“Street Utopia” – Film and Food Festival (North Beach)

Street Utopia is an urban design festival showcasing film, food, and art that promotes Democracy & Egalitarianism in the public spaces of North Beach.  The multi-media presentation offers: 

* Two screens of International Films from Samso and  Copenhagen (Denmark), Bogota (Colombia), Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Portland (Oregon), Budapest (Hungary), Curitiba (Brazil), and other cities that utilize environmentally sustainable and people-friendly policies.    

* New art presented by North Beach residents: painter Lutzka Zivny, photographer Chris Ferris, and the children of Destination Art.    

* Wall displays by Urban Ecology of proposed utopian building and redesign projects in North Beach: Vehicle-free Grant Avenue?  "Poet’s Plaza" on car-free Vallejo between Columbus and Grant? Plant 500 trees?  Repair & beautify Washington Square, for environmentally-friendly events?  Widen sidewalks on Columbus?  Audience opinions & suggestions will be solicited.    

* "Street Food" by mobile sidewalk vendors: The Girl From Empanada, Bike Basket Pies, The Hot Dog Man.    

*  Brief public speeches, testimonies and manifestos presented orally by local street freedom activists.

ALSO ON STREETSBLOG

This Week in Livable Streets Events

By Michael Rhodes |
Start the new year right with a packed week of livable streets events that span the spectrum from national monuments to Web 2.0. Here are the highlights: Tuesday: Learning from Washington D.C.: Monumental planning and thriving TODs. Find out how Washington D.C. is planning for its next 100 years, and how the region’s suburban transit […]

StreetUtopia North Beach

By Chris Carlsson |
View southeast across North Beach from Russian Hill. 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 […]

Dreaming of Pedestrian Heaven on San Francisco’s Oldest Street

By Michael Rhodes |
Enjoying a car-free Grant Avenue at Noodle Fest. Photo: Michael Rhodes Could San Francisco’s first and oldest thoroughfare become the city’s first true pedestrianized street? Since the day in 1835 when William Richardson drew the first map of Yerba Buena that included just one street, called "Calle de la fundacion" — Foundation Street, which ran […]

Streetfilms: A Proposed Urban Park in Historic North Beach

By Bryan Goebel |
"What destroys the poetry of a city? Automobiles destroy it, and they destroy more than the poetry." –Lawrence Ferlinghetti One of San Francisco’s cherished literary icons — poet, painter and City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti — is celebrating his 90th birthday today, and I thought it would be fitting to bring you his vision for […]

Noodle Fest 2011

By Aaron Bialick |
Noodle Fest 2011: Chinatown and North Beach, A Cultural and Culinary Celebration will be held on May 1st from 1pm to 5pm along Grant Avenue between Pacific and Vallejo Streets. Chinatown Community Development Center and North Beach Merchants Association are putting our second annual food festival so you can come out with your friends and […]

First Walking Sunday Streets a Hit in Chinatown and North Beach

By Bryan Goebel |
San Francisco’s Grant Avenue, the city’s oldest street, was opened to pedestrians only yesterday in a milestone Sunday Streets event that drew thousands of people to the historic neighborhoods of Chinatown and North Beach on a sunny, 74-degree day. The city’s first walking Sunday Streets on a thoroughfare that seems like one of the most […]