Noticed a posted sign on Columbus Ave about the new 20 line, which will go from downtown through financial district, and North Beach ending near Ghirardelli Square. Hello! I’m very pleased that this is going in, to cover the absence of the 15. The notice on the MUNI site seems pretty apologetic too. Funny, talking to a bus driver last week, she had no idea that there was an uproar over the 15 that her employer was actually going to do something about it. The route is from North Point & Van Ness to Beale & Market. And it doesn’t go through Chinatown. More info after jump.
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I was clinging to the side bar, daydreaming about nothing much in particular, when one sharp crack of the bell got my attention back to the Here and Now - just in time to suck it in for a near-miss with the passing east-bound line.

Whew.

In the last twenty years or so, so-called light-rail systems have become common in American cities. From Tacoma to Tampa, cities are realizing that streetcars are a clean, efficient and attractive way to get people around.

San Francisco has had streetcars of some kind since 1860 — horse-drawn, steam-driven, cable-driven, and finally the electric cars of the type seen today. And though the number of lines was drastically reduced in mid-century, the city always had at least five lines: the J-Church, N-Judah, and the three Sutro Tunnel lines K, L, and M. But in 1982 these lines disappeared from Market Street as the surface cars were replaced by space-age “LRV” (for Light Rail Vehicle) cars.

More after the jump.
(Photo of double-ended PPC car no. 1007 by Telstar.)
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The Russian Version

SF green with envy

Taking yesterday’s trolleybus lead, the second San Francisco transportation option straight out of the Soviet Union is the Soviet tramvai.

You might call it a trolley, but those of us who travel too much know its really a tramvai, and no matter what it answers to, we all get out of its way.

Big, slow, and riding roughly on rails, it takes over streets worldwide. The San Francisco version is a direct cousin to the Soviet ones. Not sleek like Amsterdam’s or Istanbul’s, but old, rickety, and with that tooth-rattling ride that’s great for all involved.

Many cities, including DC, tore out their tramvai’s in the 1950’s to make way for more cars. As much as the ride is jarring, I do wish we’d kept ours. They add a classic touch to the city, and if modernized, are a very cool way to travel.

Me, I’ll stick with the trolleybus till you get the Euro-tramvai upgrade.

Because this is San Francisco and very few things have the ability to surprise me, I nearly walked by a group of people performing some sort of modern dance…hanging from the side of a building. On a mattress.

As it turns out, this was sanctioned mattress-dancing; in fact, it was one part of this weekend’s San Francisco Trolley Dances, a self-proclaimed “freewheeling festival of modern dance in the streets of San Francisco”. And while I’m aware that it would have been much handier to post this before the Trolley Dances finished, I thought I’d be handy and post a few photos of the fun, from the McRoskey Mattress Company stop on the tour.

The zombie mob started at California and Grant. The mob being a bunch of brainless zombies roamed in circles for at least half an hour. I was able to avoid being bitten by taunting them with my camera. The zombies then proceeded to stream down Grant Street. They were unable to get through the tough metal of oncoming traffic but they weren’t giving up. They blocked traffic. They caused mayhem. They caused tourists to scream. But fear not, they didn’t eat the tourists! No BRRRAAIIINNNNSSS there!
The mob made it to market street where they were able to capture more of the local zombies. During all of this, a live hip hop video about zombies was being made. They used the zombies as a backdrop while they rapped about eating brains.

By god at this point, we had a ROT of zombies. That’s what you call a gathering of shamblers that eat brains. A rot.

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San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood embodies much of the best that urban existence has to offer. It’s sunny (in a foggy city), it’s welcoming, has good food and drink, and is open really, really late (for an American city).

Known for the gay bars, there’s much more in the Castro, for straights and kids too. From the huge palm trees planted on the median of Market Street between Castro and Church Steets to the children’s playground and adjacent dog-run and human park at Duboce, there’s lots to see and do.

Highly recomended is taking the ‘F’ MUNI trolley line, comprised of historic vehicles bought from other cities. My favorites are the “trolleys of Milano”, noisy wooden cars which have more class and character than anything shipped out by Boeing or Breda. Horridy ugly modern cars, those. The ‘F’ line goes all the way to Fisherman’s Wharf, which despite derision by the locals, is a great place to mellow out, watch sea lions, eat some wonderful calimari (or bangers, at the near-by Fiddler’s Green (1333 Columbus Ave. @ Beach St., +1.415.441.9758), watch the “polar bear” swimmers in the bay, wonder about what it would be like to visit (and eat at) Forbes’ Island, etc.

From the corner of Castro & Market it’s a very short walk to the Randall Junior Museum (for kids) and over the hill into the Haight-Ashbury. Actually, it’s only a short walk up and down into Noe Valley, although I find much less call to do that these days.

I’m typing this in a caf

I give street buskers a buck whenever I can. Always. Like I thought it would bring good art-karma or something, but more because it takes a bit of guts to set up on the street, and bravery should be rewarded. Along Clement Street in the Inner Richmond, we don’t often get buskers. Save for the one guy who seems to come out every week with his accordion on Clement and 4th, the only music you’ll hear comes wafting out of bars or thumping out of the cars, the cars that go boom. We’re Tigra and Bunny, and we… sorry. Or, occasionally, you’ll hear a tour trolley-bus full of drunken revellers belting out 80s tunes as they stop at the light outside your apartment (an accurance more amusing, fortunately, than annoying).

One night this week, there was a busker sitting on the step of a shop closed for the night, playing her guitar and singing as a couple people stood and watched. I moved in to drop a dollar in her tip box, and only caught the sign propped up behind it as I was leaning down: “Spare change for pot.”

I think San Francisco is the only city I’ve been in where one can get away with that sort of honesty.