potrero view

January 2012

Short Cuts

For Sale

The Potrero Center, on 16th Street, is for sale.  The 227,000-square-foot strip shopping center, which houses Safeway, could accommodate up to 1,800 apartments, and is currently 98 percent leased…Hogan’s Goat Tavern opens this month where the Sea Star Club used to operate in Dogpatch, as does Gilbert’s Rotisserie and Grill down the block… In response to a letter to the editor in last month’s View (“Fire Trucks”) a reader called to inquire whether police officers are allowed to park at bus stops and fire hydrants, or talk on their cell phones while driving.  Our guess is not.

 


Parking

Roughly two hundred people streamed into an American Industrial Center (AIC) warehouse space last month to protest a San Francisco Municipal Transportation Authority (SFMTA) proposal to plant high-tech parking meters in parts of Dogpatch and Potrero Hill.  “You don’t have to occupy City Hall to make things better,” quipped AIC building manager Greg Markoulis, “you can occupy AIC.”  Ninety percent of the attendees were San Franciscans, and virtually all of them opposed SFMTA’s parking meter plan.  “We park here because we work here,” said one participant.  “And many of us make less than $10 an hour; we can’t afford to pay for parking.”  “When’s the T-Line coming,” shouted out another attendee.  “Two hours,” was the response, which was met with knowing laughter from the crowd.  AIC may hire a lawyer to oppose the plan, which will be vetted again at a January 13 meeting this month. (See page 17.)

 

Killed Bees

Last fall a bee colony that had thrived at the Connecticut Friendship Community Garden – a locked organic plot visible from a walkway between Connecticut and Wisconsin streets – for a couple of years were almost exterminated, most likely as a result of chemical poisoning.  Just before the attack the bees’ keeper, Brannan Street resident Clara, who preferred to remain anonymous, had split the hive to make a new queen.  She’d returned to the colonies, playing Bossa Nova music, which the bees apparently love, to find piles of corpses in front of the hives, choking the entrances and spilling onto the ground.  The hives’ floors were covered with multiple layers of dead bodies; bee corpses clinched in death poses to wax comb on the sides.  In the original hive the queen was still alive, but the only other surviving bees were nurse bees and the emerging brood.  The next day more bees were found dead, and the queen was doing a strange twitchy half squat move repeatedly in the same spot.  Experienced beekeepers suspect that pesticide placed at the hive entrances caused the massacre.  A $100 reward is being offered for information leading to the arrest of the vandal; 553.0123.   

 

Politics

After Ed Lee was elected mayor last November, he immediately turned to paying back the $300,000 his campaign owed to vendors, pollsters and consultants.  Last month, District 8 Supervisor Scott Wiener, who was a staunch supporter of the second runner-up, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, co-hosted a $250 to $500 per person benefit reception for Lee.  No hard feelings are allowed in politics…District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen sold tickets – costing from $100 to $500 – to her birthday party last month at Poquito.  The event organizer, The California Group, declined to inform the View what the supervisor will do with the funds, or even allow the press to attend the gathering.  Perhaps the supervisor needs new clothes…  


Address

We neglected to include the building’s location in last month’s “Cor-o-van Building to Become Residential, Medical Facility.”  That would be 16th Street, between Mississippi and Seventh streets.

 

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