Dogpatch residents and nearby neighbors, as well as San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) representatives, crowded into Dogpatch Neighborhood Association’s April meeting to discuss proposed parking management strategies. Many participants objected to SFMTA’s proposal to add meters and experiment with residential parking permits; a paid parking overlay program for several blocks in the area bounded…
The California College of the Arts (CCA) plans to add a 200-bed student apartment complex at 75 Arkansas Street, followed by a 600-bed dormitory at 184 to 188 Hooper Street, as part of consolidation of its East Bay campus into the City. “We expect the Arkansas and 17th street apartment-style housing to open in fall…
Last month the City dismantled a homeless encampment located at the knot of streets that feed into Highway 101 and Cesar Chavez, scattering upwards of 100 individuals into shelters and nearby neighborhoods. Prior to it being demolished, the View spent time talking with the homeless, the housed, park goers, and afterschool workers in and around…
San Francisco Animal Care and Control’s 1200 15th Street location was built in 1931 as a warehouse. In 1989, the City took six-months to renovate the building into an animal care facility. Since then, standards for treatment of animals have changed dramatically, and the structure is seismically unsafe, a major driving force behind plans for…
A controversial proposal to build condominiums on the 500 block of De Haro Street will go before the San Francisco Planning Commission on June 2. The plan, in which a 17-unit condo complex would be constructed on what was until recently the home of Moto Guild, a motorcycle repair shop and training facility, has been…
Technology has come a long way since electrical municipal street lamps were first installed mid-century last. Today’s street lighting provides lower-cost, more environmentally friendly illumination through the use of innovative bulbs and efficient installation tactics. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) maintains roughly 22,000 of the 43,000 streetlights in the City and County of…
By 2006, politicians realized that American forces in Afghanistan and Iraq weren’t fighting the World War II style mass-on-mass, force-on-force conflicts for which soldiers were trained. Instead, the U.S. military battled guerillas who hid amongst and struck from within civilian populations. Then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told critics of his military preparedness policy that…
SOMArts Cultural Center – which provides space and production support to more than 100 nonprofit events, and offers no- and low-cost art exhibitions, performances, and classes – hired Maria Jenson as its executive director last month. SOMArts is one of six City-supported cultural centers, attracting in excess of 30,000 visitors annually to its 934 Brannan…
I came to San Francisco in 1964. My wife, Rhonda, arrived in the Bay Area in 1981. Last month, after living here for more than a half-century, we sold our Potrero Hill condominium. With five suitcases and a 120 pound German Shepherd, we hit the road, our destination: San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. We…
Last month, 50 Potrero Hill residents voted on three alternatives to remaking Jackson Park, with a majority supporting expanding the park onto Carolina Street. Concerns over parking dissuaded most voters from backing park encroachment onto Arkansas Street. Voters’ top three concerns were increasing green and open space, expanding onto nearby streets, and parking and traffic.…
What was once a dumping ground is being transformed into an oasis for Potrero Hill and Dogpatch residents. “It was an abandoned lot filled with garbage and trash, really rough in terms of walking through it because there were no pathways and there was never a sidewalk along Pennsylvania Avenue,” said Bonnie Bergeron, a decades-long…
It was a Sunday morning and my then four year-old son, Connor, was getting restless. I offered several of our regular parks – Jackson, McKinley, and Potrero Recreation Center – but Connor wasn’t interested. Without thinking, or checking the CalTrain schedule, I asked him, “you want to go on a train ride?” He jumped up…
I had a call in the Tenderloin. I knew it was going to be a no sale once I pulled up to a rundown tenement building on Ellis Street. I miraculously found a free parking meter right across the street, looked up and saw an old Black man peering out a cracked fifth floor window. …
By Chris Block and Steven J. Moss More than 50 people gathered at Peet’s Coffee & Tea’s Minnesota Street offices to discuss a proposed 24th Street Navigation Center, just west of Warm Water Cove. A significant majority of the crowd raised their hands in response to Dogpatch Neighborhood Association president Bruce Kin Huie’s question asking…
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has embarked on an initiative to research and analyze the effectiveness of the Residential Parking Permit (RPP) policy in Dogpatch. Part of the effort may include a pilot project to implement new parking management strategies for a number of blocks within an area bounded by Mariposa and Cesar…
In many ways Potrero Hill exemplifies San Francisco as a whole, particularly in terms of its population mix and income. It’s not predominantly European-American, African-American, or any other ethnicity; not all wealthy, nor all poor. In addition to its demographics, the 94107 zip code mirrors the City in how and at what age its residents…
The month of June is known for weddings and primaries, both of which can lead to happily ever after or quite the opposite. The June 7 election is marked by a handful of state and local propositions – most of them about spending taxpayer money – and a few hotly-contested political races – only one…
Over the past year alone, a cascading set of trends has prompted the closure of 10 Bay Area hospitals outside San Francisco, according to longtime health care consultant Walter Kopp. Reductions in Medicare and Medi-Cal rates, a shift to greater reliance on outpatient facilities bolstered by Obamacare rewarding ambulatory care more heavily than hospital stays,…
San Francisco is home to three clinics, located in Bernal Heights, Potrero Hill and the Haight, that offer abortion services. Two other facilities, in the Outer Mission and Union Square, vend anti-abortion messages in the guise of providing family planning assistance. Variously called “crisis pregnancy centers” (CPCs), “pregnancy counselling centers,” “limited service pregnancy centers” (LSPCs)…
Securing answers from San Francisco law enforcement agencies – which are engaged in internecine bickering over a host of issues, including allegations of racial profiling by police officers – about how well they respond to incidences of rape has proven as difficult as it was to determine their success in solving the City’s murder cases.…
Dr. Nancy Milliken, founder and director of the University of California, San Francisco’s National Center of Excellence in Women’s Health, has spent her career advancing the health and well-being of women. A professor emerita at UCSF’s Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Science, and previously vice dean of UCSF’s School of Medicine, over her thirty-plus-year…
With this month’s opening of a new nine-story building that includes spacious rooms for labor, delivery, recovery, and postpartum care, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital (ZSFG) combines well-designed facilities with highly committed physicians and impactful community programs that have served women and children from low-income and working-class families for decades. “I think what makes us…
Kiana Underwood’s five-Yelp-star floral design studio, Tulipina, is located on Vermont Street. Tulipina creates floral arrangements for “bespoke weddings,” in which everything is custom-made. “I do lots of weddings and events as well as workshops,” Underwood said. “What I do is pretty unique. I love every minute of it.” The studio, which doubles as a…
Kristina Geier opened BerryClean in Potrero Hill last fall. She was raised by parents whose professional lives revolved around the travel and hospitality industries; her first job was with Hilton San Francisco. “Cleaning is not a sexy industry,” Geier said. “People don’t want to have to deal with cleaning, they want a clean house. We…
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Verdi Club, a working class social club whose historic 1935 building sits discreetly at 2424 Mariposa Street, a half-block west of Potrero Avenue. Launched in a barber shop at 24th and Vermont streets in 1916 by a handful of passionate Italian-American men, over the years the association…