Things Get Scrappy at the Cable Car Museum
Some fights seem really really important to the folks involved, and utterly mystifying to everyone else. You know like when you see two pigeons fighting over a hamburger bun, and you can't decide which one to root for because it seems like they both want the same thing and they'd just be better off sharing? Or another example: the unnecessary feud going on at the Cable Car Museum.
Yesterday we mentioned a book by Dr. Walter Rice and Emiliano Echeverria about transit that isn't sold at the museum. And in fact, the CCM has flat-out refused to sell any of their books there. The museum didn't respond to our requests for information, so it's hard to get their side of the story. But Dr. Rice indicates that the resentment started simmering in the mid-90s.
After the jump: firings! Lawsuits! Ambiguity!!!
The structure of local transit is a little confusing -- there's museums, friends of museums, concessionaires, city agencies -- and we'll do our best to avoid describing the wonky ins and outs. The short version of the story is that Dr. Rice used to be the guy in charge of things at the museum, but a board member named Jose Godoy became increasingly hostile. Dr. Rice wanted to print a second edition of his very popular book about cable cars, but he says that Jose told him no -- the expense was too great, even though there were errors in the first edition that needed correcting. To this day, some of the information that the Museum provides its guests is factually incorrect, Dr. Rice says. And he's been given fake-excuses by the museum about why they won't carry his books -- they claim that they don't meet museum standards, despite overwhelmingly positive reviews and academic reception.
There's more: the co-author of Dr. Rice's books is Emiliano Echeverria, a transit expert and former museum employee whom Dr. Rice told us was fired by Jose as a cost-cutting measure. Ouch. And then there was the time that Dr. Rice had a website designed for the museum, but Jose told him he didn't like it. Ouch again. After some time, Dr. Rice decided to resign. And sue. Update: And complain.
See, the museum was claiming that a book that he wrote about cable cars actually belonged to them, even though Dr. Rice says they didn't pay for its production. After he objected, he did win ownership of the intellectual property, but at that point, relationships were obviously strained.
So where does this leave us? Well, one of the world's most well-regarded authorities on San Francisco's cable cars can't get his books stocked at the very cable car museum that he used to run. But the museum itself putters happily along, it's guests blithely unaware of the knowledge gap yawning beneath them.
Where does this leave us though, the average person on the street? Well, kind of baffled, frankly. A little perplexed. And feeling like outsiders at a pigeon-fight.