[Image by the Asian Art Museum.]

The Asian Art Museum hosts their Matcha event series on the first Thursday of every month, from 5 to 9 in the evening, and it’s that day again. The theme for tonight’s event is Tea and Spice, and I probably can’t describe it any better than they do:

Still dusty from its annual trek to Burning Man, Tealchemy’s Tea Temple will be erected inside the Asian Art Museum for MATCHA. Everyone can sip earthy tea inside this mammoth atmospheric, communal space, which celebrates the centuries-old nomadic trade and travel of the Silk Routes. Elsewhere in the museum, taste teas from India, Persia, and Tibet (courtesy Samovar) or those along China’s Tea and Horse Roads (courtesy Teance).

Discover how these different blends are brewed and grind your own spicy chai (Indian tea), mortar and pestle style. Learn about tea and its cultural influences, see art of the spice routes on a guided tour, and view Power & Glory: Court Arts of China’s Ming Dynasty before it closes (Sept. 21)

So it looks like I can look forward to a nice cup of tea after work today.

The museum is on Larkin next door to Main Library. Admission is $5 after 5 PM, and as they imply up there, for that awesome price you get the run of the museum. The Ming Dynasty exhibit is pretty cool.

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

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

The Golden Gate Bridge was closed in both directions following a head-on crash that happened around 3:15 pm.

Update 5:05 pm: Lanes have just reopened. Nevertheless: Check traffic conditions before heading that way.

Following the jump, the gory details.

Read more…

Here is the current state of affairs in SF.

Gas = $4.41 / gallon

Parking ticket = $50 (minimum fine, sfgate story)

“Raising parking fines will lead to more abuse on the streets,” said Luis Estrella, a San Francisco parking-control officer for the past eight years who said he was punched last year by a firefighter who got a $50 ticket.

Downtown meter violations, for example, will be fined up to $60, and parking in a street-cleaning zone will set drivers back $50. The city now makes about $90 million a year from parking fines. The increase would bring in an estimated $13 million more in the new fiscal year.

COLA Formula revealed!

A state agency today chose the Pacheco Pass route among two possible ways bullet trains of the future might reach the Bay Area from southern California. (Click the graphic for a larger map.)

Winners: San Jose and the Peninsula, along with landowners along the east-west route across the Pacheco Pass — a route that roughly parallels State Hwy. 152. Losers: Landowners in Stockton, Tracy, and along the spurned Altamont route.
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If you’re thinking about flying or driving to the L.A. area for Thanksgiving, just think how much nicer it would be to get on a bullet train and zoom down there in three or four hours, without worrying about seasonal weather, over-cautious bag inspectors, narrow seats or traffic jams.

Following up on the earlier entry about the arguments over which route — the southern Pacheco Pass route or the more northern route going over the Altamont Pass to the Dumbarton Bridge — the California High Speed Rail Authority announced today it would recommend the Pacheco Pass route.
 
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From an entry in SFist on Pierre Valley, I thought up this brilliant (if I may say so) post. Here is a list of little, somewhat unknown neighborhoods. Do you know them? Could you give coherent, simple directions to them from where you live?
1. Pierre Valley- 2 pts, unless you looked it up from the link above.
2. Anza Vista - 3 pts. Even people who live here don’t know they live here
3. North Point - 1 pt. Kinda easy.
4. Lombard Heights - 2 pts. same goes as Anza Vista above.
5. Excelsior Heights - 1 pt. You may have heard of it, but could you take MUNI there?
6. Dogpatch - 1 pt. Recently well known (hint hint).
7. India Basin- 1 pt. I just like the name of this.

Additions welcome. Locations and scoring after the jump.
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While local dining legend SF’s Original Joe’s suffered it’s own fire on Friday, a scary big rig fire in a tunnel near Santa Clarita has severed the main commercial road artery through Northern & Southern California.
[ map of alternate routes around the I-5 south during closure after the jump]

The Governor, possibly eager to please the Republican voting base of Santa Clarita that helped get him into office, Arnie made sure to immediately declare the situation a “State of Emergency“.

One wonders if certain inevitable “Emergency” situations like this can’t be seen coming, and with the obvious transportation risks better managed or mitigated…

P.S Speaking of “State of Emergencies”, seriously, has the governor or any of his minions tried eating out here on the 5? Where the hell am I supposed to find a decent dining location with small plates, that has a trained staff capable of suitable bio-dynamic wine pairings, and perhaps proper vegetarian options out here that go with the smell of the horrendous cow sh*t…

Read the road rage addled rant of a Frisco Foodie Fraught With Fears For Us All after hours spent inching along the I-5 yesterday out of Southern California, miles from a decent warm organic frisee & Treviso radicchio salad topped with thinly sliced pear, sundried heirloom tomatoes, herbed chevre and bottarga in a Barolo-tangerine vinaigrette …

Is this California or Oklahoma for gawd sakes?

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A piece in the Examiner today talks about several possible alternate routes for bullet trains through the Bay Area. They might go by Modesto, they might go by Gilroy. They might go past places you’ve never heard of, called Shinn and Greenville. They might even go in a tube across the bay.

Or nothing might happen at all.
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