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Scenes from Sunday Streets in the Bayview, Dogpatch and Potrero Hill

Aaron Bialick — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 16:00:33 +0000

Thousands of people took to the car-free streets of the Bayview, Dogpatch and Potrero Hill yesterday for a sunny Sunday Streets. Did you go? Please share your stories in the comments section, and see more photos below the break. The next Sunday Streets is July 12th on the Great Highway.

22nd Street. Flickr photo: geekstinkbreath

Photo: Bryan Goebel

Flickr photo: geekstinkbreath

Sunday Streets to Grace Bayview, Potrero, and Dogpatch This Weekend

Aaron Bialick — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:49:29 +0000

Flickr photo: sfbike

Many a cycling tot will get another chance to graduate from training wheels this Sunday on safe, car-free streets by the Bay. Sunday Streets returns to Bayview with a tweaked route this year to include the Lower Potero Hill and Dogpatch neighborhoods in the plethora of family-friendly activities.

The list of activities this month is so long, in fact, that when organizer Susan King submitted it the San Francisco Examiner for publication, “the copy editors came back to me and said, ‘cut this down by a third’.”

“This is certainly one of the most robust program lists we’ve had,” said King.

The route will run along Third Street from Mendell Plaza to 22nd Street, where it will zig zag west by Espirit Park to the Jackson Playground at 17th and Wisconsin Streets. It was modified to accommodate vehicle traffic needs for a Giants game at the ballpark, but it will also bring the street opening to new doorsteps.

“It gives us a chance to really explore those two neighborhoods that we haven’t done before,” said King. “In Dogpatch, we’re going through the emerging merchant corridor on 22nd Street and tying it to Espirit park, which is a beautiful little park hidden behind the freeway.”

“There’s a new bike path on 17th Street from Mission, so people will have a safe passage to the start of the route,” she added.

The event is being organized by Livable City in coordination with local organizations like The Third Street Corridor Project, the Bayview Merchant Association and the Renaissance Entrepreneur Center.

It will be held in conjunction with the fourth annual Family Health and Wellness Fair hosted by the Bayview Opera House, which will include free health screenings from medical professionals. The Bayview Music Festival will also fill the streets with live outdoor music along with venues all the way from Woods Yard Park to Thee Parkside and Bottom of the Hill.

San Franciscans can get healthy with activities like Zumba dance lessons and a Yoga-thon at the Opera House. As always, the SF Bike Coalition will hold its Freedom from Training Wheels program along with Blazing Saddles’ free bike rentals and the Funky Town Roller Disco. The SF Arts Commission’s Free Wall interactive mural will also make its final appearance.

In light of Sunday Streets’ success, King said officials from the U.S. Center for Disease Control will be assessing this month’s event as a potentially effective obesity intervention program. “They’re looking for programs that will be recommended on a national scale, which is very exciting,” she said.

Visit sundaystreetssf.com for the route map and full list of programs.

Muni Rider Profile: Hoi Chong Wong on the T-Third and Stockton Buses

Michael Rhodes — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 00:49:40 +0000

Photo: Michael Rhodes

Hoi Chong Wong can tell you about the commute from 3rd Street in the Bayview to Chinatown or the commute in Guangzhou, China. Though retired now, he's been making the trip to Chinatown on Muni almost daily since he immigrated to San Francisco in 1997, first on the defunct 15-Third bus line, and now on the T-Third Street light rail line, with a transfer to the 30-Stockton or 45-Union-Stockton bus line near 4th and King. In Guangzhou, he also traveled mostly by bus, plus the occasional bicycle ride.

When he went back to visit Guangzhou recently, Wong, 71, said, he was inspired by improvements that have been made on the bus system since he left 12 years ago.

"There is a huge difference in terms of the bus line services for Guangzhou and here," explained Wong, speaking through a translator since he's a monolingual Cantonese speaker. Boarding is much more orderly than it is on the 30 and 45, and "instructions on the buses are very clear," said Wong. "They have an automated system where it's very clear in terms of which station is next. They have a map, and the next stop has a blinking light."

Wong said Guangzhou's buses announce stops in three languages: English, Cantonese and Mandarin. Most announcements on Muni are made only in English, so navigating the system when he first arrived 12 years ago was a challenge. "It was very difficult and confusing for him because he felt like all the instructions and all the maps are not clear as to where he should take the buses, and which of the lines goes to which neighborhoods," said Tammy Hung, translating for Wong. "So it took him quite a long time to navigate his way throughout the city."

On the 45-Union-Stockton. Flickr photo: SFBart

Cycling was also an option in Guangzhou, but because of the bus system's reliability, Wong said he'd only ride his bike on occasion. He could count on buses arriving every other minute in Guangzhou, while the T-Third often doesn't adhere to its less ambitious nine-minute scheduled peak headways, with trains often bunching up. "That also goes for 45 and 30," he adds.

He's never witnessed violence on the buses, but the Stockton buses are often so packed that it can lead to arguments, he said. Because it's so crowded, people only get into verbal arguments. "It's so crowded they can't even get into fights."

Not speaking English has not kept Wong from being an active member of the community in San Francisco. In fact, he's now president of Community Tenants Association, an 800-member tenants' rights organization, which helped him apply for affordable housing when he first arrived in San Francisco. After picking up a housing application at CTA, he began attending meetings and slowly became more involved in the process, eventually culminating in him becoming the organization's president.

In Guangzhou, he worked at a management level at a sewing company, he explained, signaling his profession to me by pointing to Hung's sweater. Now, his community activism and meetings with friends bring him to Chinatown daily. "Even though I'm retired, I come to Chinatown every day to attend a lot of community events, including this meeting," a weekly CTA meeting where he spoke to Streetsblog. Perhaps 100 individuals were in attendance at the meeting, mostly seniors, enjoying an apparent mix of activism and socializing, a far cry from the isolated lifestyle in suburban senior homes.

Senior Issues on Muni

A bus in Guangzhou, China. Photo: Wikipedia.

Through his own experience riding Muni and stories from his friends, Wong said seniors often face extra difficulty riding Muni. At his transfer point to the 30 and 45 near 4th and King, where both lines lay over before beginning their routes, he said he often sees groups of seniors standing in the cold as bus drivers sip coffee on their breaks. "That usually creates a chaotic situation where seniors just go up on the bus in a herd," said Wong, who feels it's not safe because seniors often trip and fall as they board all at once. Complicating matters, two buses frequently layover at once at the stop, with little indication of which is departing first, and Wong said he regularly sees buses depart without warning, leaving riders behind at the stop.

Wong is most concerned about a lack of driver sensitivity on the Stockton bus lines, but has also witnessed issues on the T-Third, including operators not noticing seniors hurrying to catch the train. On two occasions, he's also witnessed drivers failing to stop the light rail vehicles at the station platform. "Some of the seniors actually fell down on the platform because of the level, it's not balanced, and the driver was not doing the appropriate steps to address the situation," said Wong. "Because the seniors already have medical care, they kind of just let it go, but they never really reported it to Muni or anything." One of the injured seniors was a friend of his, he adds.

A Vital Service

Muni clearly provides a vital service to Wong, and though I mostly asked him about problems with the system, he also offers a compliment: the December 2009 service changes have been a big improvement for his visits to family near Silver Avenue. "He used to take the 9X, now called the 8X, to go and visit his relatives, and he said that actually the service has been improving because of the frequency of the services, just since December," Hung said, translating.

After indulging his interviewer for nearly half an hour, it was time for Wong to return to business at the CTA meeting, where he's a model of the engaged retiree, able to meet with friends and fellow activists thanks to Muni.

Environmentalists Oppose Bridge Over Yosemite Slough

Susan Vaughan — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 19:28:43 +0000

Artist's rendering of new development at Hunter's Point and Candlestick Point. Courtesy Lennar

If all goes as planned for San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development and one of the nation’s largest home builders, the Lennar Corporation, a causeway over the Yosemite Slough wetlands restoration project between Hunters Point and Candlestick Point will be built sometime in the next few years. This fact is not making environmentalists happy.

Greenaction, the Sierra Club, Arc Ecology, and the Audubon Society all have concerns about the impact of the bridge to surrounding residents and wildlife. Environmentalists with these organizations are concerned that bridge construction will stir up contamination in the ground, and that the bridge itself – and the road it will connect to on either side – will divide the state park, Candlestick Point State Recreation Area, through which it will travel. They are also concerned it will endanger wildlife and undermine the restoration of the slough.

The proposed bridge over Yosemite Slough will serve the residents of the 10,500 or so new homes planned for 763-acre Candlestick Point and Hunters Point developments, and a few other, smaller developments planned for the area. The United States Navy has occupied Hunters Point since World War II, but is now turning it over to the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency and Lennar. For decades, the Navy disposed of toxic waste in parts of Hunters Point now known as Parcels E and F.

“Yosemite Slough backs up right on to Parcel E,” says Marie Harrison, a community organizer with Greenaction, a San Francisco environmental justice organization. Parcel E is not only contaminated but it is a landfill that is prone to liquefaction during an earthquake – and depending on how the engineers decide to proceed, one end of the bridge could be anchored in the Parcel E landfill.

If it is not anchored in the landfill, engineers could decide to drive pilings into the contaminated Parcel F mudflats, which are below water and contaminated with PCBs and heavy metals, according to Saul Bloom, the executive director of Arc Ecology, a community-based environmental justice organization in the Bayview.

“The last thing you want to do is stir up the contamination by driving pilings into [contaminated] mud flats,” says Steven Chapman, of the Sierra Club.

“A bridge over this area will destroy habitat for wildlife by adding pollution and disrupting migration,” says Golden Gate Audubon Society Conservation Committee Chairperson Noreen Weeden, who notes that the GGAS has identified 118 native bird species that frequent the slough. She adds that the bridge will also cast a shadow over the estuary, where now there is sunlight, and possibly add toxic runoff to the water below.

Arthur Feinstein, conservation director for Arc Ecology and a Sierra Club member, notes that the causeway includes “a bridge and a road through a state park, which one just doesn’t do.” The project will eventually cost $25 million and involve habitat restoration, trail construction, and installation of bird nesting islands in the water.

“Young birds are going to fly into the bridge,” says Feinstein.

Tentative Design

The causeway is currently planned to be seven lanes, according to Assistant Project Manager Wells Lawson, in the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development: two 11-foot lanes of bus-rapid traffic (BRT) in either direction on one side; a 15-foot pedestrian and bicycle lane on the other; and 40 feet dedicated to four grassy lanes (two in either direction) that will only be open to traffic on the nine to 10 game days a year – should the 49ers choose to stay in San Francisco and play their home games in a new stadium, now planned for Hunters Point. During the rest of the year pedestrians and bicyclists will have access to the game-day lanes. The BRT lanes will be for buses that will carry riders to and from regional transportation hubs, such as the Balboa BART station and the Caltrain station.

And if the 49ers migrate south or elsewhere?

“We will have a need for a different bridge,” says Lawson, one in which the car lanes for game day traffic are eliminated.

While the new developments are projected to add 16,545 to 18,695 parking spots (up to 35,860, including the stadium lot) according to the Draft Transportation Plan for the developments, the goal of planners is discourage private automobile use as much as possible. In fact, planners are trying to coax a shift in transportation habits such that a maximum of 40 percent of weekday peak period transportation will be by automobile, 35 percent will be by transit, 22 percent will be by foot, and three percent will be by bicycle.

If the 49ers opt to relocate outside of San Francisco, the current Draft Transportation Plan still includes 9,000 parking spaces in Hunters Point for vehicles serving the research and development industries that will be established on the site now dedicated to a new stadium.

With or without the four game-day travel lanes, “do you really think they’re not going to open [the bridge] up to traffic everyday?” asks a skeptical Harrison.

In 1987 the State Parks System approved the Candlestick Point State Recreation Area General Plan for the 157-acre state park that includes Yosemite Slough. While Candlestick is on Governor Schwarzenegger’s list of sites to be shuttered because of the economic downturn, the restoration of the 34-acre Yosemite Slough is going forward. The California State Parks Foundation, in fact, is now raising $12 million for the first phase of the restoration project.

According to the SF Planning Department, there will be two upcoming workshops about the project in July. The draft environmental review should be done this fall.

No one from the California State Parks Foundation responded to phone calls by the time of publication.

A Garden Bike Tour in Bayview

Chris Carlsson — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:25:28 +0000

A lot of what makes living in a city so fun is the ability to walk or bike around and see surprising things that you wouldn’t expect, made possible by being in the streets and moving at a human pace, without the membrane of a steel box and corporate radio to mediate your experience. It’s even more fun when you juxtapose the oddities that you encounter with the history that is obscured or revealed by those discoveries. I took such a ride Saturday, down to the Bayview neighborhood to visit some community gardens I’ve been reading about via the Quesada Gardens website. I’ve visited Quesada Gardens a half dozen times since its original establishment in 2002, but this was the first time I met Annette Smith, one of the founders and guiding lights of the neighborhood renaissance that has accompanied the flowering of this remarkable garden.

Saturday, February 21: Annette Smith at the Quesada Garden she co-founded in 2002.

What I’d only heard about before was the new gardens that had started nearby, inspired by the success of the Quesada effort. To get there on an overcast day, I rode from my home in the Mission through the gauntlet of junkies under the freeway that is still the best-and-only way to bicycle from the Mission to the southeast. Cutting through the sprawling warehouse district behind Bayshore Blvd., I came upon this spot at Newcomb and Barneveld which seemed to echo with the history of trains and industrial production that once occupied this area.

Newcomb at Barneveld, east of Bayshore Blvd., an industrial zone implanted on an historic wetland.

Long before that, as recently as the early decades of the 20th century, this area was still largely wetlands. You can see a charming video clip of George Williams describing getting clam parts at the Old Clam House at Bayshore and Oakdale and going fishing in those wetlands when he was a kid. Here is an aerial photo of the area before it was fully urbanized:

Aerial view of wetlands east of Bernal Heights and south of Potrero Hill, c. 1920s.

I was searching for the new gardens at Newhall and Bridgeview, and another one on Latona above Third Street. But I found more than that… a rumored community garden effort on Palou led me to stop here and find this strip, as yet ungardened—sitting as it does above the Caltrain tunnel across from the Phelps-Palou Minipark seemed like a promising spot for a new common garden.

Palou Community Garden Project: A future home?

Phelps-Palou mini park, not on most people's radar... across the street from the future garden.

Just west of the hoped-for community garden I noticed this place, which is almost certainly a home built on an original earthquake shack. You can tell by the dimensions and the odd way the rest of the structure is built on and out from the basic shack:

A probable 1906 earthquake shack reconfigured into a larger abode.

A modest home from the front, the sideview above helps to see the structure as a shack plus add-ons...

The view towards downtown is one most people don’t get to see, so I found this angle that really pleased me. The curving I-280 freeway beneath the distant Bay Bridge, foregrounded by heaps of rusting car bodies… not your usual sourdough view of the City!

Overlapping transit systems make for a strange kind of artistic urban landscape when seen from afar... the piles of detritus that are the transit system's endpoint make a poignant punctuation to this view.

Anyway, I made it up a steep block of Newhall to the top of the Quesada Garden, where there was a nice view across the Bayview/3rd Street neighborhood.

A bit of the garden that tops the Quesada cul-de-sac, with a bit of mural visible too.

Easterly view down the Quesada Garden towards the Bay.

A block further is the lot that has been reclaimed as the Bridgeview Garden, but frankly it seemed a bit abandoned, overrun with winter grasses and weeds. Annette Smith told me later that the main people maintaining it had been UC students doing community service hours and it wasn’t easy getting neighbors to participate.

Bridgeview Garden

Caddy corner across from the garden, though, is this venerable home with its prolific sidewalk garden, clearly cared for over a long period of time (clearly there are neighbors who are quite involved in their urban environment).

Newhall and Revere sidewalk garden, caddy-corner from Bridgeview Garden.

Riding further I came upon this scene, trash obscuring the sign announcing the Charles Drew Alternative School Butterfly Garden. In also seemed to be abandoned to the winter rains, but it was a gorgeous green under gray skies day. Obviously the establishment of a community garden or a school-based butterfly garden is just the first step in a much longer and more difficult process of truly reinhabiting our urban environment. The ongoing work of maintaining these places didn’t seem to be happening as I cruised by today, but it is the depths of winter hereabouts so perhaps they’ll get more energy as the seasons change.

When cultures collide... junk dumped in front of Butterfly garden.

Part of a larger effort to connect kids and nature.

After a week of winter rains, San Francisco almost takes on an Irish look, with intense green grasses everywhere.

Even Annette told me that when she gets dirt in her shoes, she has to stop working and get it out… “I still hate to walk barefoot in the dirt,” alluding to her southern childhood on a farm. So maybe that’s part of it, that a lot of folks still harbor memories of agricultural labor, and hold it in a less-than-honorable place. Rejuvenating our engagement with urban farming will take more than sweat equity… it’ll take a deep shift in attitudes.

I liked the Latona garden, a scrappy urban oasis perched above the 3rd Street Youth Center and Clinic at Latona and Thornton. It is in an unlikely narrow strip, but it has an undeniable spirit. At first I came up on this nice art piece on its fence, with the ironic juxtaposition of a car transmission (I think?) leaning against it. But the big old tree, a California Buckeye I think, gives the place personality, and the signage that dots the inside of the fences brought a smile to my face…

Discarded engine parts add decoration to Latona Community Garden fence.

This tree beckons all to come and sit under it, or add to the garden.

The Latona garden sits on the small strip above the 3rd Street Youth Center and Clinic.

Dogs are welcome... people, not so much?

Chard grows in the Bayview, Candlestick Park and Bayview Hill in the distance.

Some of the signs dotting the interior of Latona garden.

After looping around, I stopped at Quesada where I met Annette Smith. She’s a charming,soft-spoken woman. I asked her whether she and her neighbors had been discussing food security and she spent the next few minutes describing how she grew up on a farm and used to grow all kinds of potatoes, chard, collard greens, corn, cotton, tomatoes, and much more. She still makes sure to keep collard greens, corn, and sweet potatoes growing, and explained how she got some seeds for collard greens from her mother at the other end of Quesada when she lived in the projects. It’s always been a staple, and even her daughter told her she couldn’t remember her mother ever buying collard greens.

The re-emergent community around gardening in Bayview is one of many social movements in gestation in the City. Transforming how we think about urban space, whether abandoned lots or overly wide asphalt-covered streets, is based on this artistic and community-based reappropriation of common land. A funny but telling last note: Annette explained with some genuine puzzlement that the two sides of Quesada and its center median had been level with each other when they started gardening only 7 years ago. Today, the south side is six to ten feet higher than the north side, and the garden is steeply sloped between the two! Nature will have the last word, after all…

These developments are growing amidst the push by the City to "redevelop" nearly the entire neighborhood (historically this has meant removing the existing population, like in 1960s program to bulldoze the African-American Fillmore District when "urban renewal" meant to that neighborhood "negro removal"). In the industrial wastelands near Cesar Chavez, slowly getting its share of lawyer lofts and so-called "live-work" spaces, there are plans to build 30,000 new housing units! All this would be inconceivable if the City hadn't already spent a good deal of money on extending light rail down 3rd Street. Here's a couple of final shots illustrating the newly renovated streetscape centered on the light rail line in the middle of 3rd Street.

T-Third Street light rail tracks run southerly to the edge of the City.

The T line has already changed Bayview-Hunter's Point.