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by Chris Jones
Today is the first day of the City's ambitious six week experiment to revive the Mid-Market Street corridor by removing eastbound automobile traffic from the City's main drag. City officials are hopeful the plan will magically transform the beleaguered thoroughfare into a swank boulevard, popular among film stars and the international jet set. We'll see about that.
Alas, the City's plans for Market Street have apparently started the wheels turning in the minds of amateur urban planners all across town. Owner of the Warfield Theater, David Addington, wants to blanket the street in enormous electronic billboards and is taking his plan to you, the voters, for approval. Most members of the Board of Supervisors and local planning group SPUR are reportedly keen on the idea. Keep an eye out for Proposition D on the November 3rd ballot, which will make an exception to the City's sign ordinance to allow for installation of the billboards.
Golly, what fantastic ideas these folks have, because, you know, nothing says "welcome" on a pee smelling street of boarded up store fronts, theaters full of strippers, and drug addled drag queen prostitutes wandering the sidewalks in a haze, like giant blinking billboards and not a single car in sight. What's next? Red lit store fronts stocked with ladies of the evening and an amazing array of vibrating accoutrements?
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so skeptical chris!
a comment about improvements for (at least a number of) modes of transportation would be appropriate
This is an unrealistic way to look at this. Your apocalyptic vision of Mid-market is pretty much what's there now. You know, Touch the Magic? Nothing has worked there in decades. Planning has failed, and let's just say SF's lax social policies haven't helped.
Instead, a few billboards generate tax-free revenue to increase the arts' presence, which in turn generates revenue and people. The people necessitate a police presence, which is covered by the revenue. At the same time, some of the blight is removed by developing non-profit space and non-SRO affordable housing for families who also have no interest in maintaining the blight. That revenue also helps pay for clean-up. Again, I stress, nothing else has helped Mid-market.
In full disclosure, I'm helping on this. Nevertheless, it's time to realize that fixing Mid-market - a stated goal of all political camps - doesn't come without compromises. A few billboards (which will not be the size of Times Square anyway) to support arts, public safety, and blight removal is a grown-up way to move an important part of the city forward.
Otherwise, there'll be a lot more magic to touch as the area continues to degrade with no political will to fix it.
So the revenue goes to the Randy Shaw cabal? Reason enough to vote no.
These are some Ken Garcia–level gripes.
Ouch.
I miss Play Fascination.
bring back the Barbary Coast!
we can have gun fights in the street, sleep with loose women, and slip each other Mickey Fickeys just for shits n giggles.
It did seem a bit East Berlin circa 1965 this morning, with just a few Stasi agents running late for work on their bicycles and multiple police at each intersection, like Tito was in town or something.
So Yeh! Bring on the capitalist agiprop billboards!
If they get rid of all of the grime and filth there, where will Tu Lan find rats to cook?
I think when people hear "electric billboards on mid-Market" they automatically think of the horrible gaudy electric light show at Columbus and Broadway. That's not what we're talking about here, is it?
From the article:
"Under the new proposition, signs ranging from digital billboards, like the one seen heading into Oakland from the Bay Bridge, to "dancing inflatable men" would be allowed along Market from Fifth to Seventh streets, according to the Planning Department. The signs could be no bigger than 500 square feet, about a quarter the size of some of the billboards seen from the bridge."
I actually like the horrible, gaudy electric light show at Columbus and Broadway, but I'm a mid-20th century roadside culture junkie, so I'm prejudiced.
Agreed. More neon please.
ha ha, you should never go to asia, you would shit gold twinkies as soon as you stepped off the plane. stay home, american, don't even try times square.
i bet the serramonte people had to go through three years of permitting in order to be ahead of the curve.
Brilliant.... remove the cars but keep the crack dealers, $20 whores, tittie shows and bong shops .... Brilliant I say
this is going to make for some GREAT night photography. wide open, tripod set up in the intersection of 2nd & Market...
Just don't get too close to 6th or you and your camera will soon part ways. Lots of SFPD to direct traffic for Newsom's latest pet project, just nobody to do real police work. Hurrah!
"SFPD: The best traffic control money can buy!"
The mid-Market property owners and merchants are clearly sniffing glue. Scratch that - they clearly think the Board of Supes and the voting public is sniffing glue - which just might be the case.
If you think these guys are going to put up retro-kitchy neon or downtown-Toyko electronic billboards in the West Coast's version of Times Square, you are insane. When NYC started work on revitalizing Times Square, they included a neon sign ordinance that was highly proscriptive - essentially guaranteeing the quality of outcome. (I'd also note that revitalizing Times Sq. - NYC's mid-Market - didn't happen due to neon signs. It happened because Giuliani used every trick in the book to close down the peep shows, porn shops and strip clubs.)
These guys just want a source of more revenue (some of the revenue from the boards will go to youth programs/arts, but a big ole chunk goes to the property owners). This is essentially a money grab by the property owners. Putting these signs up cost them nothing - the billboard companies like Clear Channel pay for the installation and hand over a rent check every month to the property owners. And all they need to do to get that cold hard cash is dupe the public into thinking this is going to be some salvation for mid-Market.
The Board of Supes is equally complicit. They get 40% of the revenues to dole out to their favorite constituent groups without having to raise taxes or cut funds from some other program.
Market Street is not Times Square. I can't believe people in this comments thread are actually positive about this. Advertising is not entertainment, the only people helped by more ads are the people buying and selling the ads.
But maybe I'm just extreme. I'd take a missile to that night light on the Oakland side of the bay bridge if I could.
This is a terrible idea.
All would be well if they just brought back Hollywood Billiards.
This sounds awesome, like the outdoor scenes from "Blade Runner". I alreay have an illuminated umbrella (http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/travel-outdoors/9260/) so I'm all set.