I’m betting anything that this is already underway, but if you are interested, may as well let your voice be heard on the matter.

Sign the petition!

To: Google, and the Google Maps team
We would like a ‘Bike There’ feature added to Google Maps - to go with the current ‘Drive There’ and ‘Take Public Transit’ options. The feature would take into account actual bicycle lanes from the locality being mapped, and it would automatically plan a route for a bicyclist, possibly even providing the cyclist options for either the most direct route, or the most bicycle-friendly (safest) route. The Google Maps-based third party site, byCycle.org (http://byCycle.org/), provides these features for two metro areas - Portland, Oregon and Madison, Wisconsin, and there are countless other mapping initiatives around the world aimed at accomplishing the same goal. We hope that Google will consider building this feature into the core Google Maps service.

There are many reasons why this feature would be a wonderful edition to Google Maps. Among them, some of the most influential would be to:
* Make bicycling safer for millions of bicyclists around the world.
* Empower world citizens to better adapt their lifestyles to face the challenges of global climate change.
* Help Google realize its core mission of ‘organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.’

By implementing the ‘Take Public Transit’ option, Google and the Google Maps team have shown themselves to be concerned and capable world citizens; a ‘Bike There’ feature addition to Google Maps would be the ultimate statement in support of sustainable development.

For more information on this feature request please visit the Google Maps ‘Bike There’ website (http://GoogleMapsBikeThere.org/).

Thank you, Google and the Google Maps team! And thank you, petitioners, for joining us in attempting to realize this very important goal!
Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Walked by Zeitgeist last night and it was a nightmare to get in- there was quite a long line. Friend mentioned that she wanted a blog post that listed all of the nice outside eating areas, so here you go:

* Medjool on Mission. Huge roof deck with capacity for crowds. Tiny little elevator, but that’s the only real drawback.

* El Rio, of course, huge deck

* The Ramp- huge back deck with open area

* Personal favorite: Fish! in Sausalito, lots of deck and locally fished seafood.

* Almost all of the Ferry Building restaurants have outdoor eating

* Epic Roasthouse & Waterbar on Embarcadero

* Palomino & Gordon Biersch have outside areas

* The Waterfront on Embarcadero has a wind-protected open area

* Pier 23 has a tarp enclosed back area (they may open it once in a while)

* Most North Beach places have outside sidewalk seating.

* Metro Hotel on Divisadero near Haight has a beautiful back garden.

Please comment with your favorites!

Also see: Eater SF’s El Fresco Options, CitySearch Round-up

In what looks to be an amazing film, The Unforeseen, we get a look at a battle between a storied Austin developer and a community that finds itself on the brink of losing one of it’s long held treasures. Imho it’s not development that is the enemy, it’s the nature of the way things are developed today. The capitalists version of development is essentially the oldest get rich quick schemes our society has ever known, and it’s this brand of short term thinking that clashes with a newfound american values of heritage and stewardship.

An ambitious west Texas farm boy with grandiose plans tires of living at the mercy of nature and sets out to find a life with more control. He heads to Austin where he becomes a real estate developer and skillfully capitalizes on the growth of this 1970s boomtown. At the peak of his powers, he transforms 4,000 acres of pristine Hill Country into one of the state’s largest and fastest selling subdivisions. When the development threatens a local treasure, a fragile limestone aquifer and a naturally spring-fed swimming hole, the community fights back. In the conflict that ensues, we see in miniature a struggle that today plays out in communities across the country.

Screening at the Red Vic Movie House, 5/18/08 - 5/19/08.

Trailer after the jump

Greetings dear readers! I’m happy to present to you a weekly addition to SF Metblogs! Every Wednesday, I’ll pick a bar to write about and present my take and experience in hopes of giving you options for your everyday after-work Happy Hour needs so that you can effectively “Party Like it’s Friday!”

Comments are always welcome and please feel free to throw some suggestions my way! I’m an equal-opportunity drinker and always looking for new spots to check out! As this is a San Francisco blog, let’s try to stay within city limits. Although, I’m no stranger to the East Bay and would love to venture out that way on occasion.

Beale Street Bar and Grill

I was first introduced to Beale Street Bar and Grill when my roommate invited me to a thing his co-workers were having one night. Working in the Financial District in San Francisco has taught me never to turn down an invitation to a bar I’ve never been.

We’re so limited to what bars there are to go to in the area that it seems we tend to flock to the same ones repeatedly after work. I do get it; certain people have certain tastes. That much is… well, certain. But, I’m the type of guy that likes variety. I tend to not have a favorite type of anything. The Financial District seems to provide a certain specific type of venue for your happy hour needs. Sure there’s variety, but like any district in SF, it’s pretty limited. In the Financial District, there are mainly pubs and bars catered to those hard working people we like to affectionately (and sometimes not so much affectionately) call Yuppies.

I tend to really like dive bars. It’s not a preference in the sense that I’ll be opposed to go anywhere else. It’s just that I feel like they have an environment that’s much more comfortable than any stuffed up fancy place can provide.

Beale Street provides the happy medium. It’s still the Financial District and even their slogan says it’s “The Financial District’s Neighborhood Bar” and that tells me they can provide that comfortable dive bar experience you may want.

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There’s a general workshop on what to do with the “triangle”- that is the parking lot that is now Parks & Rec property, bordered by Columbus, Lombard & Mason. At the North Beach Clubhouse (we have a clubhouse?) 4/30, 7pm.
official info from SFPL

For over 25 years, dedicated family farmers and independent food purveyors from all over California have arrived at SF’s UN Plaza at dawn on Wednesdays & Sundays, setting up their temporary tents & tables to sell their produce and sundry products til about 5pm. Whether you like the wide array of greens or roasted nuts, dried fruits, dates, baked goods, cheeses, olive oils or even fresh fish & fowl, there’s something for everyone. Unlike the more pretentious and prosperous scene at the fashionable Ferry Building, this inauspicious & authentic farmer’s market is frequented by the denizens of the neighborhood, office workers on lunch break, old Chinese folks and some occasional tourists that find it upon emerging from BART. The prices are often half of what the other fancy farmer’s market might charge, and the scene about as bucolic and community orientated as one can get in “The Heart Of The City”.

If it wasn’t for the farmers & vendors who twice a week make the United Nations Plaza a lively civic gathering spot, the place is generally a desolate, if not dangerous empty expanse populated by sleepy doped up miscreants, drug dealers, ne’er do ‘ells, tweakers, stolen property salesmen and a spectacular variety of shady criminal thugs. The same city and it’s bloated bureaucracy, which had a big hand in letting the UN plaza slip into a symbolic cesspool of urban decay in the first place, now wants to manage the sole successful independently operated revitalizing factor in the area ? How uh, original…

The “Heart Of The City Farmer’s Market” at UN Plaza has long been organized and managed by an independent non-profit that was formed in 1981 starting with just 12 farmers, and some of the same vendors have been there since the inception. John Fernandez and his mother Christine Adams help manage the market that the city now has plans to “take over” after two+ decades, and they are not amused. Neither were at least a half dozen stall operators that I spoke to in an informal survey today, some who’ve been at UN Plaza since the very early days. They already dealt with this threat back in 1995, and here we go again, with a basically bankrupt bureaucracy that’s trying to dip it’s incompetent tentacles into something that isn’t broke, so why bother to fix it?

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The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco announced on January 14th 2008 it was providing over $4 million in Affordable Housing Project grants that are expected to go towards creating nearly 600 units of affordable housing in the area. The funding is reserved for affordable housing sites throughout Nancy Pelosi’s pork craving 8th District, including SF’s Polk & Geary Senior Housing, the 47 unit Zygmundt Arendt Senior House at 850 Broderick, as well as projects at 275 10th St. and 53 Columbus Ave amongst others. Complete list of sites, and factoids provided by the people intent on spending yer tax dollars below the fold…

pic: The Zygmundt Arendt House project was spearheaded by SF’s Department of Human Services, and the photo courtesy Community Housing Partnership (CHP) who are now in charge. The project is named after a Polish immigrant & railroad worker who died in 1998 and left approx 6 million in stocks & real estate to build housing for the poor.
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A court room thousands of miles away in Miami on Tuesday hosts the sentencing hearings for convicted “terrorist plotter” Jose Padilla, but he and his mother, with the help of Yale legal scholar Jonathon Friedman have also started legal proceedings right here in San Francisco.

San Francisco’s Federal Court became part of an intriguing and intertwining legal legacy last Friday, when a suit was filed against a Berkeley Law Professor. Padilla ( one of the few “evil doers” ever convicted in the wake of the Bush Admin’s post-9/11 Homeland Security craze that swept the US), is angry at Boalt Hall’s John Yoo… and wants a symbolic dollar in damages ( although his lawyers want their full fees of course).

Padilla, a U.S Citizen who was born in Brooklyn and once claimed membership in Chicago’s “Maniac Latin Disciples” street gang was later termed an “illegal enemy combatant” after the government announced a “dirty bomb” plot in 2002. Thus began a long & winding legal odyssey in which precedents were few and far between, many challenges were filed, some initial charges were dropped, then reinstated, and evidence seldom matched allegations. All along, Padilla’s rotating cast of legal representatives claimed the case was an overblown example of overdue process, in which torture was employed on US soil “as part of a systematic program” that “intended to break down Mr. Padilla’s humanity and will to live”. Eventually, Padilla was convicted by the Feds last August.

But the story doesn’t stop there…

(more after the jump)
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I’m not a huge Citysearch fan, but this season I was looking for food resources for the holiday and came across their simple and excellent Thanksgiving Planner. It has places to get birds both vegan and animal, ready to cook and pre-cooked; pre-assembled meals that you can order in a few minutes online (for pickup at Whole Foods locations around town), and even local restaurants that are doing dinners and events. Who knew Waiters on Wheels will cater your Thanksgiving with, say, a turkey meal from Lefty O’Douls? The planner iz truly excellent if you’re having an event or want to go out. Then again, the holiday is an odd one; best to rent Addams Family Values and enjoy all the free, open parking. One year for Thanksgiving, instead of orphan potlucks or suffering with other people’s families, I took acid with a bunch of friends and wandered around SF in daylight hours. We tried to fly a kite. It took us a while to realize there was no wind. Good times.

But — I was excited to see this on the Citysearch list: my favorite (and not cheap) gourmet vegan restaurant Millennium is doing a $60 five-course feast from 2:30pm to 7:30pm (the menu is in their events).

Through total accident, was at a picnic at Oakland’s Shoreline park, where you can walk out to a vista point and see the tankers getting unloaded and loaded. Here, we realized we were staring at the one that bashed into the Bay Bridge. Brother-in-law took photos, so thanks Mark!

And more after jump. The best way to see it was probably on a boat. We were surprised the ship was still unloading containers. They were placing metal-looking empty flats onto the boat while they took off the containers. The gash is very eerie looking. We didn’t see any oil around the coastline there, but did see containment efforts of foam-looking long bumpers up against the rocks, and lots of signs about no swimming, etc. nearby.
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