May 15th was not only a “Spare the Air” day and “Bike to Work” day; it also was a day of record temperatures in The City. As the day went on, the heat soared to 97 degrees in the city.

As noon approached, trouble began to brew on the BART system. For the next 8 hours, the system was plagued by delays of 45 minutes or longer.

I met the BART problem head-on at rush hour last night. I arrived at Civic Center at about 4:40pm. Trains were being held in between stations and at stations for 10 to 15 minutes at a time. The first train only went to 24th street/Mission, so I didn’t get on. Then I realized, soon enough, the trains were ONLY going to 24th Street/Mission, where you would have to transfer.

17 minutes later, two more trains came and went, absolutely packed to the ceiling. Finally, I got on a train. At 24th Street, something strange happened- the train went backwards. Apparently, while I was zoning out in iPod land, the train had suddenly become a Richmond train and just started going the other way at 24th Street.

At 16th, I disembarked to attempt another try towards my destination. Alas, my “SFO” BART train, again, suddenly became a Richmond train and turned around. But, at least, this time, I managed to GET OFF the train at 24th.

The platform was packed with people, the trains kept turning around. Then two more packed trains rolled by. Finally, I braved one of the packed trains. My last BART train of the evening made several long pauses to cool itself, but I did finally make my destination at 6:20pm.

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There is a reason I carry a camera in my bag every day. I have three digital cameras, constantly charging, of various sizes, on the ready to capture news, odd sightings or anything in my path.

Many questions from folks have been launched at me while wandering into BART on a daily basis… “Do you want to take a FREE personally test?”, “Do you have some change?”, “Do you know where I can get some pot?”…

Yesterday, I heard, “Would you like to buy a rat for $5.00?”

(Insert trusty camera here)

This is Mia, and she sells rats in BART for $5.00.

(I used to have rats for pets and it broke my little heart
when they only lived to their meager lifespan of 2 years)

A story in today’s Chronicle says the mayor’s office is floating a proposal to close to traffic a major street, like the Embarcadero and all the way down the side of the city to Bayview, and open it up to artists. This follows a recent resurrection of the proposal to close Market St. to automobile traffic.

While the notion of dancers, martial artists and mimes cavorting up and down the Embarcadero is a pleasant fantasy, the neighborhood activist quoted in the first story is correct: the Embarcadero is already a recreation area packed with people ranging up and down broad sidewalks and bike lanes. What would be the point of closing the traffic lanes? Is yoga better on the asphalt? (Maybe those folks who practice yoga in an over-heated room would take to it.)

Instead, go ahead and close Third St. between Market and 23rd. You’d have a fantastic pedestrian boulevard all the way through SOMA, anchored by Yerba Buena Center on one end and the baseball stadium on the other. Then south of there, through Mission Bay and Dogpatch, you could bring pedestrians to the neighborhood for the first time. There are no shops whose businesses would be damaged by the lack of passing traffic.

And the idea of closing Market St. to automobiles is stupid. Chicago provides all the example we need. During the 1980s and early 90s, State St. was a transit mall, closed to cars, open only to buses. And without car traffic, the street died, becoming a dead zone. Since they reopened State St. in 1996, it has rebounded. If they close Market St. to cars, the buses and streetcars might run faster, but watch all the shops close.

This is a series. Earlier ones: Coit Tower, & St. Francis glass elevators

You’re on a slim budget, and have guests in town. What to do? Chinatown, baby! (pedometer link here)

Enter at Bush & Grant, and take the requisite dorky tourist photo of your arm in the Lion’s jaws. Next off: walk up Grant to Sacramento, take a left, and halfway up take a right onto Waverly alley, where most of Joy Luck Club took place. Stop at Uncle’s for some duck-egg joe like Mama makes, or go for the cheapest eggs & hash browns anywhere in town. Walk up Stockton and witness the craziness that is the open produce market hell. Either shop for some gai lan (chinese broccoli) or grab an apricot to munch and freak out your tourist friends by live fish in the open meat & seafood markets near Broadway. Walk over to Pacific and walk up halfway to the large & boisterous Y Ben, for some cheap & greasy dim sum and endless tea. Walk off the grease by heading farther downhill, take a right 2 blocks over to Washington & Walter Lum, where you can checkout some intense Go games. Walk 1/2 block North on Washington, take a right on the alley WentWorth to see mahjong gambling dens, then at Jackson, walk up the hill past Grant 1/2 block to loop back on a parallel alley- Ross- and check out the fortune cookie factory. The guests might need a snack, so get bubble tea at the edge of Chinatown at Grant & Columbus. If they’re still up for more, and resisted the lure of North Beach, walk through the labyrinthine hardware stores on Pacific & Columbus, and puzzle over the funeral items for sale near the doorway. They should be tired and full by then.

With all the video games, cell phones, vending machines and ATM’s in our midst, many people would argue humans have lost touch with their wild side forever.

I’ve spent most of my life in metropolitan areas. Though I’ve spent some time on horseback, I’ve spent 95% of my time riding urban public transportation systems instead. I buy my food in boxes, in bags, and heat it at home. Hell, for lunch, I even graze at a salad bar.

A train takes me to my job, which is as far from harvesting my own food and repairing my homestead as a job could possibly be. I work with digital media. CDs and DVDs and the computers that record them are my daily companions. I have an iPod, a few computers, a cell phone, a personal organizer and automated payments. I’m the perfect example of the city-dwelling, half-woman, half-machine that has every day of the week organized to an annoying level.

You could say I’m far from my roots as a savanna-loving homo sapien… you could say that of my co-workers too. So it was pretty interesting to see something quite to the contrary in the middle of my day-to-day technology bustle. I heard quite a ruckus on the bottom floor of our brand-new, giant-sized office. I gazed down from my loft to see a fork-lift pushing a giant machine into the corner of the production area.

Diagonally across from the machinery was the entire assembly crew, staring in wonder. I went downstairs to check it out. A brand new machine that resembles a yellow submarine attached to complete photo-developing station was being hoisted into our midst. It’s a massive tangle of steel and gears, still shining from the factory and looming large over every other machine in our company. I hear tell this was the major reason for moving to our new office. The gaggle of human assemblers were still staring at the great beast.

That’s when I realized what seemed so odd about the bunch…

they were afraid.
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This is a series- the first one was on Coit Tower

I had another visitor in town- from Belgium, and we were walking around Post St. on a Thursday night. She didn’t drink- and wanted to see something odd/unexpected, so I navigate to the front of St. Francis on Powell at Post St. entered the lobby, walk past Michael Minna, past the first set of elevators to the rotating door, and take a right before the door.

Description & but alas, no photos, after the jump

Had visitors in town- local Bay Area folks- and we went up Coit Tower. I personally love doing touristy things.. After I went to Alcatraz (age: 30) I realized being a local is about knowing *when* to hit the touristy stuff. Today, it was: go when it’s overcast with high cloud cover. Alcatraz? Evening tour. Convincing my companions to go was a little tougher:

Me: “We’ll never do it again. Carpe Dieum!”
Brother in law: “The kids won’t even remember it.” [they totally lost the significance of Lombard] (To 4 year old:) “Will you remember this forever and ever?”
I look at sister, her husband, “Have you ever gone up?”
Both shake their head- all our lives here, and we’ve never done it.
“So how much?”
We figure out it’s going to be $14.00, three adults, and two kids under 6.
Later, we agreed that the lack of a line was the major reason we decided to go up.

For those that haven’t gone up, description & photos after the jump.
More Pictures & Description

We’ve all heard variants of this story before, this time the details are flowing from the courts. If you haven’t seen Pacific Heights and you are a renter in SF, you need to check out this older film. The film’s tagline is: “It seemed like the perfect house. He seemed like the perfect tenant. Until they asked him to leave.”

Now this story from the Chronicle yesterday, SF Landlord Couple plead not guilty…

A San Francisco landlord couple who are accused of waging a campaign of terror at a South of Market apartment building to drive out their renters are the victims of a lawsuit-happy tenant and did nothing wrong, their attorneys said Friday.

This gets interesting in this notable exchange where the landlords attorney ask for a reduction in bail.

“There were no actual threats of injury,” Whelan said, adding of Nicole Macy, “She’s clearly not a safety risk to society in general.”
Peltz said cutting out Morrow’s floor supports put him at risk of injury. He also said the couple had made death threats against tenants.

There was a developer who would burn his own buildings to the ground to get around the permitting process in SF a few years back. This doesn’t seem beyond comprehension that these owners would start to dismantle their own building to get their tenants out.

h/t to SFGate.

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I’m sitting for 20 minutes on Embarcadero, trying to get to work. There are about 100 people slowly taking up 3 lanes, bright pink banners and a flag- though I couldn’t read any of the writing. I sat there, patiently, fixating on a toddler tripping lightly on the bumps of the painted line road, holding both of his parents’ hands. Finally impatience got the better of me and I negotiated my way out and tried to go over Telegraph Hill the other way.

I turn off to go over Stockton, and North Beach traffic is also at a dead halt.

Thing is- the protest- I couldn’t even tell what they were protesting! I saw “War=Lies,” which, due to the low turnout, made me kind of depressed. No amount of road rage could make me not appreciate civil disobedience, peacefully. But I did have to get to the East Bay, and there was no way over there (without an additional hour and a half via BART). Living in the city there’s a protest, it seems, every week. “San Francisco is the best city to protest,” a neighbor told me the other day when we were discussing the Torch issue. Is there protest-fatigue? Like too many CALPIRG kids knocking on Palo Alto homes (that’s a strange phenomenon- ivy league kids spanning out every summer night from 6-8pm, knocking on doors.)

Ah, SF Gate answers my question: May Day Parade

Warm at 7am, no fog, and a beautiful sunrise. Looks like another hot day. Yesterday, in the Mission briefly, recognized the signs of a sunny day and no fog evening: Zeitgeist and Medjool outside eating and drinking areas were packed. It’s so strange and infrequent, to have warm evenings in the city.