SFist: SFist Photo: Who Killed the Panhandle Bandshell?

guest

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 15:45:47 -0800

To correct your facts, the Neighborhood Parks Council was one of the largest proponents of the Bandshell and if you look at the public record from the above cited Rec and Park Commission hearing TWO Neighborhood Parks Council Staff spoke in favor of the Bandshell.

guest

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 12:42:17 -0800

I live North of the Panhandle and was excited about the bandshell. We went to the opening and our kids had a good time watching some performers and the "Bubble Man". As far as I can tell that is when the magic ended. We regularly checked the schedule of performers and twice packed up our family for a picnic in front of the bandshell. Both times--nada. No one showed. It was a cool shell. It wasn't a band shell.

mariconsoy

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 18:16:30 -0800

Moving it to one of the housing projects and set it up for public executions.

aj

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 16:36:44 -0800

Guest 16 is correct. There are a lot of neighborhood associations. The one in question, PROSF, is mainly famous for opposing anything that moves, and sending out vast quantities of emails (mainly Kimo Crossman's enormous public records requests). NOPNA, another association in the same area, is far more reasonable. They of course supported the bandshell.

Ciaran

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 14:56:35 -0800

For a small neighborhood there are a surprising number of neighborhood associations. I think they can be brought into existence pretty quickly when someone wants to object to something.

guest

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 13:31:20 -0800

Guest[15] -- You are assuming that the "neighborhood" associations represent the entire neighborhood. I have a friend who was told her opinion didn't count for much because she was a renter. I live in this area and the neighborhood associations who approved of the project are the only ones I've heard of. We really need to think hard about the suburbanization of our city.

guest

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:10:00 -0800

Someone called it tyranny of the minority - it's beginning to feel more like tyranny of the lameass burners. Or tyranny of the news starved local bloggers? You say at least 10 people didn't like it, obscuring the fact that one of those people represents the local residents organization. I heard the whole project was an effort by soma live/work trust fund losers to colonize the panhandle.

rroseselavy

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:08:02 -0800

Actually, this could be sort of a roving landmark. Why not set it up in a different neighborhood each summer? Then you could test some of these hypotheses about who it attracts, for better or worse.

guest

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 12:04:45 -0800

I live on the Panhandle, less than a block down from the bandshell and received several notices from neighborhood NIMBY's before and after they built this thing, calling for residents to oppose it because it would supposedly generate too much noise and attract too many gutter punks. It did neither of these things. I was barely able to hear any noise from the bandshell while standing outside my building when shows were going on and certainly couldn't hear anything from inside my flat. As far as the gutter punks are concerned - there's a finite number of these kids wandering about and they already congregated in the Panhandle long before the bandhsell was put up. I didn't perceive any increase in their numbers with the bandshell. On the contrary, it provided a much welcomed bit of culture in a neighborhood sorely lacking in it. If neighborhood NIMBY's are so concerned with gutter punks converging on the Panhandle/Upper Haight, maybe they should focus more attention on gentrifying Haight Street and stamping out the last vestiges of their 1960's Summer of Love crap as represented by the overabundance of headshops and hippie freelove T-shirt shops up and down the street. Those kids, not to mention the tourists, are drawn to this neighborhood because of its history and reputation, not because someone deigns to construct something new and interesting in the Panhandle.

rroseselavy

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 11:54:31 -0800

I actually sympathize with the neighbors who objected to it. I can't personally vouch that any night drumming took place, but if it happens once, that's one too many times in what is a largely residential neighborhood. Folks who live around the park have enough of the city's problems to contend with without adding another attraction for drummers, junkies, and homeless people.

Ciaran

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 11:12:33 -0800

Tell us more about this Weiss character

guest

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:54:24 -0800

I thought all the Black Rock Arts whatever group projects were intended to be temporary (#4 mentioned the purple head above). I'm a neighbor and was initially skeptical (the bandshell pointed directly at my bedroom window) but decided to wait and see, and it was great having it there. It was nice having mostly small groups gathered on the grass each weekend with the weather so nice, and the sounds that wafted into my apartment were mostly nice, unamplified music. The only amplified sound was from microphones I think from spoken word performances on opening weekend; that was annoying, but it never happened again. As far as use by the homeless, there was a guy who slept under a shopping cart the whole summer next to a tree 100 yards from the bandshell. He didn't use it and he would have been there regardless. The major, constant disruptions come from the street kids who have 40oz happy hour every afternoon on the benches with their dogs barking. Thankfully, they usually skulk off around sundown. It's too bad the bandshell is coming down. Hopefully it'll be back next summer.

jt

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:39:06 -0800

Ernestine Weiss doesn't live anywhere near the panhandle. She's an activist from district 3.

aj

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:23:05 -0800

You can kill anything in this town. It's trivially simple. Getting anything built, even something nice, well, forget it.

RinconHillSF

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:16:39 -0800

If it still needs a home in the year 2014, maybe we can make space for it at the City Park on top of the new Transbay Transit Center (assuming the Pelli design recommendation is chosen by the TJPA Board next Thursday and the building progresses as planned). I'd love to have that bandshell in my neighborhood.

J

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:13:34 -0800

Sounds like typical san francisco politics...if a small (10 out of how many live in the area?) number of folks object to something, the plug is pulled. It doesn't seem to matter that

guest

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:12:10 -0800

"urban campers" Is that what we're calling those ass holes now?

guest

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:11:21 -0800

When the giant purple head leaves GG Park in November, replace it with the bandshell.

Jas

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 10:03:48 -0800

I fail to see how sticking to the terms of the original permit constitutes the project being "killed off". It's pretty clear that the extension of the permit was "killed off" - not the bandshell itself. It's too bad that you have to focus on this negative aftershow instead of celebrating the shell in itself - you could have run a post on how it was built, how many volvos gave their hoods up for art, and where it might go up next summer, but instead we're getting this recounting of neighborhood complaints and conspiracy theories.

guest

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:52:11 -0800

The good news is that they are going to reuse it. Maybe some less provincial town will actually welcome it.

DC1974

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 09:46:37 -0800

This is the tyranny of the minority and it happens way too much in not just San Francisco -- but the entire country. We've taken the american natural distrust for others and blown it up into something so completely ridiculous that gridlock is the only option from here on out. It's so depressing.