• Oakland will begin issuing speed-camera citations to speeding drivers Monday, as the 60-day grace period for the cameras has ended. Since the cameras were installed on January 15 — at 18 high-injury hotspots, 140,000 warnings were sent to about 74,000 unique license plates. [KTVU]
• A San Francisco tech worker named Alysa Liu recently had her Instagram account suspended for being an imposter the day after the figure skater warned fans about fake accounts. The SF-based Liu said she does frequently receive messages from fans meant for the figure skater, and she has 180 days to appeal the decision. [KGO]

• Around 3,600 addresses in the Richmond/Sea Cliff neighborhood were without power Sunday morning due to an unplanned PG&E outage starting around 8:54 am, which was fully restored by 12:30 pm. [Chronicle]
• Santa Clara County has begun providing people exiting jail with a 30-day supply of medication, along with extended case management and a treatment plan through Medicaid. [Hoodline]
• The city of San Francisco will be setting up dumpsters in Bayview-Hunters Point on Fridays and issuing steep fines to curb illegal dumping in the neighborhood, which is most frequent on Friday nights, littering the neighborhood with trash and hazardous materials. [KPIX]

• Oakland Restaurant Week is in full swing through March 22, featuring a variety of delectable gourmet dishes, prix-fixe menus, and lunch deals from over 135 restaurants — remember to tip your wait staff well! [KQED]
• The Brides of March took over San Francisco Saturday, along with a plethora of St. Patrick’s Day festivities. [Stories in SF/Instagram]

Image: Leanne Maxwell/SFist

San Francisco’s Marina Boulevard was turned into a demo racetrack Saturday as a Formula 1 car and other vehicles raced along the waterfront for a brief eight-tenths-of-a-mile stretch, drawing around 50,000 spectators who reportedly trashed the Marina District on their way out.

As KRON4 reports, the Red Bull-sponsored Formula One demonstration took over the Marina District Saturday afternoon for San Francisco's first such event of its kind. Around 50,000 fans reportedly showed up to watch the spectacle, which featured a branded Ford Raptor T1+ rally racer, a multi-million dollar F1 car, and other high-performance vehicles speeding along the short stretch of Marina Boulevard between Buchanan and Baker streets, which was closed to traffic from 3 am to 10 pm Saturday, as SFGate reported.

KTVU spoke to some of the spectators. "A bunch of drivers were doing crazy things like wheelies and driving with their feet off and standing up," said Avi Singh of San Jose.

"I love it. I think it's fun to have so many people around. People are excited. It's bringing people from all across the city and the Bay Area," said Stephanie Lo of San Francisco.

As SFGate reported, Red Bull’s test and reserve driver, Yuki Tsunoda (featured in the below clip) of Netflix’s Drive to Survive fame, took part in the event, along with local driver Scott Speed, off-road racer Mitch Guthrie, and freestyle motocross rider Aaron Colton.

KRON4 reports that Speed’s car ran into the barrier at one point, causing the barrier to hit the fence surrounding the crowd, which can be seen in the below video clip. A couple spectators reportedly felt the impact, including a girl who can be seen with a small cut on her knee in the clip.

Additionally, per KTVU, Tsonoda’s car caught fire during the grand finale, but he was uninjured.

Naturally, San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie declared on social media he had good time at the event.

“Maybe one of my most thrilling events as mayor was driving down Marina Green for the Red Bull Showrun,” Lurie said. “It was an incredible event that brought 50,000 people to our waterfront—and our city showed out. The energy in our city was on full display. Let’s go, San Francisco!”

As the SF Standard reports, the aftermath of the event was perhaps even more of a spectacle. The neighborhood group chat was reportedly lighting up residents’ phones with ongoing reports detailing the chaos, including piles of litter, broken windows, smashed planters, attempted break-ins, and public urination.

“It was chaos,” Patrick Souris told the Standard. “It was terrible.”

Neighbors also noted the lack of police presence, and the officers in attendance were reportedly “just sitting there chilling.”

The Standard is reportedly still waiting for comment from the event’s organizers. The San Francisco Police Department said its Northern Police District Station did respond to calls Saturday, but no further details were provided.

Image: Oracle Red Bull Racing/Facebook

This week: Hip-hop at Yoshi’s, coastal trails, national park sweethearts, and a Muni beer crawl. Plus, turning Lake Merritt trash into art, repairing bikes for kids, a light bulb that never goes out, and the big cat on campus.

Campus legend

An orange cat named Cheeto, who's been an internet meme for quite some time, is a fixture of the physics department at the University of California, Davis campus, where students and staff leave out food, beds, and the occasional note about his whereabouts.

Sightings get logged on Instagram, and he’s even picked up a joking Rate My Professors profile, complete with five-star reviews. Most days, Cheeto is easy to find — sleeping in the sun or stretched out in the landscaping, clearly unbothered by his reputation. — The California Aggie

Park crushes

Lots of accounts did the sweetheart meme this week, but Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy's take is the most creative, pairing park-themed Valentines with fun, local references.

The cards also offer some date ideas across Bay Area parks. — Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy/Instagram

Found things by the lake

Around Lake Merritt, a volunteer group known as the Trash Falcons has spent years picking up what gets left behind during walks around the water. The group meets weekly and removes more than 15 tons of trash a year, with most of it recycled and a small portion recontextualized as art.

Some of those objects — plastic forks, odd fragments, things too strange to toss back into a bin — now anchor a temporary museum built from about 175 finds, as part of an exhibition at Oakland’s Junior Center of Art and Science called What We Sow. The Trash Falcons’ museum is on view through March 6, with a related art exhibit in the gallery running into April. — NBC Bay Area

Wind along the bluffs

Along the Cowell–Purísima Coastal Trail, the coastline opens up in long, clean lines of cliff, water, and sky. The 3.6-mile, mostly flat path traces the edge of the bluffs just south of Half Moon Bay, with steady ocean views and few interruptions.

On clear days, it’s the kind of walk that invites an unhurried pace, with room to stop, look out, and keep going. The trail is open year-round and runs one way along the coast, with access points near Highway 1. — Anjali/Instagram

Century light, quiet glow

In Livermore, a single bulb has been glowing almost nonstop since 1901, tucked into the ceiling of Fire Station Number 6. Built by Shelby Electric and hardened like a tiny carbon diamond, the Centennial Light Bulb has outlasted generations of firefighters, power outages, and even its own moves between stations.

Visitors from across the globe stop by to see it, though for the crew, it’s just another fixture in the daily rhythm of the station. The bulb now burns at 4 watts and is expected to mark 125 years this June. — San Francisco Chronicle

Pints along the lines

Hop on Muni ties craft beer to four Muni routes across the city. Grab a limited-edition IPA at Standard Deviant, collect stickers at bars along each line, and finish back at the brewery to enter for prizes.

The first 25 to complete their cards take home a pint glass, and the grand prize includes SFCFC gear. The crawl runs February 21 through March 2, sending participants through familiar streets in a new kind of loop. — SFMTA

Tables and basslines

At Yoshi’s, hip-hop has been quietly reshaping the room, with rappers performing alongside live bands in a space once defined almost entirely by jazz. Post-pandemic crowds skew older, local, and seated at tables, but the energy shifts once artists like DJ Quik or Spice 1 start stretching songs and trading solos with the band.

The programming reflects where the audience is now, even as the format keeps the club’s improvisational spirit intact. Upcoming shows include the Sugerhill Gang, the Pharcyde, and Twista, all in April. — KQED

Wheels of change

In San Jose, Jim Gardner has turned childhood tinkering into a lifeline for the unhoused. Through Good Karma Bikes, he and volunteers repair and give away bicycles, helping people regain mobility, confidence, and a foothold in life.

The nonprofit serves thousands, from middle schoolers to adults in recovery, and runs programs that teach bike mechanics and hands-on skills. Gardner recently received recognition for his work, underscoring a decade of connecting tools, talent, and trust to lift neighbors forward. — KPIX

Top image: Trash Falcons

Previously: Field Notes: Bean Meeting, Magnolias in Bloom, and Christopher Burch’s Cosmic Paintings

When Supervisor Danny Sauter requested more trash cans in his district, Public Works deflected by announcing the relaunch of the costly Slim Silhouette to replace existing ‘90s-era cans already on the streets, but they’re not adding additional trash cans to the mix, which doesn't solve the shortage problem.

On Thursday, Supervisor Danny Sauter called a public hearing asking for 1,500 new trash cans in his district, which includes North Beach and Chinatown, citing that the insufficiently few existing trash cans scattered throughout his densely populated district are often overflowing, which several district residents echoed at the hearing.

According to the Chronicle, San Francisco Public Works announced during the hearing that the agency intended to replace all of the city’s existing green trash cans, which were installed in the ’90s, with the 2022 contest-winning Slim Silhouette prototype using $15 million in funds from a reserve account.

Meanwhile, Mission Local reports that Ian Schneider, spokesman for Public Works, which is currently seeking a trash can manager, brushed off Sauter’s request for additional trash cans, reviving old, unfounded claims that the Newsom administration used when they removed 1,000 trash cans in 2007 — that more trash cans somehow equal more litter.

SFist has published nearly a dozen posts over the years chronicling San Francisco’s ludicrously drawn out trash can saga. Back when Newsom was mayor in 2007, San Francisco initially had 4,500 trash cans, until he pulled half of them off the streets in a misguided effort to reduce litter in the city by 50 percent over five years. The plan did not work, and mayor Ed Lee began bringing the trash cans back out ten years later.

Dating as far back as 2021, supervisors were able to simply order additional trash cans upon request, but Mission Local notes that’s no longer the case. Sauter said that the city’s trash cans “are elusive” and ”randomly disappear overnight. They don’t follow a standard policy. Instead, their placement and removal is simply the result of who makes the most noise.’”

Schneider at Public Works said the same thing in not so many words — the trash cans are removed upon request from residents or if they have a history of vandalism or litter, while denying that the city has a shortage of trash cans. Sauter and Supervisor Bilal Mahmood called on Public Works and Recology staffers to come up with better solutions for keeping sidewalks cleaner, including using drones to monitor illegal dumping and sensors to alert employees when a bin is tipped over.

In July 2021, SFist first reported on the comically drawn out design and selection of Public Works’s smart trash can prototypes, which cost between $12,000 and $20,000 per piece and were projected to take four years to fully install on city streets. A year later, six models were released at various locations for residents to try out and vote on using a QR code.

It was revealed in October 2022 that respondents actually preferred a bulky out-of-the-box model called The BearSaver compared to the more modern-looking prototypes, but the sleek Slim Silhouette was ultimately chosen. Then, in January 2024, the whole project was put on hold due to the city’s budget deficit.

Mission Local notes that the city will be issuing a formal proposal for the manufacturing of the new trash cans this month.  

Previously: San Francisco Budget Cuts Trash Plans for City's New Fancy, Expensive Trash Cans

Image courtesy of San Francisco Public Works

Fort Funston and Ocean Beach are once again strewn with litter and debris, as rainstorms have a way of drifting white bags and single-use plastics onto the shores near the Pacific Ocean.

The storms of late January had many San Francisco beachcombers puzzled and frustrated at the amount of trash that showed up on the shores of Ocean Beach and Fort Funston, and it’s happening again now. The Chronicle reports that the beach of Fort Funston is again littered with debris, a phenomenon that seems to coincide with the aftermath of big winter storms.

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"Litter is always an issue from time to time, but we definitely see peaks during certain events throughout the year – significant rainfalls like this with heavy rain (and) flooding," Matt Huntington, vice chair of the SF chapter of the Surfrider Foundation that organizes beach clean-ups, tells the Chronicle. “We see it every year. Unfortunately this isn’t uncommon.”

The trash is generally not from people being litterbugs (not at the beach, at least), but instead likely flows from bodies of water that are tributaries into the Bay. After heavy rains, those tributaries can flush their accumulated trash and debris to the Pacific shoreline of SF beaches.

A spokesperson for the SF Public Utilities Commission tells the Chronicle that the agency does controlled releases of stormwater and wastewater at Ocean Beach and Fort Funston, but utilizes a process that would catch solid material and prevent that from being spilled onto the beach.

Those beaches are also under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service, and a spokesperson of theirs told SFGate last month that “Our maintenance team has been made aware and is currently determining next steps.”

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Meanwhile, there’s another storm heading in this weekend, so this is likely to occur again. The Surfrider Foundation has another storm cleanup scheduled for Sunday morning, though that could be canceled if it’s raining.

Related: Uh-Oh! Trash From Sewer ‘Outfalls’ Now Strewn All Across Ocean Beach, Fort Funston [SFist]

Image: surfridersf via Instagram

More than four million visitors come to Yosemite National Park every year, and despite the National Parks Service’s “Leave No Trace” ethos, they leave behind a lot of trash.

A recent volunteer-driven cleanup effort to pick up as much stray litter as possible revealed the most common types of trash abandoned, as the Chronicle reported. The event, called the Yosemite Facelift, is held annually and hosted by the Yosemite Climbing Association. This year, thousands of volunteers collected 10,432 pounds of litter, according to its website.

During the cleanup, representatives from a partner nonprofit, the 5 Gyres Institute focused on reducing plastics, conducted a random sampling of litter to understand what items bypass Yosemite's waste management system, per the Chronicle.

The most common items, in order? Food wrappers, cigarette butts, cleaning wipes, napkins, bottle caps and rings, beverage bottles, pieces of plastic wrapping, receipts, clothing/shoes, twist ties, food waste, hair accessories, and straws.

And the most common brand, by large measure? Marlboro. Afterwards, Kirkland, Camel, Jolly Rancher, Starburst, Clif, McDonald's, Wrigley, Crystal Geyser, Orbit, Starbucks, Eco-Products, Häagen-Dazs, Coca-Cola, Nature Valley, and Parliament.

This year’s cleanup was the 20th anniversary of the event, and reportedly marked the lowest amount of trash found over the years.

The same cleanup last year reportedly found far more face masks. Additionally, according to the Chronicle, last year volunteers found a toaster, an old Polaroid of a man in a “scandalous Santa outfit,” and other “intimate products.”

Image of Yosemite National Park via Unsplash/Zach Searcy.

The Museum of Ice Cream turns out to have one cleanup duty they need to tend to, and neighbors are starting to notice. An SFist tipster sent in the photos below decrying the "pollution" being created as countless tiny, presumably non-biodegradable plastic sprinkles from the MoIC's signature Sprinkle Pool can be seen littering the sidewalk and gutters outside the museum at Kearny and Market, and heading into a storm drain where, fingers crossed, they won't end up in the ocean.

Reader Chris W., an office-neighbor of the MoIC, says he's found the sprinkles upwards of three and four blocks away, and "Despite complaining to MOIC security and customer service about this ongoing problem in the neighborhood there has been no progress."

I personally observed the sprinkles yesterday dotting the entire block of sidewalk on Stockton Street between O'Farrell and Geary (see photo above), well over a block away from the MoIC, meaning that Chris W. was not sounding false alarms, and the spread of these colorful bits of refuse are in fact already making their way around the neighborhood.

Photo: Chris W.

Inside the museum, guests are invited to take a "dip" in the whimsical sprinkle pool, after removing their shoes, and then you can go in a "Sprinkle Shower" in which an employee or a friend will use a compressed-air hose to blow any errant sprinkles off of your clothing.

I can attest from my own experience dipping in the Sprinkle Pool a month ago that I continued to find the tiny sprinkles in my pockets, pant cuffs, socks, and underwear for days thereafter, and they ended up on the floor of my bedroom as a result, where I am still finding them.

Photo: Jay Barmann/SFist

Photo: Jay Barmann/SFist

Eater LA noticed the sprinkle-litter problem last month, long after the iteration of the MoIC opened there, with the Arts District in LA apparently covered in the things for months. The MoIC response at the time was, "Our employees tell everyone repeatedly to shake off and make sure they get rid of all the extra sprinkles. Before leaving the Museum of Ice Cream, our team members are told to double check guests to make sure everyone has shaken off excess sprinkles."

So, yes, this cleanup is going to be a challenge! And an ongoing one. The Museum of Ice Cream is continuing its sold-out run in San Francisco through February, at least, pending further extensions.

Previously: Museum Of Ice Cream Creator To NY Mag: 'I Want To Be The Next Disney'

As sure as the sun rises every Sunday and Monday morning, the sun will greet a completely trashed Dolores Park landscape following any warm weekend afternoon. Park revelers have been leaving hundreds of pounds of empty glass bottles, pizza boxes, used paper and plastic products and of course the occasional syringe in a recurring, pretty-much-every-weekend development that Rec and Parks calls “appalling”.

In an attempt to appeal to the appalled demographic, and to hopefully bag the trashy habits of Dolores Park partiers, Supervisor Jeff Sheehy (whose District 8 includes the park) announced in a press release a proposal to increase the fine for littering in Dolores Park to $1,000. The $1,000 fine, which is currently just a $192 fine, would apply only to Dolores Park, but the proposal’s ban on glass products would apply to all city parks.

“If it costs you money to leave your trash in the park, you won’t do it,” Sheehy told the Chronicle. “There are consequences to every action. I have a 12-year-old daughter. If there were no consequences for her, then she would do whatever she wants. This behavior has to change. It’s a terrible situation.”

While that pontificating sure makes sense on a schoolmarmy-y level, the proposal seems to ignore a fundamental problem in the current system — no one is ever cited for littering. It doesn’t matter whether the fine is $191 or $1,000 if litterers never receive a citation. While the park’s trash problem has been ongoing for years, the Chronicle notes that “not a single person has been has been ticketed for littering in Dolores Park this year.”

Currently, park rangers issue littering citations (or never issue them, as the case appears more to be). These citations are enforced — or never enforced — by District Attorney Gascón’s office, who don’t feel they have the resources to chase down each petty citation. “Unless someone is repeatedly ticketed for littering, these citations result in infractions and fines rather than misdemeanor prosecutions,” DA spokesperson Max Szabo told the Chronicle. “We care deeply about the environment, but we don’t think the public wants a jury empaneled every time someone fails to toss a bag of potato chips.”

Since Dolores Park’s renovation, the landfill and recycling capacity for the park has raised to 56,000 gallons per week, from only 35,000 gallons per week prior to the renovation. Additionally, the Love Dolores Campaign has been established to steward the park, though a Rec and Parks employee has referred to that campaign as “obviously useless”.

As KRON 4 reports, Sheehy's proposed legislation will go before the Board of Supes' Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee in June.

Related: Watch Several Hipsters Argue With, And Insult, Two Parks Officials Busting Them In Dolores Park

It was June of 2007, when then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom declared "We have too many garbage cans in the city," and ordered SF's Department of Public Works to remove half of the city's on-street trash containers. The cans' removal, Newsom said, would help "reduce litter in the city by 50 percent over the next five years," the Chron reported at the time. My friends, that didn't happen — and now the city is returning cans to one busy SF corridor, at a hefty price.

From the moment Newsom issued his edict, saying "I'm still pro-garbage can...I'm just not pro-400 garbage cans in four blocks," the first term Mayor was under attack, with then-Richmond District Supervisor Jake McGoldrick sneering "What's next? Is he going to stop street sweepers from coming around because people are throwing their trash in the street? I don't understand the rationale."

McGoldrick wasn't the only critic of the policy — as my SFist co-founding-writer Rita Hao mused at the time, "Why don't they just have rule-breakers get garbage service, but also leave some trash cans outside for folks like us who want to throw our finished cup of Mitchell's Mexican Chocolate ice cream away without going back into the store?"

The rationale, it seemed, was that pulling the cans would curb illegal dumping from scofflaws the city can't catch. As Newsom said when announcing the program, “We want there to be room in the garbage cans, and there’s often not. They’re overflowing because other residents are using them inappropriately," the Ex reported in 2007.

According to then-DPW director Fred Abadi they "removed trash cans from places where they were being misused, underused or where there were more than enough," the Ex reported at the time. "The status quo is not working,” Mayoral spokesperson Nate Ballard said at the time. “This is a program that deserves a chance.”

And a chance it received — nearly a decade-long chance, as DPW continued to cut the city's then-5,000 cans to the 3,200 we have today. But Tuesday DPW trumpeted a so-called "Yes We Can! Project" via press release (I uploaded the whole thing for you to read here), in which the department will bring 38 new bins back to Mission Street between 14th and Cesar Chavez Streets, putting the new total along that stretch to 73.

“It is one of our top priorities to keep our streets and neighborhoods clean and livable,” Lee said in the release (which did not mention the policies of our now-Lt. Gov AT ALL). “To help maintain the beautiful nature of our city, we continue to explore different strategies, such as the Fix-It initiative and the Yes We Can pilot program, to help our thriving and active corridors.”

Because, you guys, it apparently took the city ten years to figure out that people who illegally dump their trash in city cans will (gasp) just dump it on the street if no can is available. Who on earth could have predicted that. Also:

As long ago as 2009, Mission Local suggested that the can removal plan wasn't working in their coverage area of the Mission District. In a report from September of that year, they wrote that "a new litter study by the Department of Public Works is expected to demonstrate only a slight improvement" and that people continue to "leave their garbage in public trashcans along the street, or in other people’s bins...with fewer cans on the street, more trash is likely to end up around them." This is borne out by the Chron, which reports this week that "In 2016, more than 5,800 complaints about overflowing garbage cans came into the city’s 311 service portal. Of those, 445, or nearly 8 percent, came from the Mission."

Will those 38 new cans along Mission help reduce those calls, if for no other reason than now illegal dumpers have a can in which to dump? It's obviously too soon to say, and DPH says they program is just a six-month pilot. According to Mission Local, "Public Works will also monitor the program’s effectiveness by tracking 311 service requests and using on-site evaluations to determine whether the additional cans actually result in less street-dumping and littering. If successful, the program will likely be implemented in other other neighborhoods."

That implementation, in the Mission or beyond, will come at a price: the Chron reports that each new can costs the city $1,600 to install. A drop in the bucket given our overall operating budget, but still tooth-gnashing when you think about how, if we'd just kept all the cans there in the first place ten freakin' years ago, we wouldn't be spending a dime.

Related: In Confusing Bid To Reduce Litter, National Park Service Pulls Ocean Beach Trash Cans

You could say they're cosplaying for a cause. A group of volunteers called "The Initiative" are making their neighborhood clean up work considerably more exciting with cool capes and outfits, and for her work as a founding member of the group's local branch, San Francisco native Roxanne Cai has been profiled by People magazine as a "doer."

“As soon as you put on a mask or a cape, people approach you, so we do it to draw attention to the cause," Cai tells the publication. “We don’t have any real superpowers except the power to give a damn long enough to do something.”

As profiled in 2013 by the Chronicle, in addition to Cai, who goes by Rock N roll as her super identity, the group consisted of Vector, Clockwork, SageTiger, and more. "I call us Good Samaritans on steroids," Cai said at the time.

According to Cai, the group has picked up 7,000 needles in the Mission District — but the people who leave them there aren't the enemy, and neither are the needles themselves. Says Cai: “If we had a super foe, it would be apathy, because you can’t force people to care — and there’s so much apathy out there,”

The next needle pick up patrol effort is this Sunday and there are three spots open. Anyone have any extra red tights?

Related: Video: Rad Local Woodworker Katie Gong Profiled In New People Mag Series

In a bizarrely counterintuitive move echoing San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department's efforts in Dolores Park, the National Park Service has removed a series of garbage cans along the Ocean Beach promenade with the intended goal of reducing litter. This has not exactly worked out as planned.

The National Park Service, which manages the popular stretch of Ocean Beach, believes that the previously existing trash cans encouraged beach-goers to leave behind their garbage, and that by removing the cans people will be inclined to pack out what they have packed in.

Dan Collman, a representative with the NPS, attempted to explain the logic behind the removal to a Richmond District Blog reader.

“We are working on a couple of experiments that would encourage visitors to pack in and pack out," explained Collman. "As well, we are hoping to save staff time and allow them to focus on other high impact areas.”

“Not to mention how nice the historic sea wall looks without trash cans,” continued Collman.

And while yes, sea walls probably do look better without trans cans, they definitely don't look better with loose garbage piled everywhere — the very situation that has resulted from the removal of the cans. It seems that some people — perhaps confused, perhaps lazy — are simply piling their trash where the cans used to be.

A reporter with Richmond District Blog notes that "[nearly] every stairwell had some debris nearby, and a few of them had piles of garbage tucked up in the corners."

It goes without saying that people should not be littering our parks and beaches (or anywhere, for that matter), but getting people to act in certain ways when they're inclined to do otherwise requires that we make it easier for them to do the "right" thing — not harder.

If the goal is to get people to throw away their garbage, removing on-site trash cans seems like a strange incentive.

The National Park Service has posted signs calling the removal of the trash cans an experiment, but has not provided details as to when the experiment will end.

However, the NPS will be keeping an eye on the situation, assures Collman.

“If this totally fails, we’ll address it immediately,” he said.

This move follows on the heels of other possible changes at the beach, such as potentially requiring $35-dollar permits for beach bonfires.

All previous coverage of Ocean Beach.

City officials met on Monday in an effort to combat those pervasive delivery menus and nail salon fliers abundantly placed on our front doors that more often than not get blown in the wind from one house to the next and into the gutter.

The new plan would move the enforcement of handbill violations under the authority of the Department of Public Works instead of SFPD, who would hold distributors accountable if the handbills end up in the street due to not being securely fastened to doors and gates. Violators could be fined $100 for each offense after being issued several warnings.

The plan passed unanimously with the Board of Supervisors Land Use and Economic Development Committee yesterday and will go before the full Board of Supervisors next month.

Although many of us would like to see them banned altogether, leaflets fall under the First Amendment. If you'd rather not have to deal with handbill detritus at all, post a "No Handbills" sign in a 30-point or larger font on your door.

[Via S.F. Chronicle]

This morning, a fresh new ordinance went into effect: cigarette addicts now must pay 20 cents extra per pack "in order cover the costs of cleaning up discarded cigarette butts throughout the city." The very first tax of its kind in the U.S., KTVU says, "The fee will be collected from retailers and will go specifically to city departments that conduct street cleanup of cigarette butts."

Also, "[t]he mayor's office said that discarded cigarette butts account for a significant portion of the litter that has to be cleaned from sidewalks and gutters, and can leach toxins into the environment." He's also probably concerned for your health too. Or so you would be lead to believe.

This brings the price of an average pack of smokes of up to about $7.

Mission Mission posted this appalling photo of the trash left behind at Dolores Park on Easter Sunday, which was taken at 7 a.m. yesterday morning.

Nearly 3,500 people were still hanging out at the park at 8 p.m. on Sunday when the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence first attempted to help clean up the post-Easter-celebration mess. So, about 30 of them returned at 9 a.m. yesterday to clean up the lingering litter.

Here are Sister Maple Syrup's observations regarding the attendees' littering patterns:

A smoker will make a tidy pile of their cig butts next to their blanket all day, then leave that pile on the ground when they leave the park.

There was an amazing array of bottle caps from beer. Who in their right mind rips cap off a bottle and tosses it into grass where people play soccer…?

A lot of people must believe that it’s okay to leave jello, lemon rinds, strawberries, and other assorted cocktail garnishes because they’re “biodegradeable” — giving no thought to how gross that might be to step in.

Surprisingly, only one dirty condom found, and 4 or so wrapped condoms. Glad those who had them took them with them!

+++

I know Dolores Park has these kinds of messes every weekend, and there’s no team like us to come along after to clean it up, so I empathize with those of you who live there. Please know that we (the Sisters) definitely DO care enough to clean things up, and Monday morning we managed to leave the park cleaner than it was when we showed up Sunday morning to pick up dog poop before our event :)