A liberal think tank, the Urban Land Institute, has issued a report on the cost to working people of living in the Bay Area. The report, Bay Area Burden, examines the impact on working people of high costs of housing and transportation, looks at how proximity to mass transit helps relieve the burden, and asks policymakers to take working people’s needs into account when making land use decisions.

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

It’s election day! Who knew? In San Francisco, the only interesting thing on the ballot is Prop. D., the proposal to put giant Times Square-type advertising signs on Market Street in order to “enliven” it.

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.

      Gene Hackman as Harry Caul monitoring the goings-on in the Jack Tar Hotel

A personal memory I have of that hotel is the 1990 and 1991 Out/Write conferences, which brought together the whole LGBT literary world for the first time. Searching for some mention of these conferences on the web, I found a lovely piece by Edmund White, in which he gives a glowing description of the 1991 conference.

Also read: Curbed SF on the Jack Tar Hotel

Who knows how to post YouTubes on Metblogs (tips welcome), but here is a time lapse of the bridge being built!

California’s High Speed Rail Authority delayed a vote to award a $9 million public relations contract when some commission members let it be known that the contract was about to be awarded to some cronies of Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger, and that two of the three commission members who recommended the PR firm used to work with one of its principals.

Wasn’t Schwartzenegger elected by promising not to do business as usual?

Although San Francisco was one of the first cities to have Google’s camera-equipped cars tootling up and down its streets to produce Street View imagery, the service has never been very good for the southeast part of the city. With yesterday’s update to the service, several neighborhoods, including much of Bernal Heights and Visitacion Valley, still lack coverage. Here’s Bernal Heights:

As a Bernal Heights resident whose block is not covered, I have mixed feelings about being left out. Should I feel exclusive, or excluded? At least it’s an improvement over the original coverage which showed only half the city.

Click the image above for an image that shows the southeastern quadrant of the city, where coverage is lacking.

Previously:
SF stops at Cesar Chavez?
Google maps now displays BART, Caltrain lines
Petition to have bike routes on Google maps
Fun with Google maps

The Bell Market in Noe Valley is set to close at 4:00 pm on Sunday, Feb. 15, according to signs posted on the store. I went in there last night to buy some baby food (for the cat — I don’t have any babies) and they were totally out of what I wanted. A look around the store revealed that many shelves were already bare, with empty banana cartons lining the empty bottom shelves.

Curbed SF has been saying that Whole Foods is taking over the location. Their most recent post on the matter says the location is expected to open in the fall, leaving more than six months for renovation to take place.

Less than a month after local writer-activist Stephen Elliott began organizing a campaign against a proposed American Apparel store on Valencia St., the San Francisco Planning Commission denied a permit to the controversial clothing manufacturer-retailer.

The vote by the commission was 7-0, the Stop American Apparel website reported.

Update: Elliott, who was in New York last night promoting his new online magazine The Rumpus, blogged about the commission’s vote and his efforts.

I was inspired by Tara’s post, Public Transportation 2.0, to add more than a comment.

When I was in Bangalore in 2007, I was struck by the utility of the ubiquitous motorized rickshaws, known locally as autocabs or just autos:

Any visitor to Asia has seen these things, since they’re in every Asian city. And they are cheap and they are everywhere. When I mentioned them to one of the panjandrums of the Bay Area public transportation scene, the executive director of one of the NGOs that lobbies for transportation policy, he was dismissive. “Oh, the tuk-tuks,” he said. “They clog up the streets, and they pollute. That’s not what we need. We need commuter rail that goes everywhere.”

Oh, fine, Mr. Bay Area Transit Boss! So I’m on my way to work in the morning. Never mind how I get to the BART station; I take a train across the bay to, say, Ashby. Now that I have alighted at your gigantor 1970s-era concrete monster BART station, I need to get to work, 2.3 miles away. It’s too far to walk. I could wait 20 minutes for a bus, and then that bus would take 20 minutes to poke along for the two miles, making my trip to work take over an hour… And that’s why I drive every day instead.

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San Francisco writer and activist Stephen Elliott whose Progressive Reading Series raises money for progressive causes and candidates, and who just founded the online magazine The Rumpus, walked up Valencia St. the other day and saw this:

According to the notice, the American Apparel chain of clothing stores wants to open a branch on Valencia St., next to Artists Television Access. Appalled at this prospect, Elliott is organizing people to show up at the February 5 hearing and voice their opposition.

I interview Elliott briefly about his efforts, after the jump.