Their website, bayareaburden.org, has a Housing + Transportation Calculator that’s fun to play with.

Are they kidding? Apparently not. Here are some arguments in favor and a Chronicle editorial against. And here is the whole list of issues and candidates running, including City Atty. Dennis Herrera (unopposed).

Go to the SF Dept of Elections for results tonight.

 
Flickr photo of Times Square by Scott Beale at Laughing Squid.

Bring pictures of dead loved ones, wear black, feel free to dress in skeletal attire. Kids are welcome.

Just a note to tribal/Burning Man types: leave your freaking bongo drums at home, OK?

Pictures show an eerily empty toll plaza, an eerily empty bridge, and stuffed BART trains. Meanwhile, a car thief blew through barricades in San Francisco and led police on a chase over the closed bridge, and most people in San Francisco today completely forgot there was any problem at all, since it’s a gorgeous, sunny, warm 1st of November.

The incident took place almost two years after the Cosco Busan struck the Bay Bridge on Nov. 7, 2007, releasing over 58,000 gallons of heavy “bunker fuel” and fouling beaches around the bay and up and down the coast from San Mateo County to Sonoma County.

Saying his “young family” and his day job were bigger priorities, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom pulled out of the race for California governor today.

Newsom was once a Democratic Party rising star. Then:

• his 2004 gay marriage fiat handed right-wingers an issue to organize around, and some say it helped send George Bush to the White house for a second term.
• His marriage to TV news reporter Kimberly Guilfoyle fell apart at the beginning of 2005.
• In early 2007, he admitted an affair with his campaign manager’s wife, and a problem with alcohol.
• His “it’s gonna happen whether you like it or not” taunting was successfully used against gay marriage by Prop. 8 backers in 2008.

And then in April this year he announced he was running for governor. So we see how well that went.

Newsom’s second term as San Francisco mayor lasts through 2011.

You can text the word ALERT to 45227 (which is KCBS radio) and get a text message when the Bay Bridge reopens.

Update, 3:20 pm: The 511.org site now says the bridge will be closed “through Friday,” but “if” the bridge remains closed, BART will run hourly all-night service to the East Bay tonight and Saturday night. Here’s the all-night BART details. Note that only 14 stations will be in operation overnight.

Meanwhile, a UC Berkeley engineering expert was being quoted in news reports saying the design of the first fix — which was done while crews were cleaning up from the mammoth Labor Day re-route — was “not correct” and left the span vulnerable to complete collapse in the event of an earthquake. It was nothing more than a Band-Aid, he said.

An Associated Press article quoted a driver as saying the accident yesterday had caused her to lose “so much confidence in the experts, the millions of dollars that are being spent to reconstruct and build a new bridge,” referring to the decade-long project that will eventually replace the entire cantilever section with a suspension bridge.

The failure was probably caused by continuous heavy winds this week, CalTrans said. Wind continued gusty today while a new repair was being worked on. Asked to describe what the new design was like, a CalTrans spokesman said, “Think of a big belt around a piece of wood.”

Somehow that image doesn’t comfort me.

California Highway Patrol officers are still working, two hours after the incident, to clear heavy traffic from the bridge, after which it will be closed in both directions indefinitely. Monitor the Twitter account @baybridgeinfo for information.