I moved to San Francisco after attending college at the University of California, Santa Cruz because the City was full of beloved haunts, from Aub Zam Zam to Specs. Over the years, I became more attached to all the wonderful things San Francisco offers. And it wasn’t just the bars. I started my career here,…
I choose to raise my family in San Francisco, and specifically Potrero Hill, because of the shared commitment to making the Hill better for everyone who lives here. In every part of our lives, my family has found a welcoming community. I’d heard the neighborhood legend of families coming together years ago to keep Daniel Webster…
The up swelling of post-election demonstrations – in Golden Gate and Dolores parks, and throughout the Bay Area and nation – shows how we can coalesce with one voice and that we can fight for what we want if we put our minds to it. We can’t let the election of Donald Trump be the…
The result of the presidential election brought home my reasons for wanting to raise my kids in a densely populated urban environment like San Francisco: diversity, diversity, diversity. Socio-economic, racial, ethnic, cultural and gender identity diversity. Parenting is a tough job wherever you reside. We all make decisions in attempts to make that job a…
Last April, my wife, Rhonda, and I left San Francisco, our home for fifty-two years, to become permanent residents in Mexico. “We’re driving a car looking in the rearview mirror, meaning that the environment in which you believe yourself to exist is always a past one, it isn’t the one you’re actually in,” said Alan…
On November 8, you can dramatically improve our regional transportation system by voting “yes” on the BART bond, Measure RR. A “yes” for RR will bring $3.5 billion in investment to keep BART safe and reliable. RR will allow BART to update fundamental parts of its system that are 44 years old: replace more than…
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) plan for traffic was to make it disappear. That plan has failed miserably. SFMTA doesn’t appear to have a Plan B, other than to ignore the public and blame us for their failure. It’s time for them to disappear. Since SFMTA laid the thermoplastic red carpet on Mission…
I work in the East Bay. My coworkers who’ve fled over a bridge, through a tunnel, or down a freeway to raise their children frequently encourage me to move out of San Francisco. The schools in the suburbs are better, they say. The City is so inconvenient, they allege. There’s so little outdoor space, they…
With 25 local measures, 17 state initiatives, and many, many candidates, voters need a decision framework, or guiding philosophy, to render thoughtful ballot decisions. One approach is to group measures into like categories, and apply a consistent thought process throughout, deviating only when there’s compelling reasons to do so. Here’s ours, limited to local measures…
I live on Kansas Street, one block south of the 25th street footbridge bridge, and have been the Kansas Street SAFE Association captain since 2004. I believe that the bridge should remain closed, not because I have a strong opinion one way or the other; I don’t. I’ll support the final decision. I’m in favor…
This year, the long planned main building of San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s bus facility is under construction on Islais Creek’s north shore. When Muni conceived of the project, its then project manager approached Friends of Islais Creek – which for 30 years has worked with other community groups to create public activity spaces along…
Potrero Hill is like an island. Bound by Highway 101 and Interstate 280 and natural topography – hills are a great barrier for people and fog – the community is visible from adjacent streets and other peaks. But like an isle it’s hard to get to, or out of. Once there was an access point…
There’s general agreement that homelessness is one of San Francisco’s highest priority concerns, and that homeless individuals should be treated fairly, humanely, and with dignity. Few people choose to be homeless; that’s why the services San Francisco Housing Opportunity, Partnerships, and Engagement (HOPE) offers are so important. A key component of those amenities is operating…
In the late-1990s, before the dot-com bubble burst, San Francisco’s eastern neighborhoods faced many of the same issues as today: rapid gentrification and displacement. In Potrero Hill and Dogpatch real estate investors gobbled up industrial sites made valuable by 1988 Live-Work legislation that was supposed to help artists, instead displacing them, along with small businesses…
The Potrero Hill Democratic Club recommends voting against Proposition B on this month’s ballot. Proposition B would extend and augment the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department’s guaranteed portion of the annual City budget—the measure’s proponents claim it would add $1 billion over the next thirty years—with no accountability outside the department itself. While the…
Proposition A, Public Health and Safety Bond: No. Proposition B, Recreation and Open Space Fund: No. Proposition C, Charter Amendment, Affordable Housing Requirements: Yes! Proposition D, Office of Citizen Complaints Investigations: Yes. Proposition E, Paid Sick Leave: Yes. Measure AA, San Francisco Bay Clean Water, Pollution Prevention and Habitat Restoration Program: Yes. Proposition 50, Suspension…
By Paul Kleyman, Special to The View The booming voice on my telephone answering machine was intimidating and scary: “This is the Internal Revenue Services.” The robo call told me that the IRS had filed a lawsuit against me; I should dial a stated number immediately. Except that, the Internal Revenue Service never calls. Ever. Federal…
Over the past several years the City has flourished. Tax revenues have increased substantially, as tourism and development has boomed, changing neighborhood character. The Mayor’s fiscal year (FY) 2015 budget of almost nine billion dollars is one billion dollars more than it was just two years ago. In good times government programs and…
City Hall asserts it’s protecting neighborhoods from short-term residential rentals to tourists, like those offered by Airbnb. It claims it’s protecting the availability and affordability of scarce housing. I wholeheartedly disagree. City Hall passed legislation that’s so weak that every independent analysis reached the same conclusion: the current law is unworkable and unenforceable. These tourist…
The San Francisco Giants want to transform a 28-acre industrial site located on Port property, currently used as a surface parking lot for baseball games, into a mixed-use $1.6 billion development, featuring waterfront parks; 1,500 rental units, 40 percent of which would be affordable; retail and 1.5 million square feet of office space; a parking…
I was on my knees at the back fence of my Vermont Street home, in the dirt among mosquitoes and dog-doo, sucking on a dirty hose with my head as low to the ground as I could get it, painfully trying to syphon water from my bathtub to my avocado tree. “What the heck am…
I did my best to avoid journalists like Brian Williams and Bill O’Reilly, as well as politicians such as U.S. Senator John McCain and Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert McDonald, when I was with the U.S. military. I believed then, as I do now, in press freedoms and representative politics. People have the right to…
Despite multiple rounds of discussions with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), citizens’ concerns about the proposed location for the T-Line turn-around – Mission Bay Loop – have been largely dismissed. The loop is still planned for the route originally contemplated in 1999. Construction is scheduled to start in the coming month. Moving forward…