October 21, 2007
Our Nightly Festival of Lights Remains Undisrupted
That "Lights out SF" bullshit was a huge success! A couple of local landmarks switched off some lights for a few hours, one night out of the year, so now the whales are all saved. Hooray!
Many residents didn't participate, and in fact most of the people we talked to had never heard of it. Inconceivable! How could they have avoided Lights Out's bombardment of enviromessaging? The event had a website and everything. Sure, its unfortunate title evokes an image of being sucker-punched into unconsciousness, the benefit of individual participation was always kind of nebulous. But nevertheless, it's neat! Next, lets see what happens if everyone in SF flushes the toilet at the same time.
Oh, speaking of the website, they have some pix up from the event. Using HIGHLY SOPHISTERCATED cyber technology, SFist compared their lights-on pix to the lights-out pix: areas of grey are unchanged; dark spots are lights turned out; light spots are lights turned on. (More here and here.) As you can see, the city was largely unmoved. Oh well. As conservation efforts go, Lights Out SF just wasn't sustainable.
Fortunately, the Lights Out website also has more long-termy suggestions, some of which are fairly doable (adjust your thermostat) and others of which have a Jimmy-Carteresque air of desperation (don't use planes to go on holiday; instead, just drive to the next town over).
So, readers: did you play the Lights Out game? Did your friends and loved ones? What are you doing to stave off the end of the world for a few more days?
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I did the "lights out" thing. Of course, you could also call it "going out to dinner with the girlfriend" but six of one, a half dozen of the other.
yeah, i was like whatevers.
i sat in my living room with a fine view of downtown. and at 8:01 The City looked exactly the same as 7:01, except for that the sky had gotten darker, causing The City to acually look brighter.
I sat in my darkened room, reflecting upon my life. After 10 minutes I had a depression attack and had to take a handful of pills to stablize.
They kicked in at about 7:45 and I turned on every light in the house so I could vacuum to stay cheerful.
At least I tried.
I felt like a real idiot....
At about 7:55 PM, I turned off every light in my apartment, and grabbed my digital camera. Somehow I had the idea that I was going to capture some sort of really cool photo of the city with just a few lights on, some kind of history-making event.
Then, about 8:03 or so, when I was starting to imagine that there might be just a few less lights on way over yonder at Twin Peaks, I stared down at the Chinatown projects, where all the lights were on full blast. And I realized that not only weren't the lights going to go off in the Chinatown projects, they weren't going to go off anywhere except maybe a few public buildings.
So I stared out at the lights for about 10 minutes, saw absolutely no change, felt really stupid and switched on the TV to watch a movie, forgetting about the whole thing.
Bummer.
Lights out.
Congrats to the Lights Out volunteers for promoting the event well.
On a sad note, I walked out to Pier 14 to check out the City's landmarks dimmed, and I ran across a bunch of beer cans and trash that looks like the remains of a fraternity party at the end of the pier. I quipped to the two folks standing there (they were videotaping the event, I think) that it looked like someone had some fun. He said it was a group of about 30 or so young folks on bicycles that were celebrating the Lights Out event who left the mess.
Great, let's celebrate an environmentally friendly event about conservation by leaving our empty beer cans, bottles, and other crap lying around at the end of Pier 14 for others or the wind to knock into the Bay. Some people really have no clue.
The Latin American Club (bar on 22nd street) had the lights off (used candles instead). Also went to a party where the lights were out.. at 9pm someone turned them back on, and nearly blinded everyone at the place. We turned them back off and returned to partying by candlelight.
Your fellow party goers are much cuter in by candlelight.
We turned our lights out at 7:59 and I was personally insulted when my neighbors failed to turn their lights out come... 8:05. Fed up with my neighbors, we went out for a walk (also with our digital camera and a giant glass of wine) to behold our fellow Earth-lovers in darkened glory. Instead, we saw more neighbors with their entire homes ablaze with every type of lights, light bulbs and lighting fixtures not to mention giant flat-screen tvs and Halloween decorations. Fed up with the neighborhood, we stomped over to the Rocks at the Randall Museum park to observe some Earth loving Castro-ites in darkened bliss. Only to find... more lights everywhere. I guess only 4 or 5 of us participated.
Matty, what have you done lately for the environment besides write synical online commentary?
We turned our lights out. Unfortunately for us, 8 p.m. was dinner hour. It's all well and good to eat by candlelight, but cooking by it is a little trickier.
I looked out the window and saw no one else had turned out the lights, and in fact, the douchebag Porsche driving yuppies across the street had every single light in their house blazing (seriously, why?), like they do every night.
I burned my hand taking steak out of the oven in the dark, got irritated, and at 8:45, the lights came back on.
I don't own a car. I already do more than most, so I draw the line at stumbling around in the dark trying to cook.
I rescued two whales from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and sent them forward in time in a modified Klingon cargo hold.
we turned out the lights -- except for the 15-watt light above the stove, because it's critical accent lighting and must remains on, always -- but left on all the tvs and computer screens showing google's homepage. its stark whiteness proved effective as temporary light.
Nice idea but total failure in terms of follow through. I went to the Dolores Park lights out event and was greeted by very loud bad techo/dance music which was then replaced by really loud opera. Either way it was pretty anti-climatic after they announced it was 8pm and basically nothing happened to the lights in the skyline. . . . after socking in the burnman atmosphere for ten minutes, my friends and I left.