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Every election in California is physically and mentally exhausting. What with the near-endless stream of ballot measures we are presented on every voting occasion, being a lowercase-d democrat here is a full-time job. After a near-all-nighter yesterday and a consultation with a like-minded friend, I felt like I was prepared for easily the most interesting election I have taken part in as a Californian.

Maybe because there is no incumbent but an interim appointee, there is a huge array of serious, qualified candidates for San Francisco Mayor this year (no Chicken Johns this year, thank goodness), and the use of ranked choice voting has ensured that the candidates are (mostly) running on the issues. Fortunately or unfortunately, the candidates largely agree with one another on key issues, so narrowing the field was a bit of a challenge. My method was a combination of their personal statements, their answers to the Chronicle’s questions on current municipal issues, and their ability to speak and think quickly in a debate setting.

My top three choices were:

• David Chiu. He’s hands down the best one for the job. He’s smart, has a strong big-picture plan for the city, and has already proven he can get things done.
• Jeff Adachi. He seems to me a bit like Gavin Newsom in that the mayoral office is a stepping stone towards some larger ambition, but he has a detailed and comprehensive plan for improving the city, and years of experience in public office.
• Joanna Rees. I didn’t expect to like her—certainly think she is a bit too much of an outsider to be effective in office right away—but her no-nonsense answers to the debate/interview questions and common-sense plan for the city make her a good third choice.

As for the propositions:

• A – yes. School bonds are more or less the whole reason we do ballot initiatives. And who’s going to vote no on seismic improvements to old school buildings?
• B – yes. I hate to keep signing away money that has already been misspent, several times, for the same thing, but our roads suck, and they have to be repaved. Reluctant yes.
• C – yes. Weak sauce, but it’s a start, and it is a consensus plan.
• D – no. Goes further in the right direction, but was written entirely in isolation, and has some potential legal issues.
• E – hell yes. Give power back to the legislators at the expense of ballot initiatives? Oh, yeah.
• F – no. Seems like a good idea, but the rider that allows the ethics commission and the board of supervisors to change the ordinance without voter approval kills it for me.
• G – no. No ballot-box budgeting.
• H – no. Seems like a poorly-thought-out solution to a small part of a big problem.

Let’s hope good things result.

I’m from Chicago. So you may think I’m just being spoiled when I say this, but aside from the occasional painted lady, I find San Francisco architecture uninspiring at best.

Not so the slew of new buildings going up in and around the future UCSF Mission Bay campus. That area contains some of the most interesting examples of modern architecture I’ve seen outside of magazines. The new Madrone residences have extensive rooftop gardens, and there are innovative uses of material everywhere. Even the parking garages look cool. I’d love to see the neighborhood when the work’s all finished, but that’ll take years yet.

If you live in SF and dig architecture, the next time you have a free hour or so, do yourself a favor and walk around down there. There are far worse ways to spend your time. Oh, and be sure to check out the Chihuly in the lobby of the Nektar/Bayer building. Nice.

or On the Perils of Living in California: item #23

So I was reading Derek Powazek’s Ten Tips on How To Be A Driver in San Francisco, and while I agree with what he says for the most part^*, there was something to which I simply had to take exception:

1. Bikes are our friends.
   I love how San Francisco has gotten so bike-friendly over the last few years. There are a lot more bikes on the road now than there used to be, and I think it’s rad. So be a good driver. Really look around for bikes. Note where the bike lanes are (they’re not always where you think they are). Stop when a bike is approaching. Smile and wave to let them know that you’ve seen them. You’ll often get a smile in return. That kind of brief moment of pleasantness can fill my sails all day.

OK, not to put too fine a point on it, but are you fucking kidding me?! Bicyclists in San Francisco are a scourge upon the face of the earth. The vast majority of them are rude, share the amusing misconception that they are indestructible, and in general display a troubling lack of regard for the safety of those they share the road with, to say nothing of their own. They can’t just be people who need to ride a bike to get from point A to point B because it’s convenient and inexpensive, like in most other cities. Oh, no. Not here in San Francisco. Because you can’t do anything here without turning it into a political statement.

And nowhere, nowhere, are bikers worse than in the neighborhood I used to live and still visit often: the Mission. These fedora-wearing hipsters on their idiotic single-gear bikes put the rest of the SF bike maniacs to shame. Let me tell you a little story. Now imagine the scene, if you will:

I parked my car for the day just past the corner of Valencia and a mid-block side street, and I’m just getting ready to leave so I can head home. An enterprising driver has noticed I’m leaving and is waiting behind me so he can pull in as soon as I leave. I put my car into reverse and start backing up, looking in the rear view mirror to make sure I don’t accidentally hit the guy behind me, and that’s when a biker decides it’s a great time to squeeze between my still-reversing car and the car parked just a few feet behind.

Seriously?! I mean, think about it for a second. Who’s going to win that contest? The…foolhardy…biker, or the two two-ton steel vehicles she’s sandwiched between, where the gap is narrowing? She’s—grrr…flames…heaving!

And don’t even get me started on the SF coalition of bicycle lunatics who shut down Market Street at regular intervals so that they can, with a fricking police escort, alienate and enrage beyond reason the drivers of San Francisco. Jesus.

Well, one thing is quite clear. Derek Powazek is a much nicer person than I am. Also: rad?

I noticed recently that the J, L and M Muni metro lines had been, rather than stopping at the Embarcadero station like always, coming all the way out to the Caltrain station on 4th and King on weekday mornings.

I thought this was a great idea. With a bit of schedule reshuffling to avoid congestion at Embarcadero, adding more transit capacity for the ever-growing residential population of Mission Bay could only work out for the better. In fact, it doesn’t really make sense for those lines to stop at Embarcadero anymore.

But I had no idea what the schedule was, if any—recall that I had only seen these trains on weekday mornings, as none of the trains I rode in the evenings went past Embarcadero, necessitating a switch to the N or T—if this was a permanent change, or what. And sadly, there seemed to be no news or announcements about it anywhere. So I wrote in to a Muni-themed blog to ask if the author or readers knew anything about it.

Alas, it turns out that the switching yard used to turn the aforementioned trains around at Embarcadero was temporarily out of order, so those trains were going all the way out to the switching yard at the Caltrain station. It appears that this was only a temporary measure.

Sigh. God forbid that Muni do something that was useful, for a change.

that public transportation in San Francisco does not work, and one of the biggest reasons for it is poor signage. And this on the BART, which is arguably the only transportation system in the bay area that is actually and consistently useful. It’s hard to find your way around the stations, to find your way out, to find your way in, and worst of all, to figure out where you’re going or should be. It’s a mess.

A local designer, frustrated beyond measure, recently put together an incredibly detailed proposal overhauling the BART signage and maps. Pay attention, kids: this is great design. Let me say it again: this is great design. The type face and color coding are simply brilliant; you might notice a distinct similarity—not coincidental, I’m sure—to existing US road and highway signage. It’s simple, distinctive, and doesn’t reinvent the wheel. Beautiful. Though I have to wonder, like my friend citrusboy (hat tip), where the color coding and destination designations are on the trains themselves.

Every local resident should read it, and then go to the next monthly meeting for the SFMTA (Muni) Citizen’s Advisory Council (CAC) Engineering Maintenance and Safety Committee (EMSC) (Wednesday, 25 June 2008) and demand that it be implemented forthwith.

two years ago, my romantic imaginings of living in the city entailed a lot of evenings like the one I spent last night.

First, I met some friends at Craft Gym for the Lotta Prints event, a chance for people to play with artist Lotta Jansdotter’s stamps and stencils^*.

We followed that up with a truly excellent sushi dinner at Sebo, and rounded out the evening with hot chocolate and conversation at the new Christopher Elbow store/lounge.

The lounge space at Christopher Elbow is cunningly designed, with the seating area consisting of one long banquette that faces a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, making the customers a living window display. The seating arrangement, along with the inspired use of lighting, makes the space magical at night. That, on top of their, oh yeah, excellent chocolates, will no doubt make Christopher Elbow a San Francisco landmark in the near future.

Luckily for us, though, Hayes Valley was very quiet last night, and we had Sebo and Elbow almost to ourselves, which lent the whole evening a rare idyllic overtone.

I love this city.

^* This was entirely too crowded, so we ended up leaving quickly, but I did come away inspired. Look for the result of that inspiration in a new blog template soon.

Proving, yet again, that governing by initiative is a bad idea.

Ballot measures that should never have passed:

• State-wide:
  • 99 was put on the ballot solely to counteract 98, which didn’t pass.
• City of San Francisco:
  • A unfairly burdens homeowners (a mere 1/3 of the city’s population) with paying for improvements to local schools.
  • D: hiring quotas? Oh HELL no.
  • E unnecessarily ties the mayor’s hands in making appointments to the Public Utilities Commission, when the Board of Supervisors already has a veto.
  • H seems to be an unnecessary enhancement to an already comprehensive law. Waste of time.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: the general populace is neither smart nor knowledgeable enough to make their own laws. What the hell do we pay our lawmakers for?

For those who may not read Japanese, that means: “I’m home!” Now that SFIFF 2008 is over (as of last Thursday—more on this in a minute), and I’ve spent a couple of days recovering, you’ll be seeing more of me. Aren’t you excited?

About the festival. In direct contrast with SFIAAFF, my happiness quotient with SFIFF has been going down in recent years. I wasn’t sure why, until my friend Jieun hit the nail on the head a little while ago: the festival takes itself entirely too seriously. It’s pretentious, even more than most, which are snooty almost by definition. SFIFF tends to pick films rather than movies, “important” films (a description that makes me want to run in the other direction), serious films, films that are about art almost to the exclusion of entertainment…but isn’t that what movies are about, in the end?

And when they do show movies that are so crass as to be entertaining, they apologize for it beforehand. I mean, come on. 9_9

Anyway. That said, this year was better, mathematically speaking, than last year, and I’ll let you judge for yourself based on my descriptions of each movie:

(more…)

this past Thursday, and our first showing was last night. Brick Lane (3 stars), based on the popular novel of a few years ago, just didn’t do it for me.

While it was quite skillfully made, I felt like the story relied too heavily on stereotypes and wasn’t very engaging, which is probably more an indictment of the novel on which the film was based rather than a fault of the film itself (full disclosure: I haven’t read the novel).

Brick Lane is but one of a raft of novels about the Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi immigrant experience that have been so popular in recent years, and I feel reasonably certain that there are other novels (my sister would probably say Jhumpa Lahiri’s) that take a subtler approach than this one seemed to, again assuming that the film is a fair standard by which to judge the book—which is, admittedly, risky, but the director said last night that the author said that the film captured the essence of the book.

Anyway. I felt the plot lacked a certain subtlety, was in fact a bit clunky. Also, the film relied too heavily on flashbacks and camera tricks to get the emotions of the main character across, when they should have relied on the gifted actress that was cast in the role. I’m not sorry I saw the movie, but I was not moved by it—and this film’s subject matter is a topic that has a lot of resonance for me.