first and in two blows drove the second down beyond the reach of the hammer… there was no foundation within eighty feet… pilings were abandoned, and cribs of logs were laid upon the turf so as to get a wider base than offered by piles. The bridge made thus always shook when crossed by heavy teams and gradually settled till it was in the middle about five feet below the original level… the cost of the road was ninety-six thousand dollars, about thirty thousand dollars per mile… the plank road company obtained another franchise for a road on Folsom Street… in 1854 a high tide overflowed the [Folsom] road between Fourth and Fifth and floated off the planking.”

J.S. Hittell observes that, although these marshy areas were called swamps, “They seem to have been for part of their area at least, subterranean lakes from forty to eighty feet deep, covered by a crust of peat moss eight or ten feet thick… When the streets were first made, the weight of the sand pressed the peat down, so that the water stood where the surface was dry before… More than once a contractor had put on enough sand to raise the street to the official grade, and gave notice to the city engineer to inspect the work, but in the lapse of a day between notice and inspection the sand had sunk down six or eight feet… heavy sand crowded under the light peat at the sides of the street and lifted it up eight or ten feet above its original level, in muddy riddges full of hideous cracks…it was also pushed sidewise so that houses and fences built upon it were carried away from their original position and tilted up at singular angles…”

The toll road to the mission probably would have gone out Market Street instead of trying to cross these soggy swamps, but in that era tall sand hills still dominated the terrain. The relatively flat Market Street we know today was blocked by an 80-foot sandhill between Second and Third Streets… What happened to all that sand? In the period 1859 to 1873, the "steam paddy" (or giant steam shovel—it was said to do the work of twenty Irish laborers at a single stroke) took south-of-Market sand to fill Mission Bay, establishing a century-long pattern of leveling hills and using the sand, rock, and soil to fill in nearby wetlands to "make land." It wasn't until the 1965 McAteer-Petris Act established the Bay Conservation and Development Commission that the pell-mell filling of the bay was halted.

Market and Powell are written in hand on this 1851 photo. This view is from apx. 2nd and Folsom. Note the very tall sand dunes to the left and in the distance. This is today's rather flat South of Market area!

This Oma-fiets (or, Grandma-bicycle, in Dutch) sits for sale at the Market Street storefront of "My Dutch Bike" while a typical "American" bike is pedaled by outside. Photo by Frank Chan.

Seeing an opportunity, Nasirian teamed up with Dutch husband Oscar Mulder to open up a new business to peddle Dutch pedals: My Dutch Bike on Market Street just east of Second Street. Their shop sells a few high-end Dutch city bikes, as well as the bakfiets, the Dutch answer to cargo bikes. Their sales are good enough to keep them in business, she says, although most of their business is online, and they will be moving soon to another location.

My Dutch Bike is just one manifestation of a veritable frenzy of marketing to the fastest-growing segment in the bicycle market: everyday, utilitarian bicycles. It sparks some interesting questions: What can we do to encourage the trend? What will the quintessential American, or San Franciscan, city bike look like?

In every country where bicycles are commonplace transportation, almost every single bike comes equipped with lights, fenders, a rack, and chainguard. In Germany, those items, plus a bell and a kickstand, are mandatory on any bike not sold as a stripped-down "sports bike."

David Baker's "Old Dutch" has all these elements, and the typical Dutch bike geometry - large (28") diameter wheels, very upright posture - that makes them especially elegant for urban transportation. "I have 12 bikes, but this is the one I pick when I go on most trips," Baker says. "It turns the act of riding into this very pleasant and restful ritual." Riding it feels like you're on a "great ship of state."

The fact that his bike is heavy and geared to a slow one-speed is part of the charm to him. He rides for exercise, so a highly efficient bike defeats that purpose. And the large wheels, while being heavier, have less rolling resistance, handle our rough pavement better, and provide more momentum. It helps he does not have to carry his bike up the stairs.

"If our city were serious about promoting bicycle culture, and meeting the MTA's goal of cutting car use in half by 2030 while doubling bicycling and walking, we have to find a way to subsidize new "city bike" purchases."

This is one of the reasons that Gary Fisher thinks that an American "city bike" has to be lightweight. Talking to me from the European bicycle dealers' show in Germany, Fisher explained that most bikes there stay on the ground floor. Also key, he said, is that people there dawdle around on safe bike paths. "In the United States you have to share the street with traffic and it feels safer to keep up a higher speed. In Germany, you just go your own pace."

Industry leaders are always looking for the next electric bikes or the next "mountain bike boom" and many are betting on city bikes for those purposes. Marin's Joe Breeze makes nothing but city bikes these days, and all the big companies have a line of upright bikes with commuting accessories.

Some think that electric bikes are the route to mainstream acceptance of city bicycling in the United States. In Europe, Fisher says, electric bikes "are the absolute rage," accounting for 30 percent of sales by value. Business people love them because their extra cost brings extra profit. From the user's perspective, the bike looks and feels like a regular bike; the lithium ion batteries kick in power only when needed to climb a hill or increase speed. These are not motorcycles; the rider still has to pedal. At an average cost approaching $1,300 each, however, electric-assist bicycles are not the people's bike.

As our bicycle culture develops, will we too get a quintessential American, or San Franciscan city bike, in the same way that the cultures of the Netherlands, Denmark and China, all have bikes so typical of their respective countries?

That's doubtful. Like this city and nation, our city bikes will be probably be diverse.

It does seem important, though, that we usher in the era of the city bike. Nobody has to carefully think through what kind of lights, trunk, and fenders go best with their automobile when they buy it! Nobody has to tuck in their pant legs or adopt an aggressive, athletic posture when they step in their car or walk to the bus. The same has to be true for bicycling if the movement to put the bicycle at the center of urban transportation systems can expect to be successful.

A woman rides a city bike in Amsterdam. Flickr photo: Amsterdamize

Also, let's be honest, they won't be cheap. An adequate bicycle with all the "city bike" accessories will cost at least $500; a good one costs more. That's less than a car, sure, but it's more than a year's worth of transit passes and a prohibitive expense for vast numbers of people.

Here's the answer to sparking that new market in city bikes: government subsidy.

If our city were serious about promoting bicycle culture, and meeting the MTA's goal of cutting car use in half by 2030 while doubling bicycling and walking, we have to find a way to subsidize new "city bike" purchases. We already subsidize transit passes at a cost of several million dollars a year. A one-year program to match the transit subsidy with a bike subsidy - let's say that's $2 million - could provide $250 coupons for the first 8,000 residents to qualify. Measures could be built in to the program to ensure the bikes actually remain in the possession of the intended coupon recipient and not sold for a profit, but even if there's "fraud," the program will promote city bikes and urban bicycling.

Such a program, which we could dub "Cash for Cycling Eco Stimulus," would work better at the national level, of course. Even a tiny program, say, using the $123 million not claimed from the $3 billion "cash for clunkers" auto purchase subsidy program, could provide $200 coupons for 615,000 people, close to the 700,000 who claimed some cash for their "clunker." Even that absurdly small program would be a huge boost to the American bicycle industry, whose sales hover around 13.4 million units annually today.

Cities don't stand still. Going back at least to WWII, U.S. cities have been radically altered again and again. Economic restructuring has been part of it, as urban areas have shed manufacturing in favor of the so-called service sector: FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) and Tourism (restaurants and hotels plus retail and entertainment). Transportation changes have played a big part too, with the suburbanization of the 1950s-60s fueled (literally) by the interstate highway system and intraurban freeways, and the inexorable expansion of private cars at the expense of public transit. The populations that occupy various neighborhoods in cities, once relatively stable for generations, have moved away, leaving behind spaces whose character has changed with the arrival of new city dwellers, whether from other countries or just elsewhere in the U.S.

It's a long story, and every neighborhood in every city has its own tale to tell. During the past generation a populist opposition to urban gentrification has emerged. It probably starts with the bitter struggles to prevent the 1960s "urban renewal" programs from displacing whole populations (in San Francisco's Fillmore it became known as "negro removal," a precedent well-remembered by those now opposing the Redevelopment Agency in Bayview/Hunter's Point). But during the real estate booms of the 1980s and again during the dotcom boom at the end of the 1990s, right through the historically unprecedented housing bubble that finally popped in 2008, many progressives have worked to confront the forces of gentrification.

Gentrification as a term tends to conflate different "facts on the ground" though. Sometimes it defines a process of social displacement, usually class- or race-based, wherein a poorer population is forced out by rising prices and the steady influx of new residents who can pay those prices. To acolytes of the market, this all seems perfectly reasonable and fair, and the idea that there should be some kind of social restraint on such "efficient" "self-organizing" market mechanisms is anathema. To leftists and housing activists committed to defending the downtrodden and the poor, this system is a thinly disguised process of ethnic cleansing most of the time, and when the outcome isn't blatantly racist, it's still another chapter in a long saga of the rich screwing the rest of us.

Those of us who lean towards this latter way of seeing things are enjoying some schadenfreude today as the Lembi Group, one of San Francisco's most notorious landlords and exploiters of tenants, is sinking under a mountain of debt it incurred during the frenzied market conditions that only recently subsided.

Anti-Google, anti-gentrification graffiti popped up around the Mission a year ago or so. This is on 18th near Dolores.

On the other hand, folks fighting the displacement dynamics of the real estate markets in cities have sometimes fallen into a weird cul-de-sac where they seem to think keeping things seedy and decaying is a good thing, as if that were a way to ensure community stability. I can't cite anyone's public declarations to this effect, but I've certainly heard many friends and comrades tsk-tsking disapprovingly when they see someone painting their building, or putting in sidewalk tables and flowerpots, or any of a number of street-level neighborhood improvements. The sidewalk depaving and gardens I wrote about in January earned that response from some radicals I know too. I suppose the feeling is that if such improvements begin, it's only a matter of time before the Devil of Displacement rides in behind the ferns and wrought-iron ornamentation.

David Byrne, the New York musician (once of Talking Heads fame), has a new book out called "Bicycle Diaries," in which he travels to many cities around the world and the U.S., bringing his bike to help preserve his mental (and physical) health while touring. In his "Diaries" he ruminates on many interesting questions of the role of art, history, urban design, and decries the role of freeways in destroying inner cities and waterfronts among other things. But in one curious part he visits Pittsburgh, PA and has this to say about a clear-cut process of gentrification:

"About four years ago when I was here, [a friend] told me how the Heinz family was intent on bringing life (and eventually urban living) back into the downtown of this former industrial giant. Sometimes a rebirth can be started in one neighborhood and then it spreads to the surrounding areas--if they're not cut off or isolated. Artists move into a former factory district and soon cafés and grocery stores follow. A music club opens, a gallery and a bookstore. Developers turn the warehouses into luxury condos and the process begins again, somewhere else."

In other parts of the book Byrne is quite critical of the dynamics of modern capitalism and the results of unfettered market life on the quality of living it leaves in its wake. But here he embraces the building blocks of gentrification, a version of a life-cycle for urban neighborhoods. True enough, this has happened in many places, sometimes aided by the participation of the poorer residents who struggled to clear vacant lots and start community gardens, or who started street festivals when times were harder that have since become charming ethnic attractions.

To my thinking, the problem is not the efforts people make to improve their physical spaces. Of course there's always an issue of "taste," and what is cool and chic for some is cheezy and offensive to others. Some folks might be glad to see an influx of new cafés, while others would prefer the neighborhood remained forgotten (and thereby open to exploration and unmediated interventions) and "unimproved." The real issue is the right of folks who live in an area to make it their home, to have a sense of stability and comfort in their own communities. In the U.S., and in San Francisco, if you don't own property, you have no stability. With the property-trumps-all logic always hovering over city neighborhoods, tenants and the poor are regularly displaced when inflationary dynamics begin, especially if there is no rent control to stabilize their right to remain.

Conflicts arise predictably though, when an incoming population of hipsters, artists, gays, etc., are openly hostile to the population that is being displaced simultaneously to their arrival, often poor, black or latino, and dependent on the underground economy to sustain themselves. The wealthier new arrivals are naturally targeted for harassment and sometimes crime by those who see them as both invaders and insensitive boors with a disproportionate sense of entitlement.

I'm part of the CounterPULSE art/community space at 9th and Mission in San Francisco, where I curate public Talks on three Wednesdays a month. When we opened in 2005, the neighborhood had a lot of vacancies in the wake of the post-dotcom bust, and we felt lucky to find a place we could afford and get a long-term lease near to BART and transit. Within a block there are also numerous public agencies serving the transient poor and homeless, and the corner in front of CounterPULSE has a bus stop for both the always exciting 14-Mission, as well as several SamTrans lines, mostly used by working class commuters. By 2007, our place had been tagged countless times and our windows had been thoroughly wrecked by teen vandals with etching acid they used to graffiti the glass. Homeless addicts were often sprawled on our sidewalk, at or near the bus stop, for hours during the day, and our front doors were open toilets during the night. We worried about our vulnerability, especially at first, but over time we realized that there wasn't much actual danger, just the day-to-day reality of living in a central city area with a lot of down-and-out folks living on the streets.

CounterPULSE is at 1310 Mission, the turquoise and windowed facade to the right.

A couple of years ago in September we set up out front to enjoy PARK(ing) Day and were joined by dozens of neighbors from the buildings on our block. Together we decided to launch a neighborhood association (it has since gone into limbo) called "Planktown Neighbors," a name we chose to signify the fact that we were on a stretch of Mission that had originally been a plank toll road in the early 1850s. In our discussions we struggled to define our goals (to make our streets more beautiful, more comfortable, and safer, esp. vis-a-vis the car-dominated 9th and Mission Streets), but to be as inclusive as we could be. We were in no position to solve the homelessness drama on our two-block stretch of Mission, but we didn't want to be another NIMBY-ish group of small businesses and cultural organizations who called the police to shoo away "undesirable people." So for starters some of the group decided to invest in large planters to help beautify the block, and we all vowed to put more effort into cleaning the sidewalks and getting to know the people in and around our buildings. We all thought it would be smart if we could get enough of a street transformation under way we might be able to get a city grant, and we could pool resources to hire local street people to help maintain our new trees and sidewalk gardens.

A different planter next to St. James Infirmary, further west on Mission, nearer 10th Street.

Photo: Bryan Goebel

“This Sunday’s event is the finale for 2009, but Sunday Streets will be back in 2010 with more routes, longer hours, more San Francisco neighborhoods and more programs at each event,” Newsom said in a statement. “We have created a new tradition in San Francisco that will improve our quality of life for years to come.”

This year's six Sunday Streets proved to be a real success, with tens of thousands of people spilling into the streets. They were also embraced by merchants, with calls for expanded hours. It left many of us asking: Why can't we do this every Sunday?

Susan King, who organizes Sunday Streets through Livable City, said the Mayor's office is talking about holding eight events next year, but she said nine is also a possibility. The hours will likely be extended, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (instead of 2), and stressed that anything beyond that would be taxing on the volunteers.

"I know people would like it to go later but with the wind and everything else that kicks up it's really hard to keep everyone that's out there working the event motivated beyond five hours," she said.

Next year's Sunday Streets will likely be expanded to underserved neighborhoods like the Tenderloin and Western Addition and "loop around to the great lawn at City Hall as home base," King said. There's also interest in expanding the route in SoMa, and returning to the Mission (this year's events drew upwards of 25,000 people), the Bayview District and Ocean Beach.

King said Supervisor Carmen Chu has been "astoundingly supportive" of Sunday Streets and helped turn the last event through GG Park and the beach into a success. "Of all the supervisors, her office has stepped up the most passionately," she said.

Besides Sunday Streets and a car-free Golden Gate Park on Sundays, "there's also talk of creating another set of roadways that aren't really heavily used on the weekends to have kind of a permanent closure." She said it would also be interesting to hold a Sunday Streets with no programming to see what people would do on their own with a blank canvas.

"I would also like to see individual neighborhoods going and closing off their own streets and then having the ability to bike ride through the city to various car-free nooks and crannies, like how they do the art walk, where we have open streets and designed routes throughout the city to these various car-free spaces."

King said she is encouraged to hear the Mayor's office talking about being "really bold" in moving forward with car-free spaces to keep up with the demand and interest that Sunday Streets has generated.

"The possibilities are really endless," King said, adding that she's confident she can leverage the success of this year's events to raise the money needed for next year and "that we won't have to be hands and mouth like we were this time." Each event easily costs between $25,000 to $30,000, with the bulk of expenses geared toward traffic safety personnel.

• Rock the Bike teams up with Young Performers International to provide a full lineup of live music powered by Rock the Bikes pedal powered stage. Young Performers International features young musicians (ages 11-14) performing rock n roll classics. In Golden Gate Park at the intersection of MLK South and Bernice Rodgers (near the western exit from the Park).
• Cyclecide will bring out two of their pedal powered amusement rides made out of bikes. Look for them in the kids area, just north of the Lincoln and Great Highway intersection.
• Athletes Burn Rubber: Bianchi fitness brings out the human tire pull competition set to live music from the Brother's Comatose. At Lincoln and Great Highway.
• The Riptide and Taraval Merchants present their 3rd annual Taraval Street Festival in conjunction with Sunday Streets. The fair starts at 10, and live music goes from 12-6. Taraval Street, between 46th and 47th Aves. 
• The SF Zoo brings out their zoomobile, Penguin mascot, Leaping Lemur game for the kids, joined by Bluegrass band the Barbary Ghosts playing live bluegrass from 10:30-2:00. Sloat and Upper Great Highway.
• Look for Bike & Roll's funbike built for 7. It will be roving the route from 10-2, hop on for a ride!

See you on the streets this Sunday, and don't forget to send your photos to our Flickr pool!

Intrepid explorers of San Francisco regularly stumble upon the many ghost streets that still hide all over town, rewarding the patient pedestrian for their diligence. Mostly they are on hillsides where steep grades impeded road building at earlier moments in history, but they're still presented as if they were through-streets on the maps.

A tour begins with an old map and lots of photos below the break.

1909 map of southeastern San Francisco. Most of the streets here are still under water, awaiting a bayfill effort.

Other ghost streets can be found not on foot but by exploring old maps, where one can enjoy the strange city that extends well into the bay off the southeastern shoreline. I've heard rumors, or maybe I saw a story in the Chron decades ago, about families that continue to pay their property tax annually on parcels that are well into the bay and thoroughly under water. On this 1909 map of the Yosemite Creek area, streets going NW/SE are numbered and alphabetized but they later got real names. The perpendicular grid of alphabetized streets were eventually given real names (similar to what happened in the "outside lands" of the Richmond and Sunset). But on this 1909 map, Jennings, Ingalls, Hawes, Griffith, and Fitch (J, I, H, G, F) are followed southeast into the bay by E, D, C, B, and A streets, and five further blocks with the names, Ship, Dock, Tevis, Von Schmidt, and Pollock before arriving at "Water Front" boulevard. Obviously these streets were never created since the bayfill on which they depended never happened.

Spectacular garden adjacent to Harry "Street."

Harry "Street" in its forest.

Where Harry Meets Laidley.

My favorite ghost streets are short blocks, usually either bedecked with amazing gardens tended by loving neighbors, or else just odd stubs that continue to defy the rigid grid-imposing city planners of days gone by. In these small patches of nature, sometimes groomed, sometimes not, we can free our imaginations from the sterile symmetry imposed by endless blocks of asphalt crisscrossing the city. When we whisper to each other "One Lane for Food" or other equally "preposterous" depaving notions, the ghost streets echo back to us a knowing wink with a survivor's resilience. Probably the best patch of ghost streets in town is the Filbert Steps and its cross "streets" Napier Lane and Darrell Place. The Grace Marchant Garden that fills most of the Filbert right of way on the east side of Telegraph Hill is one of the true ecological treasures of San Francisco, home too to a big flock of much-celebrated parrots.

Filbert Steps on Telegraph Hill, Grace Marchant Garden to right in photo.

I live near 24th and Folsom which gives me a good staging area for visiting the ghost streets of Potrero Hill, Bernal Heights, and both Noe and Eureka Valleys. There are many more than I can fully list or display here, and yes, you can take that as an invitation to get out there and explore! But a couple of my favorites on Potrero Hill are Kansas between 22nd and 20th, and 19th Street between Rhode Island and DeHaro. Potrero Hill in particular used to be a favorite walk many years ago when you could walk up the hillside below McKinley Square and visit the amazing community garden at Vermont and 20th, or take this Kansas ghost path uphill, continue to 19th, and then go right (east) to the ghost of 19th, popping out above the high school and then skirting the Potrero Commons that once graced the slopes above the old Northwest Pacific railroad tunnel (the train's right of way makes another ghost of transit past, cutting diagonally northwest from Potrero Hill through the Showplace Square area before petering out in the confluence of Potrero, Division, 10th, and Brannan Streets...).

Kansas "Street" just north of 22nd Street.

View south from top of Kansas "Street".

19th "Street" at Rhode Island.

A real undiscovered treasure close to the intersection of Corbett and Clayton that I wrote about not long ago in the context of historic water wars and the charming garden that's been planted on the corner, is Al's Park. This curious ribbon of whimsy and nature rises from the mural on upper Market Street (next to the pink historic Joost House) and emerges on Corbett. My 1995 Thomas Bros. map has it labeled as 19th Street (multiple ghostly incarnations for 19th!) but Google's Satellite map doesn't show there as being any public right of way there. Enter Al's Park from Corbett and enjoy a strange, almost 19th century-feeling slice of eccentric San Francisco land use.

Al's Park along the thin red line between Market and Corbett. It is on some maps labeled "19th Street."

Al's Park or 19th Street?

The entrance to Al's Park on Corbett Street.

Al's Park is a veritable museum of oddities.

Al's Park boundary.

Market Street below Al's "19th Street" Park.

Not too far from Al's Park on the northern slopes of Eureka Valley is the ghost of Saturn street that plunges from a cul-de-sac where the street seems to end into a slope with view benches, two staircases, and a lovely landscaping that accompanies one down to Ord Street. Just a few hundred feet to the north are the Vulcan Steps, another of San Francisco's many amazing public stairways serving private homes with cool, inviting porches and elegant, tree- and flower-filled gardens.

Saturn "Street" with views across Eureka Valley.

Back on Bernal Heights, where hundreds of new stairs have been installed in the past few years, especially around the rim and the eastern slope, there's a long legacy of ghost streets. Peralta and Franconia both start and stop from north to the summit and in the case of Peralta all the way down to the Alemany Farmers' Market, punctuated by incredible views, stairways, and gardens all the way. An east-west street near the southern edge of the hilltop is Powhattan and it has its own ghost block between Gates and Ellsworth. Further to the southeast Tompkins Street also has a ghost block between Nevada and Putnam. And probably the best known ghost street on Bernal is Esmeralda, which has a brief life as a thoroughfare on the east side of the summit, but is one of the hill's most glorious stairways down the west side.

Esmeralda above Elsie Street.

I only found this ghost of Harrison Street beneath Ripley a few weeks ago, missing it for years on many walks up Bernal.

Tompkins and Nevada on southeastern slopes of Bernal Heights.

Peralta "Street" looking north.

Powhattan at Ellsworth looking east.

I joined the India Basin Neighborhood Association for a guided tour of their shoreline on August 8, and enjoyed the fantasies and plans of the neighbors juxtaposed to the designs of the Redevelopment Agency for that long-lost corner of the city. India Basin is a favorite haunt of mine, home to Heron's Head Park, India Basic Open Space, and the historic Albion Brewery. It's been the main access to the Hunter's Point Naval Base, but these days, with the rebuilding starting and the naval shipyards long gone, the area is just beginning its gentrification process.

Historic Albion Brewery, now a private residence.

Long-billed Curlew and Egret share some chow time along India Basin shore.

A big roadblock to full-scale upscaling are the dozens of 1940s barracks-style public housing projects at Westbrook and Hunters View. I was struck by the ghost streets here too, staircases filling the zone that could have been Fitch Street or Griffith Street. But out here the landscape is parched, the neighbors indifferent, and the possibilities of flourishing, permaculturally designed corridors along the stairs remote at best. Even as native species habitat it was pretty bereft.

Westbook Public Housing at Fitch Street above Innes Avenue.

Interestingly, the Neighborhood Association presented many ambitious development plans for the area, including a "restaurant row" along Jennings, more offices and shops near the open shoreline at the south side of the basin, and another idea that some of us found a bit disturbing: Hudson Street is a ghostly presence out there, like a derelict alley running east-west just north of Innes Avenue, the main boulevard. But where it should cross Innes and continue westward up the hill into the Hunters View Projects, there is only a fence to mark the city's "right of way." The slope here is a hotspot of native habitat, so aficionados of plants and insects of our original eco-niche are especially interested in saving this hillside from becoming a through street. The Neighbors, for their part, saw a through Hudson Street as a way of relieving the heavy traffic on Hunters Point Blvd and Innes Avenue.

"Hudson Street" (the fence) above Hawes and Innes.

From a quarter mile further west, looking back along Hudson Street towards same hillside as photo above.

"Earl Street" at edge of Hunters' Point Naval Shipyard.

Looking north along Earl from Innes.

One essential way to enjoy the streets of San Francisco is to get out and walk around. We have so many amazing walks at our doorsteps. In the hills are hidden staircases, promontories and open hilltops with amazing views, and secret treasures. I'm particularly curious to dig through the layers of history wherever possible. For the last seven years I've been hiking up Liberty Hill, across Kite Hill and then up and over Market to the intersection of Clayton and Corbett Streets, just below the spot where the Pemberton Steps come down. If you've only passed this way by car, you're missing the whole show!

The intersection is quite a huge expanse of asphalt, but in plain view are some hints of what once was, and a fantastic garden that neighbors have brought to life at the point where the streets meet. To the west of the intersection is an open lot with outcroppings of chert, the ancient seabed thrust upward that makes up a good number of our hills. Somewhere beneath that hillside is a bubbling spring of fresh water, surging to the surface year round. That water is sometimes visible to passersby even now, as in this photo (below the break) showing water running out on to Clayton from the hillside.

You can often see water seeping from the hillside at Clayton and Corbett, evidence of the historic spring here.

Just to its north are the Pemberton Steps, a lovely staircase that takes one up the hill to Graystone Terrace, a nice way to access Tank Hill from the south, across Clarendon Road (the other way to get to Tank Hill, with its spectacular views of the city, the Golden Gate and on clear days, Bolinas and Pt. Reyes, is by going to the very top of Shrader Street and turning left, walking to the end of the cul-de-sac and following the path out of the end past the wildflowers to the summit). The uppermost flight of the Pemberton Steps are still beautiful old stone, but the lower two flights were redone in the past few years, with pink cement and a water fountain. As is the case with most stairways in upper Eureka Valley, there are some amazing homes along the steps with gorgeous gardens and fantastic viewpoints.

This pink wall doesn't necessarily look very inviting, but walk up and discover the amazing stairway and find your way to Tank Hill!

The upper flight of Pemberton Steps still has an ancient feeling...

The lower flights of Pemberton are good examples of how to do it right, when stairways are redesigned...

The landscaping along the Pemberton Steps is lovely, harmonizing well with the triangular garden at the intersection below.

Clayton-Corbett Garden, Pemberton Steps wall across street behind.

The intricately landscaped garden has some standing and sitting areas to enjoy it from, but is otherwise behind small fences.

The mysterious spring-fed water, though, is where our story lies. Two landmark buildings near this intersection housed historic characters who once fought over the water. Our characters are Behrend Joost, whose pink farmhouse is one of the older structures in the area, sitting atop the rainbow-ish mural along upper Market as it turns southward on its ascent, before the intersection with Clayton (a hidden garden connects the pink house's garden with Corbett above it, open to the public from the Corbett end).

The Miller-Joost House on upper Market Street.

Joost was an important player in San Francisco's early transportation and real estate development (two things that always go hand in hand). Our other character was a San Francisco eccentric named Alfred "Nobby" Clarke, who built the amazing turreted mansion at Douglass and Caselli, just a few blocks downhill from Clayton and Corbett. If you're visiting this on bicycle or foot, you will notice quickly that the low point in upper Eureka Valley is 18th Street, descending almost directly from below Clayton and Corbett, and just downhill from the mansion on Caselli, known in its time as "Nobby Clarke's Folly." Clarke got his fortune by becoming the City Clerk during the 1880s, a time when anyone needing city permission for anything needed his signature, a lucrative monopoly whose proceeds he apparently channeled into the construction of the 20+ room mansion.

"Nobby" Clarke's Folly under construction at Douglas and Caselli,1890s.

Joost owned the Mountain Spring Water Company that had its water origins southeast of his home. Residents in the neighborhood today recall a surface spring at Corbett and Clayton from which water was sold by the bucket or cup. A wooden bridge across Corbett on Clayton made the road muddied by the spring much more passable.

Clayton and Corbett, c. 1915.

That Mountain Spring water turned "Nobby" Clarke's and Behrend Joost's lives into daily warfare. In the early 1890s, Alfred Clarke bought seventeen acres of land in and around Caselli and Douglass Streets. Clarke's land was downhill from Joost's. The spring in dispute flowed through Joost's property down to Clarke's. Clarke didn't like Joost's water service and started his own. In turn, when Joost extended his water service, he ruined business for both of them.

"Nobby" was clearly contentious and maybe a bit proud. After he built, or overbuilt, his mansion in the Gilded Age, he and his upslope neighbor, Behrend Joost, began a feud that lasted their lifetime. While the frequently given reason for the daily warfare was the Mountain Spring Water Company service Joost owned and provided to Clarke and others in Eureka Valley, it is probable these two "rags to riches" businessmen were destined to compete about anything and everything. Their stormy relationship didn't stop with sharp words; neighbors still recount stories of their fist fights on 18th Street.
(from Mae Silver's contributions at FoundSF.org)