April 7, 2008
Newsom Changes Olympic Torch's SF Route
In light of today's Golden Gate Bridge scaling/protest incident, Mayor Gavin Newsom--according to Brittney Gilbert at CBS 5's Eye On Blogs--"announced the route of the Olympic torch has been changed from the published course to a new route whose details will not be made public."
Will the course be secret up until Wednesday's run? Can we watch it? Will it be inside a gymnasium? On the beach? Virtual? ...more info on the route change as it comes in.
Update: a sun-kissed Mayor Gavin Newsom, kicking it at the Giants opener today, tells KPIX that "[t]he bottom line is we've said from Day One, we will continue to adapt. This route is not fixed. It will continue to change. It will change up until that torch is passed--potentially through even the middle of the relay." Any guesses as to where it might go? Market Street? 16th Ave. or St.? Lapu Lapu? Your guess is as good as ours.
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Newsom, you are a yon bastard.
hee!
I'm betting they run it through the Broadway tunnel, in the dead of night, with one person holding the torch and all the other runners forming a conga line.
It's another... "we promise," and then take it away.
Can't trust the gel haired crazy man. And damn, he wants to speak at my commencement ceremony at SFSU? Maybe his $100,000 assistants will write his speech.
Van Ness? 19th Avenue? Golden Gate Park? Treasure Island? Hmm.... hard to imagine any other areas being any more secure-able (lest Treasure Island is the pick) than The Embarcadero, but I'm just a finance guy.
Wow, chaos. They showed Gavin at the Giants game with Jen Siebel maybe 45 minutes ago. No sign of advisers or iPhones or anything. He was sitting there putting on sunscreen and focusing on the game.
I'm betting on a boat on the bay surrounded by police and Coast Guard. It'll be tough to protest.
How is Gavin's super special secret not effectively canceling it? Oh right, they call this politics. I forgot.
This is a FUCKING disgrace. We have the right to know what route, and the right to protest along that route. So Chineese Secret Police know which route the olympic torch will take but citizens of san francisco do not, what the fuck?>????????
his voice was so scratchy, too, right? he needs to take a walk down the Halls Of Medicine.
Completely wild and uneducated guess, but I keep thinking "Ocean Beach." Pretty back-drop, far away from downtown, etc.
Anyway, I'm pissed now. I had my whole Wednesday lunch hour route mapped out to go see all the action.
Ocean beach? That litter ground?
i thought of ocean beach, too. or maybe gg park? just a quick jaunt around kezer stadium?
If daithi has a right to know the torch route, I have a right to a baseball team that doesn't suck all the ass out of the entire city leaving us all sitting on our livers.
If you want to protest something downtown tomorrow, try AT&T park at 7pm?
p.s. Darfur!
come on, this is probably one protest that's guaranteed to be peaceful (but with lots of people). now, its going to be peaceful because there will be NO ONE. nice work, gav. the world is watching and our mayor is scared (of not becoming gov)!
...or The Presidio.
Maybe Critical Mass will take the torch for a spin ... to heck with Willie Brown and the other designated torch carriers. That'd make for a great Harold and Kumar movie, yah?
They should parade it through At&T Park. The way the Giants are playing this season, that place will be a ghost town pretty soon.
People were throwing shit at the runners (and a few wheelchair bound participants) in Paris, as well as trying to spray them with a fire extinguisher. I think it sucks, but as worked up as people are about this issue (rightly so), the safety of the runners is a legit reason to try and minimize the opportunities to do something harmful.
And does a protest necessarily have to be on the route itself? I think not.
@Bri - good point, but a protest elsewhere is going to get far less exposure, except as a footnote in the local news.
This is definitely a cop-out - what about the people that legitimately want to watch the relay? Now they can't because Gavin's scared of some hippies making him look bad? Poor form.
Safety first.
why shouldn't the protest be on the route itself? what is the point of a satelite protest in a 'free speech zone'?
The more I learn/read about this, the more there is to protest: 1) China's treatment of Tibet, 2) the "secretization" of the SF route by Gav, 3) the fact that the modern torch relay was invented by Goebbels as a PR stunt for the Nazis in '38. Eeeew.
i was curious about seeing the torch run ever since i was a kid. it's not a big deal but very disappointing that now the only people who will see it are ones who happen to be in the right place at the right time. and what a slap in the face to the runners!
what kind of idiot protestors that think throwing stuff at athletes somehow validates their cause? hell, one of the guys is a special olympics athlete... does picking on mentally handicapped people really make your cause seem just? what about the paralympics lady? hell even the bullies in my middle school had more class than that. ..so those numbskulls that want to hijack this stuff for their cause, they get half the blame..other half goes on a city that doesn't have competent enough police that they are worried about not being able to control the situation.
i feel bad for the people of tibet but this isn't going to help them much at all, just makes SF look dumb. when we get rid of our 256billion trade deficit with them, maybe then they will know that we are serious about human rights, until then they know we won't do a thing.
@judd870:I don't really agree, but definitely see your point.
But after what happened in Europe, I think the safety of all involved matters more than increased TV coverage. And you're right about Gavin's image worries: why would Gavin want to be the one who was in charge of making sure these people were safe, and didn't? I sure as hell wouldn't want it to happen on my watch. Especially when there were warnings that all hell could break loose.
I hope non-protester people get to see it, but I understand why they're scared.
i was curious about seeing the torch run ever since i was a kid.
You must not have been trying very hard, then. The 2002 and 1996 torches (SLC and Atlanta olympics) passed through basically the entire country. I saw the Atlanta one run by while I was on the bus.
You must not have been trying very hard, then. The 2002 and 1996 torches (SLC and Atlanta olympics) passed through basically the entire country. I saw the Atlanta one run by while I was on the bus.
lucky for you! guess i was just unfortunate to not be on the same bus at the right time. which is exactly my point, since now the only people in the USA who see it are gonna do so by chance. i guess if it was like my lifelong dream i could travel to somewhere more protest-free but it's not, hence the 'curious about' in my original post.
and really, i'm not complaining for me, it's about the runners. none of them have oppressed dudes in tibet, in fact a lot of them seem like folks who have gone through some serious times and deserve a little respect and some folks clappin for em. there is a list at sfgate
here
#23 typo correction: '36.
What about those of us who might want to avoid the torch run? MUNI published a whole set of transit impacts, now we have no idea which buses might be stalled due to the torch.
They will run up and down city hall steps with fighter jets flying above
There are warnings that "all hell could break loose?" Are those real warnings or Cheney warnings? Whose hell?
Well, walking home this evening makes me wonder whether or not the route is changing or not. There's a big 'ole sign up saying "The Embarcadero Closed Wednesday, Noon - 4 p.m." They're definitely getting ready for some sort of big hee-haw at Justin Herman Plaza, the stage is set up and things are gated off.
Haha!!! Gavin, the Chinese and the Fong "led" SFPD - somebody write the punchline - quick! Can we get Jerry Yang and those two "do no evil" trust fund douchebags from Google to chime in?
Let's face it, money buys everything. China is fucking evil and the only country more evil than China is the country that sends all of its money to China. That is the USA.
Keep buying cheap Chinese products and supporting them because you don't want to spend the extra few pennies on your plunger or fish or clock radio. China is sucking us dry and they now make the rules. If they were any other country we would have invaded by now but we are a nation of pussies with corporate leaders who live and die by the almighty dollar.
Google and Yahoo included; all of you money grubbing lemmings who work for and defend their actions.
Fuck Tibet, Taiwan, Vietnam and the rest of that region. The Chinese will do anything they want there and we won't do a thing about it because we can't.
We're "busy" bringing "democracy" to Iraq and god forbid that Google and Yahoo don't meet analyst expectations.
This makes me want to protest, all right. Protest Newsom and his George W. Bush-esque policies.
@manys:Yes, I really meant explicit warnings that a war, LA riots type of situation will break out if the torch continues through the city.
I meant that if Paris is any indication of what might happen, then precautions should be taken because runners could get hurt by overzealous protesters. If I were the one in that position, I would be far from happy.
get helpyour bi polar.........
This makes me want to protest, all right. Protest Newsom and his George W. Bush-esque policies.
Well, the Chinese people aren't the only ones being brainwashed either...
Check out:
http://www.anti-cnn.com/
As an American expat in China, I can totally see how people (Chinese/American/whatever) who have never left their own country are completely dependent on what their own media outlets tell them.
While we all know that the Chinese media is gov't controlled, huge media conglomerates abroad (CNN, BBC, etc) also are biased as heck!
And the worst part about it is: the mainstream people think they are getting overall truthful & unbiased reporting from the CNNs and NYTs of the world under the facade that the media is privatized w/o political agenda.
For those of you in China, www.anti-cnn.com is blocked (leading me to believe that its maintained by overseas Chinese). Access it using a proxy --- (ie. tor)
(I've posted this on other articles as I feel that this hasn't been getting the attention it needs. ;) )
On the plus side, I can say that the USA is evil and nobody broke down my door yet today. Give the Patriot Act II time to kick in and we will all - and I mean ALL - become political prisoners at the drop of a hat.
I hope I drop dead or put a bullet in my head before that happens.
I think the Presidio is a pretty good guess. Federal property. You've got jurisdiction for the Park Police, Feds, SFPD, Sherriff, and Highway Patrol. I think possibly down by Crissy Field, where there's little traffic, not a whole lot of access/egress routes, and a nice background. Good publicity for the development projects going on down there, too.
I think the Patriot Act only kicks in when you're an elected official and you're cheating on your husband or wife with a hooker.
I'm thinking they're going to have the torch carriers run on treadmills in front of a green screen.
Read about the nice Chinese security guards who will be surronding the torch, and CALLING THE SHOTS AND ISSUING ORDERS on the streets of San Francisco.... Nice..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=557941&in_page_id=1770&ct=5
I'm disappointed. Remember when China used to be 100% Commie and I used to proudly wear my Mao hat like a good liberal should? It's just not the same anymore...
I waited an hour and a half waiting for the tourch to come. enduring some bald moron yelling about how everyone carrying a box and wearing a back pack was concealing a bomb.....and talking about the lack of isreal/palistine singes there were in the crowd to later learn that the rout was changed.... I was pissed to say the least