Update to the story below as of 1720h PST: The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that with 9800 ballots remaining, Measure B has passed the 66.67 percent mark.

The ballot initiative to fund a BART extension to San Jose may have squeaked by, KNTV was reporting this afternoon. Though initial balloting showed the measure falling short of the required two-thirds majority, mail-in ballots are turning the tide.

With 17,000 of 42,000 mail-in ballots still to be counted, the vote to fund the 22-mile BART extension with a 1/8-cent Santa Clara County sales tax was 66.61 percent yes; the measure, like any tax increase in California since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13, requires at least a 66.67 percent yes vote.

If the Bart-to-San Jose tax passes, it would complete a surprising trifecta of voter support for mass transit projects at a time when local and state budgets are tight. Earlier this month, voters in Marin and Sonoma Counties passed a rail initiative, and statewide Proposition 1A also passed, kicking off the state’s bullet train project.

Earlier this afternoon I walked past 826 Valencia and saw a notice for this cool, typically whimsical event posted in the window:

Join artist Lucas Murgida as he completes a three-year traveling art project which began here in the 826 front window. This installation of The Locksmithing Institute will kick off with a reception in the Pirate Store, where refreshments and a demonstration on opening doors without keys will be enjoyed by all.

In February of 2005, The Locksmithing Institute conducted its first class at 826 Valencia. Here students were taught how to liberate themselves from their everyday shackles in a series of lock-picking courses. Since that time, the Institute has traveled all over the Western Hemisphere and has taught hundreds of students in Portland, New York, Oakland, San Francisco, Baltimore, Boston, and Uruguay a host of locksmithing skills such as how to pick locks, make keys, find keys, lose keys, and how not to pick locks. Click here for more details.

On Friday, September 26, the eleventh and final lesson of The Locksmithing Institute will begin at 826 Valencia. Incoming students will be given the opportunity to test their meddle in the Institute’s mobile locking window display classroom. Tuition is free, all ages are welcome, no experience is necessary, and keys are not required.

The event will run from 6-8 PM tomorrow night, Friday 26th. Unfortunately, I’m going to be down in Santa Cruz for most of the day, but I’m going to try really hard to be back in time for this!

[Event text taken directly from 826 Valencia; another heads-up from SF Funcheap.]

Kirk Read, host of the San Francisco reading series Smack Dab and K’vetsh, has won the first award by the Open Door Project, an effort by publishing figure Don Weise to create more opportunities for gay male writers. (Publishing folks know Weise as a former editor at the Avalon Publishing Group, but before that he worked at San Francisco’s Cleis Press.) (Disclosure: Cleis Press has published two of my books.)

Read is a performance artist and HIV activist in San Francisco in addition to his author/impresario roles.

Courtesy SFist — which provided a huge public service by untangling the stupidity of Muni publishing dozens of proposed route changes on dozens of separate PDFs — here are all the proposed changes to Muni routes posted to SFist’s Flickr set. SFist rules today.

Among the several radical changes:

• Bryant Street is totally out of luck. No more service in the Mission District or South of Market. That means that if you wanted to take a bus to or from the Hall of Justice — like if your car was towed and you wanted to get it back — you have to catch a bus on Folsom and then walk two blocks.

More changes after the jump

Earlier this year Whole Foods and the owner of the propert where Cala foods is located proposed a new development, including housing and a full service Whole Foods market. The project has been met with deft opposition by the HANC (Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council). An organization that seems to largely be concerned with protecting their own vision of the Haight and their political clout is significant.

The Haight Ashbury Improvement Association is taking a much more progressive stance and is in favor of the project. Long story short, if you live anywhere close and have a point of view, the time to speak up is now, and the person to talk to is Ross Mirkarimi. Email him at ross.mirkarimi@sfgov.org .

Statement to HAIA and poll

I was invited last night to attend a rather San Francisco¹ event — live tag-team nude model wrestling at the Fortress of Pornitude, Kink.com. The local web porn provider — whose purchase of the early 20th century Armory building caused a small stir in early 2007 — streams and webcasts more than a dozen porn channels² featuring nubile women (mostly) and men doing forceful, lascivious things to themselves and one another.

NB: Most of the links in this post from here on are NSFW and shouldn’t be clicked if pornography offends you. The language in this post after the jump also contains NSFW descriptions.

The all-girl wrestling match was held, with a live audience³, as part of kink.com’s Ultimate Surrender channel, which consists exclusively⁴ of this wrestling-as-porn subgenre.

Like many, I was curious about the Armory, a former National Guard facility which sat as an abandoned hulk over Mission Street for thirty years before the porn company moved in and cleaned up the building. And the prospect of watching several naked women cavort wasn’t unpleasant either, so I was quick to accept the invitation of Thomas Roche, an acquaintance from the erotica-writing game, who works there.

post continues after the jump

In the current SF Weekly, Matt Smith documents how a mysterious corporate entity called SFO Enterprises, formed by San Francisco International Airport managers to extend their reach beyond SFO itself, ruined a project to upgrade the airport in the capital city of Honduras. According to Smith’s article, the project was so messed up that it led to at least one fatal incident when an airliner ran off the end of a runway, killing five and injuring 65. Smith goes on to detail the project, the tortured relationship between the Honduran government and SFOE, and the economic “chaos” that resulted when the government shut down the airport for large jets after the accident.

A Google search points to many SF Weekly articles on the mysterious SFO Enterprises going back at least to 2001, but this latest one is so damning it’s a wonder Mayor Gavin Newsom doesn’t do something.

Ever heard of reverse graffiti? Neither had I until earlier today. Reverse graffiti artist Moose makes a big statement about clean in San Francisco’s Broadway Tunnel. Shot by documentarian Doug Pray. For most information visit www.reversegraffitiproject.com.

The PEW Internet project is supporting the Broadband Census, a project that is being overseen by Drew Clark, a telecommunications and technology journalist. The point is to gather as much information about peoples actual upload and download speeds. From home or work.

The census is open to anyone who wants to participate. So get to IT.

According to the government, San Francisco has 10 service providers. Not sure if that’s truly the case, as I can only think of two, Comcast and AT&T, with very different offerings.

Participate in the census so we can truly see how we stack up to other cities and communities in the U.S.

Photo courtesy of Xamad, Creative Commons.

Pacific Union has withheld their “Right of Way” over key segments of the LA/SF corridor that the Bullet Train would traverse. They claim safety issues as the reason.

From the LA Times last week:

Officials at Union Pacific railroad recently told the California High Speed Rail Authority that they have safety and operational concerns about running a bullet train close to lumbering freight trains.

“Just look at what happened in L.A. a few years ago,” said Scott Moore, a Union Pacific vice president, citing the 2005 crash of a Metrolink passenger train that killed 11 and hampered rail operations.

“Those accidents happen.”

This is kind of a big roadblock from what I’ve gathered. And if you’re motivated, for or against, drop them a line here.

Here is a sample trip:

• SF to LA
• Distance: 432 Miles
• CO2/Saved per trip: 324 lbs
• Travel Time: 2hrs, 38 mins.
• Estimated Cost: Train $55, Car $86, Air $120

Poll and linkage