Streetsblog San Francisco

Thanks to all of you for contributing these wonderful photos to our Flickr pool. We hope you'll continue to upload scenes from our streets so we can showcase your good work.

Also, we'll be taking Monday off in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and will see you back on Tuesday. Don't forget to speak out at the MTA Board meeting about Muni service cuts on Tuesday, January 19th, 2 pm, San Francisco City Hall, Room 400. The budget proposal is Item 11.

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Created with flickr slideshow.

One of the most ubiquitous admonitions in the urban landscape is the No Parking sign. Many are your garden-variety plastic number, for sale at the hardware store, hardly creative. All over San Francisco, however, folks have taken matters into their own hands and crafted some excellent variations. Whenever I've got my camera handy and I'm walking around the city, I find a new one that impresses. I've tried here to cluster a few of my favorite No Parking signs in this slideshow by type, whether by pattern, location, or color.  I hope you enjoy.

Many thanks also for consistently uploading your shots to our Flickr pool. Feel free to upload your favorite No Parking signs or leave a link in the comments.

Unfortunately, my favorite No Parking sign in San Francisco has already been taken down, presumably by the new renter of the garages space, who didn't feel quite this strongly about the issue:

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One of my favorite memories from childhood was the first time my grandparents took my sister and me into San Francisco. We were country bumpkins who grew up on a ranch in northeastern Nevada and were mesmerized by the cacophony and tumult of the big city. My grandfather took us to all the tourist destinations of note, including Fisherman's Wharf and Ghiradelli Square, but the memory that remains the most vivid in my mind was the drive down Filbert Street.

We left Fisherman's Wharf in his old faux-wood paneled station wagon, driving south on Hyde Street, before turning east on Filbert. After the turn, just before the infamous Filbert grade started, my grandfather said, "Look, kids, Coit Tower!" He then gunned it, sending us careening over the edge of "The Steepest Street in San Francisco," sacrificing the integrity of his car's undercarriage and front-end for the sake of a good scare and the subsequent laugh. 

I certainly never forgot that moment and I've used the same trick on other people who aren't familiar with San Francisco's hills. I took it on faith that Filbert was the steepest street in the city, a fact backed up by none other than Wikipedia (tied with 22nd St. in Noe Valley), which claims it to be "one of the steepest navigable streets in the Western Hemisphere, at a maximum gradient of 31.5 percent."

So it must be true, right? Wrong.

Stephen Von Worley, who runs the blog Weather Sealed, went out and measured a few other steep streets and it turns out there are several significantly slanty-er than that block on Filbert, and most of them are on the hill right behind my house in Bernal Heights.

Take Nevada above Chapman: 36 percent grade. Or his steepest: Prentiss between Chapman and Powhattan, 37 percent grade!

Von Worley writes a very entertaining essay about his quest to right the record books on the steepest streets in San Francisco, highly worth the read. Any dissenters out there have a steeper street?

Photo of Prentiss after the jump.

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Building off Jane Jacob's maxim that more eyes on a street make the street feel safer, the San Francisco Arts Commission has commissioned numerous artists to display their projects in abandoned storefronts as part of the Art in Storefronts program, and as the photo above illustrates, some of those eyes are literally watching you.

Rather than feeling any Orwellian tremors, I found the eyes mural, called The Color Therapy of Perception by Chor Boogie, and the other projects, such as Bayly and Miller's Find Your self in Natural History, a warm and welcoming visual addition to an otherwise bleak stretch of plywood-covered store fronts along Market Street between 5th and 6th Streets. And I wasn't alone. People stopped, took pictures, and shot video of the artists as they put the finishing touches on their work, in preparation for the official public launch ceremony this afternoon.

Art in Storefronts is a complement to the Better Market Street traffic diversion pilot started by the MTA last month and seeks to enliven the aesthetic appearance of the street, turning a down economic situation into an opportunity to showcase the work of local San Francisco artists. Art in Storefronts already received national attention when Time Magazine referenced it as an innovation for combating "vacancy blight."

Art in Storefronts reaches beyond Market Street to several locations in the Tenderloin, the Mission, and the Bayview. It is a collaboration between the San Francisco Arts Commission,  Mayor Gavin Newsom's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, Triple Base gallery, and the Department of Public Works (DPW). The pilot project will continue until at least February 1st, when its extension will be re-evaluated.

The Art Commission and the MTA's new paintings in the Art in Kiosks program have also started showing up on Market Street, including beautiful watercolors by Pamela Wilson-Ryckman. The paintings depict subjects in various city parks, taken from archival photographs, which, according to Wilson-Ryckman, “suggest experiences of isolation and loneliness but also of affirmation within the densely populated city.” The Art in Kiosks program runs through December 31st.

A celebration featuring live bands will begin with an unveiling ceremony today from 5-7 pm at 989 Market Street (at 6th Street) followed by a reception next door (979 Market Street) where the public can pick up a map of the newly-transformed storefronts. The public will also have the opportunity to meet the artists who will be stationed at their installations discussing their work.

More of Chor Boogie's mural and Kiosk watercolors after the jump.

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Here's your weekly round-up of photos from our Flickr pool. Thank you as always and please do send more our way. A selection of others after the jump.

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Great to see so many children out for Walk to School Day this week. An absolutely beautiful photo of this little girl above. And good lord was it intense to get buzzed by the Blue Angels! I never want to be on the target end of our military.  Thanks as always for the wonderful photos you keep uploading to our Flickr pool. Have a great weekend!

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Wow, what a beautiful bunch of uploads the Streetsblog community has been tagging for our Flickr pool!  Please keep it up. And plug1 (a.k.a. whatimseeing.com), you rock; we'd put more of your photos up, but we don't have that much server room.  Thanks all for the contributions and please keep sending them our way!

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The City of San Francisco is still barred from installing any new bike infrastructure because of a three-year-old injunction, but that's not stopping the San Francisco Unified School District from installing bike racks at the city's schools. The school district isn't covered by the injunction, and it's using several sources of funding to add desperately needed bike racks to schools like Balboa High, where these new racks were spotted just yesterday by health education teacher Christopher Pepper.

Nik Kaestner, Director of Sustainability for SFUSD, explained that the district now adds bike racks whenever it upgrades schools as part of a renovation bond program. "2002-2003 Prop. A bonds are being used to renovate our buildings in response to a lawsuit. The main focus is ADA accessibility and fire/life safety," said Kaestner. "There's some money put aside for greening schoolyards on elementary school campuses, and then there's also some money usually left over. At some point the decision was made that one thing every school would get is bike racks."

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It may be the most dramatic Pavement to Parks implementation yet: at the intersection of San Jose Avenue and Guerrero Street, enormous logs have arrived that will form the backbones of planter beds. The Planning Department's Andres Power provides an update:

Logs that form the backbones of planter beds have all been installed and cut to size. Boards that will connect the logs are being fabricated on site.  Dirt and gravel will be brought in over the next few days, and the trees and landscaping will be delivered Thursday morning.  Plants will be planted on Thursday and Friday, and possibly, into early next week.  A bunch of neighbors will be turning out at 10AM on Sunday to help with planting and painting of the log ends.  The roadway surface will be treated the beginning of next week.

By Wednesday of next week, the plaza should be complete. The transformation of the space is already striking. More pictures of the construction after the break.

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Thanks to all of you wonderful photographers who tag your photos and videos in our Flickr pool. Be sure to send us more and we might see you on the blog!

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