October 2008

Short Cuts

October is Potrero Hill

It’s autumn on the Hill, and time to celebrate our little community! In addition to shopping locally, join your neighbors at one of the many gatherings taking place this month, including the Potrero Hill Festival on October 18, Farley’s Pet Parade, and History Night, both on October 25. See the calendar section for more details…and speaking of shopping locally, October is Eat Local Month, www.eatlocalsf.org, during which the bounty of all things edible produced within 150 miles of San Francisco will be celebrated. Participating restaurants, which include Baraka, are offering daily specials, made with 100 percent local ingredients, throughout the month…And did you know that $100 spent at a home-grown merchant returns $63 back to the local economy, compared to only $43 when you shop at a chain? If San Franciscans shifted just 10 percent of our purchases from out-of-town based vendors to neighborhood establishment more than 1,300 jobs would be created.

Purse Snatches

A rash of run-away robberies has shaken up Mission and Potrero Hill residents. One former Hill resident had her pursed snatched at Café Flore, on Market Street, despite being surrounded by dozens of people, several of whom unsuccessfully chased the robber, a middle-aged African-American woman. A few weeks later two adults watching over three toddlers had their bags grabbed by a gaggle of teenagers at the Potrero Hill Playground on Arkansas Street, with a one year old pushed down to create a diversion during the theft. Victims in both incidents lost their keys, significant amounts of cash, and their credit cards and driver’s licenses. While some parents are now avoiding the playground, others think it’s time to make it safe for all Hill residents. According to Stacey Bartlett, “…we cannot wall ourselves off from the community. We need to help kids who don’t have positive direction for their energy by letting them know when they are crossing the boundaries. This is certainly easier to do when the numbers are in your favor…we should all try to go to this park more rather than less. There is safety in numbers and if more of us are there, we can positively influence the situation rather than running away from it…Please don’t give up on the nicest little park in our midst.” It doesn’t help matters that the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department has halted youth and adult activities at the Potrero Hill Recreation Center on Sundays. This is a time for openings, not closings!

Hell’s Breakfast

There are, unfortunately, worse things than purse snatchings. Last month 19-year-old Caprisha Green, mother of a one-year-old daughter, was gunned down on the 1000 block of Connecticut Street. Police found Green, who’d been sitting outside her apartment with several friends, an hour and a half before midnight with multiple gunshot wounds…and speaking of murder, roughly 2,000 Hells Angels passed through town to mourn San Francisco chapter president Mark “Papa” Guardado, who was shot down after a barroom brawl. Given the chapter’s Dogpatch location, many of the Angels dined at Just for You. Dressed in full regalia of leather jackets, vests and “Dirty White Boy” patches, the bikers were polite, but tended towards intense ice-cold eye contact, and didn’t tip the wait staff. Whatever crimes the Angels may commit, what could be worse than not tipping hardworking service people?

Restaurant Expansions

Piccino’s has opened a coffee bar a few doors down from its restaurant on 22nd Street. Open seven days a week, the expanded location offers French-press brew, scones, frittatas, muffins, and cookies for those needing to grab a quick take-out on the way to work or the train…Rather than opening a Delfina-style pizza place at Thinkers Café, as was reported in last month’s View, the Chez Papa people will split Couleur Café into two businesses, one of which will be a pizzeria.

New Park

Last month the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency presented their preliminary concepts for Mariposa Park, a new green space planned for the north side of Mariposa Street between the 280 Freeway, Minnesota and Fourth streets. Because the space is next to and below a freeway and on/off ramp, and sandwiched between the CalTrain tracks and the proposed University of California, San Francisco hospital, park design must address noise and air pollution, vehicular traffic and multi-user needs. Possible ways to creatively use the unique space include creating a climbing wall at the southwest end; developing a pedestrian/bike bridge over the train tracks, next to the north side of Mariposa Street; installing a bike skills area; recreating the original Mission Bay shoreline in an engaging way and creating a Mission Bay historic educational element; re-introducing native plants to the site; using less ‘hard’ landscape architecture in favor of a more natural, native landscape solution; and creating free-play/multi use spaces where park goers can play informal games, meet and greet, picnic, and have small gatherings. To provide your thoughts or learn about future meetings contact Catherine.Reilly@sfgov.org.

Boo!

City leaders are moving the October 31 Halloween Party, historically held in the Castro, to a parking lot near AT&T Park. However, after initial plans for a block buster event quickly feel through, the party has settled down into a free kid-centric affair in the early evening, which will morph into a modest pop music festival for adults as the witching hour draws nigh. If New Orleans – a town not known for its governmental competence – can manage Jazz Fest and Mardi Gras why can’t the City that used to know how host something similar? For information about what San Francisco can offer check-out www.sfhalloweenfestival.com ...speaking of scary, within weeks of the grand opening of Day Park in Noe Valley, the renovation of which took more than two long years, parents found that workers had dumped toxic paint and solvents into the sand box. The City responded by closing the park so that it could be checked for environmental hazards, the previous existence of which is what caused the park to be renovated in the first place. Day Park has long been called “Dirty Park” by the crew of nannies who frequent it from throughout the southern half of San Francisco, due to its play equipment’s filthy condition. The moniker seems as apt as ever…on a less frightening note, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department has awarded a contract to Sean W. Smith Engineering to renovate the Franklin Square playground. Let’s hope this time no skeletons are buried.

Proposed Construction

A four story, (in front) and 50 feet high five story, with garage, (in back) building has been proposed for the empty lot at the corner of 19th and Mississippi streets. If you have an opinion about the proposed application for a Discretionary Review contact 246.8855; tim.frye@sfgov.org ….A $204 million transit system maintenance shop and storage yard opened last month at 25th and Illinois streets. The yard includes an 180,000-square-foot maintenance yard and 13-acres of storage space. The facility will handle roughly half the City’s rail fleet, and should prompt improved service on the T-Third line…Texas-based Darling International has reached an agreement with the Port of San Francisco to build a biodiesel plant at Pier 92. Darling’s existing rendering plant, which creates tallow from processing byproducts from dairies, meatpacking facilities, butcher shops, restaurants, is the port’s largest exporter. The tallow can be used to make biodiesel; upward of 10 million gallons a year. As Homer Simpson might say, while filling up his car and his stomach, “one for you, one for me…”

World Doesn’t End

The world didn’t get sucked into a black hole after the first beam of protons were shot along a 17-mile-long racetrack known as the Large Hadron Collider, located 300 feet beneath the Swiss-French border outside Geneva. Costing $8 billion, the collider is the most expensive scientific experiment in history. It’s designed to accelerate protons to energies of seven trillion volts – seven times the energy of the next largest machine in the world, Fermilab’s Trevaton – and smash them together. The collider will eventually reach temperatures and energies equivalent to those at a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang, causing some scientists to worry that it could spit out a black hole or some other phenomenon that could end the Earth or universe. No word from God yet reacting to humankind’s latest attempt to mimic the deity, though the collider did break down shortly after its coming out party.

October 2008

Short Cuts

This Month's Stories

On-going Features