Results tagged “citylife”

"Urban Garden" by Darwin Bell.

Walk Score, a site that tells you just how "walkable" your city or hood is, ranked San Francisco the top spot for those of us who get by on foot exclusively. Eating San Francisco's dust is 2. New York, NY; 3. Boston, MA; 4. Chicago, IL; 5. Philadelphia, PA; 6. Seattle, WA; 7. Washington D.C.; 8. Long Beach, CA; 9. Los Angeles, CA; and 10. Portland, OR. (Chinatown came in as the number one hood for walking.) On a score from 0-100, WalkScore decides which city is deemed "Walkers' Paradise," "Very Walkable,""Somewhat Walkable," and "Car-Dependent" like this: they "calculate the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. Walk Score measures how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle—not how pretty the area is for walking." The site also features helpful maps and other pro-pedestrian propaganda. Be sure to check it out. [via Curbed]

"City of industry" by nicocrisafulli / Flickr.

Think twice, is right. How very bad you must feel right about now.

With a fondness for black and red ink, a tenant at Oak and Broderick seems peeved with their current living situation, which allegedly involves rats, urine, fecal matter, and an illegal rent increase.

While Gavin Newsom tours California to tout his successes as mayor of San Francisco -- not to mention spending the weekend at the insider-baseball-y Democratic Convention in Sacramento, along with practically every other SF progressive and wonk -- he hasn't solved San Francisco's ails as thoroughly as he might want you to think he has.

Thinking pink on lower Mission Street.

Stockton wins it. Using nine factors (i.e., commute times, corruption, professional sports teams, Superfund sites, taxes, unemployment, violent crime and weather) to determine the crappiness of 150 of the country's largest metropolitan areas, Stockton, CA, ranked no. 1 when it comes to woeful living. According to Forbes, "only 15% of Stockton adults have a college degree, which is one of the lowest rates in the U.S." But wait, there's more, "unemployment is expected to hit 15% in 2010, while housing prices should keep falling back to their mid-1990s level when the median home price was $130,000." Not to be outdone, Modesto came in just under medal contention at 5th place. San Joaquin County's Stockton is also known for its agriculture and meth production.

This has the stench of Academy of Art student project emanating from it, but...who knows? An SFist reader (hillary's_quivering_lip) sent it in to us, taken at Montgomery and Sacramento. It's been posted there for a week, and said reader did not look up quietly.

able to find hundreds of tomatoes hidden in Dolores Park (map) San Francisco, each and every one with cash attached." Nifty.

Someone please tell us what this means! We neither speak nor understand Mexican. Helpo! It seems that these have been found up and down Howard Street today, and we're flummoxed. What secrets do they hold? How to find the Maltese Falcon? On which corner the strongest tar is available? The new editor of the Chronicle?

Another public display of commemorative prose, folks. What with this plus the animals trying to escape from the zoo, you'd think the end is nigh, a big earthquake is on its way, or Aunt Flo has come for an extended visit.

Yeah, we could hardly believe the headline ourselves. Do people have no shame?

Starts at 7:30 p.m. at CounterPULSE; free.

Kearny Street (at California) was closed for over an hour this afternoon after a window came off of the former Bank of America building, falling to the ground from the 38th floor. No one, it seems, was injured from any falling glass. According to an SFist tipster:

In the tussle over the mantle of San Francisco’s Most Tucked-Away Neighborhood, Visitacion Valley gets our vote...particularly if by “tucked-away,” one really means “neglected.” Geographic and economic isolation have contributed to infrastructural decline - and crime - here for quite some time, although earnest efforts are being made these days to turn the tide. The block of Leland between Peabody and Rutland is dually zoned for business and residence, so the street is one of Viz Valley’s main drags. There’s plenty of foot and auto traffic here, and the 56 Rutland bus even shuffles by on occasion. Businesses bookend the nondescript strip as post-WWII housing, other small commercial concerns, and a pair of bottlebrush trees fill in the space between. Pretty? Not quite. But, utilitarian? Sure.

Oh, this looks like fun.

Japantown's new Sundance Cinemas Kabuki will offer the more discerning moviegoer (i.e.. people who self-consciously laugh out loud during Shakespeare comedies) something, well, more. Curbed SF has the full rundown on the new movie house that's sure to make you feel even that more self-righteous than you already do while braving the choppy waters of independent film. Check it:

Oh la la. The reportedly very prickly Reese Witherspoon and rubenesque Vince Vaughn -- whatever, we'd hit it. Hit it hard -- are in town filming their new divorce-themed romcom, Four Christmases. (According to IMBD, it's about a "couple struggle to visit all four of their divorced parents on Christmas Day." If you're not in tears already, then clearly you have no soul.) And here they are at a....downtown locale of some sort? We...

By Dianne de Guzman

During our visit to this block of Collingwood, between 21st and 22nd Sts., we ask three residents which area neighborhood they most closely identify with. We get three different answers. 1: “Noe Valley – although I guess, technically, Noe Valley’s northern border is 22nd.” 2: (Shrug.) “I don’t know. Maybe the Castro? Eureka Valley? What is Eureka Valley? I suppose you can’t really call this a valley, since it’s up on a hill.” 3: “Do you live around here?” Not quite the consensus we’re hoping for. But surely we can all agree that the 400 block of Collingwood is San Francisco’s preeminent home of sidewalk birdhouses.

In the last two days we have witnessed

We love the idea of turning the Presidio into a destination. After all, it's a gorgeous place. Ridiculously beautiful parts of the Presidio make Golden Gate Park look downright crummy. And what with the new landscaping, it's sure to become the tourist destination it so richly deserves.

The legendary Cafe Flore might find its way to the obit page of the B.A.R. soon. Why? Because if it doesn't "get permission to have the option to serve food 24 hrs a day, to have the option to have amplified entertainment to allow a background DJ," or to get the chance to serve booze until 2 am, the place might zip up and never call again according to SaveCafeFlore.

Yeah, we plan on running this bit into the ground. And then some. Well, well, well. Well. Huh. It looks like Mr. Van Sant is having yet another open casting call for his Harvey Milk biopic, Milk. Seeing as how are the Gena Rowlands of bit-part/background acting, we're going to attend the casting call. Again. Clearly, our picture taken at the last audition was either destroyed by a envious auditioners, or it was lost...

It’s early on a Saturday afternoon, and we’ve somehow found our way to Paris. OK, we’re not in Paris. Rather, we’re poking around mellow South Park between 2nd, 3rd, Brannan, and Bryant Sts., where arrondissement 94107’s narrow ellipse of green space merely feels a bit Parisian. The scene in the park is, for the most part, typical and ephemeral: young parents with their kids at the playground, couples chatting on benches or picnicking at tables, dogs and their attendant humans. Falling leaves pepper the ground with muted autumn color. South Park’s twist on the familiar neighborhood park theme, however, is the regular presence of down-and-out’ers at its west end. Nobody seems to demonize the two or three unshowered men hanging about, and while we’re not interested in joining them for a game of checkers or anything, it seems to be a case of no harm, no foul – at least on this afternoon.

Oh my. This site sounded much more enthralling before we delved further. Still, it's interesting -- ripe with community-building spirit and harmonious stuff like that.

Certain blocks speak to specific eras. While the local architecture can play a significant role, perhaps the most crucial factor is intangible...one that can’t be defined. It’s a mood we begin to sense as we sift around an area - what we imagine it to have been like so many years before, and in the case of certain places, how little it’s changed in the years since. Mission St. in the Excelsior had us thinking 1972 or so. Country Club Drive in the Parkside had 1954 down pat. Sturgeon St. on Treasure Island seemed rutted in about 1987. Amethyst Way in Diamond Heights feels like 1966.

Pitchfork has a rich article Fugazi's Joe Lally having thousands of dollars worth of equipment stolen from his touring van while it was parked on Valencia Street. Overnight.

With tomorrow's official switch from plastic bags to paper bags looming, news stations have their top cameramen (or the more PC "camera operators") hitting grocery stores across the city, sticking their cameras in your face at the checkout stands. We ourselves were just shot (without permission, BTW) at Whole Foods on 4th and Harrison. Thank goodness we remembered to bring our reusable frayed-green Whole Foods tote.