Results tagged “downtownbusinessinterests”

If you have any understanding of San Francisco politics, or San Francisco at all, you have to have noticed that basically everything in this city breaks down to a battle between the "Downtown Business Interests" and that of the "Progessive Community." This is the Hatfield vs the McCoys, the Republicans vs. Democrats, the Backstreet Boys vs. N'Sync that splits our fair city. But who exactly are the "Downtown Business Interests" and the "Progessive community?" What do they believe in and what do they think of the other side? And what do they want out of this city and how do they hope to achieve it? Well, after the break, SFist breaks it all down for ya.

>-We've been trying to wrap our heads around Lettergate, otherwise known as Much Ado About Paking, and think we finally have a bead on it. Or maybe not. Anyways, the story goes like this: there's been this big debate over parking in the Mission Bay/South of Market area where all this big condo building is going on. The debate, as usual, is between Chris Daly vs. the Gavster and the nefarious Downtown Business Interests over how many parking spots should be allowed to be built, Daly, wants to limit the amount of spaces to be built while Gavin doesn't. A reworked Daly measure was put up for vote and passed by a 7-2 measure. That, however, isn't really the controversy, but what happened during the debate was. During the debate, Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier and Acting Planning Director Larry Badiner read a letter from Planning Director Dean Macris, who was out of town, saying he's against Daly's measure. It became obvious to everyone who was there, however, that the letter didn't really come from Macris. It wasn't signed, wasn't on official stationary, there were two different versions of it, and the letter contradicted several things that Macris had said earlier. Needless to say, people were not amused.

Remember when Gavin the Good went off to Chicago and instead of raving about what most people rave about in Chicago-- Old Style and brats-- he raved about how green it was and how there were trees everywhere and how wood nymphs wearing Bears jerseys merrily danced along the shores of the lake? And remember how he came back and went all Johnny Appleseed on us and talked about how he wanted to plant more trees here? Well, the deadline for the first round of tree planting (5,000 trees by March) is fast approaching. In fact, trees have already been planted in SOMA and the Tenderloin, something that should make all the crack whores happy because it'll give them some shelter when it rains.

SFGate Culture blog beat us to this story (damn, that Aidan Vazari), but the National Coalition for the Homeless recently put together a list of the meanest cities to the homeless and San Francisco came in eleventh. You know, the other night while we were walking the gauntlet on 16th between Mission & Valencia and trying to navigate between a passed out drunk lying in a pool of piss and a drunk couple yelling at each other at the top of the lungs, we were just thinking about how mean we were to the homeless.