Results tagged “waterfront”

Oh, sure, you've seen all the coverage of Jan Gehl's plan to turn Fisherman's Wharf into something tolerable. But wouldn't you like to know more? The excellent SPUR is holding a forum TODAY about the city's plan to alleviate pedestrian-congestion by updating the neighborhood's 1950s-style freeway-inspired urban design: widening sidewalks, installing benches, and adding bike lanes, injunction be damned. After all, be honest: when's the last time you went to Fisherman's Wharf? Probably when you had out-of-town guests.

As part of a proposed $185 million dollar bond issued to help revitalize our parks, Park & Rec head cheese Yomi Agunbiade, announced that a major emphasis of the bond measure will be brining in new bathrooms. The reason for such a decision is the obvious third-worldyness of current park bathrooms. Twenty points for Gryffindor.

Question: Innes Ave. is in which area of San Francisco? A) Hunters Point: San Francisco’s notorious waterfront/hilltop ghetto, adjacent to a naval shipyard-cum-Superfund site. B) India Basin: Hardscrabble home to industrial businesses galore. C) India Cove: Cozy-sounding name marketed by area developers. D) Hunters Point / India Basin Historic District: Once “India Cove” takes root, the little brown “Historic District” signs won’t be far behind. E) All of the above. Answer: E, or at least that’s what we think. Few San Francisco streets rival the 800 block of Innes Ave. between Arelious Walker and Griffith for wide-ranging Blocker fodder. The immutable racket of welding equipment and other power tools punctures the Monday afternoon air out here along the shores of the bay. The day’s action at Zebra Awning and Nueva Castilla Metal Fabrication is in full noisy swing. Protective eye goggles are often part of the work uniform along this part of Innes - and on Sundays, so is prayer: At the eastern end of the stretch of small warehouses stands MarketPlace Fellowship. It’s an unlikely spot for a place of worship, but no less likely than one for a castle-turned-brewery-turned-studio. And speak of the devil, that’s the old Albion Ale & Porter Brewery behind the ivy-lined walls and iron gate at 881 Innes, across the street. The ornate, 137-year-old stone structure – updated in the 1930s after years of Prohibition-inflicted neglect – is now a private home, with space rented out to working artists. A peek through the Wonka-reminiscent gate reveals a lavishly landscaped front area that looks more South Yorkshire than southeast San Francisco. We have it on good authority that invitation-only parties occur here on occasion, oompa loompas and rivers of century-old beer be damned.

Want to hear and participate in a thought-provoking discussion about planning regional transportation? Tomorrow at 12:30 p.m. you can head on down to SPUR's (a.k.a. the San Francisco Planning + Research Association) office at 312 Sutter St. (@ Grant), 5th floor. While open to the public, it will cost you $5 if you're not a member (membership details can be found here). The discussion will involve regional social justice, transit, walking, and bicycling advocates, and is coordinated by the Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC), in an effort to influence the next Regional Transportation Plan.

Let the bourgeois battle begin: Green Connect and SF Community Clean Team are looking to clean up Warm Water Cove, the waterfront park at 24th and Michigan Streets, this coming Saturday morning. (And want you to wakeup up before 9 a.m. to pull weeds?!) Many an art school student brandishing a can of spray paint and local musicians like this place for 'spressing themselves or for throwing afternoon concerts. While others are understandably looking to make the Dogpatch park more streamlined to fit the area's new, um, growth, others are also understandably very upset about it.

-- Feinstein endorses Clinton, which could very well be the start of one totally bitchin' clique. [Chron, Examiner]

Thanks to some ass-kicking by Matthew Bajko at the BAR, Bevan's taking a bit more time this year to plan for Halloween. Next public meeting: Wednesday, the 30th, at 5:30 in the California Pacific Medical Center, Davies Campus, in the Level B Auditorium in the North Tower Building. Is it just us, or do those directions sound like riddles in a scavenger hunt? Anyway, they'll be talking about the city's plan for moving Halloween to the waterfront.

Photos from San Francisco's Critical Mass, April 2007

You may be shocked -- SHOCKED -- to learn that sometimes, some of the people who come to the Castro for Halloween are not entirely well-behaved. Fortunately, after last year's shootings and stabbings, Bevan promised to plan ahead to make 2007 safer. And he did! After some reminding by the BAR, which ran an article last week about how he totally forgot to do that planning he'd been talking about.

Quick -- which one of those pictures above is of Valencia Street in SF and which is of Williamsburg in Brooklyn?

SFist interviews JL Aronson, director of Danielson: A Family Movie

Yeah, we know. It's a Monday. And not just any Monday, but the five-year anniversary of That Day with all the attendant beating over the head that comes with it. So to cheer you up, dear readers, SFist presents to you, the Holy Grail of awesome music videos-- Journey's "Separate Ways."

The weeks starts out right when a sucker punch on the field lands Chicagoist in the middle of a Sox/Cubs throwdown and the fists continue to fly in the comments. Despite suburban resident Ms. Pinney's best little try no books will be banned anytime soon and the El is really really gross.

It took us awhile, but we think we finally got a handle on the all the hubbub over the plan to build that shopping mall/YMCA at Piers 27-31. Which is a good thing because yesterday, the Board of Supervisors voted the sucker down. There goes four years of planning and non-existent fund raising. Our drama begins with Aaron Peskin pulling out a rarely used, little known ordinance that ruled that any huge development has to be re-examined and analyzed part-way into the development to check on it's economic feasibility. Peskin, whose district covers the area being discussed, has been a long-time critic of the plan, as has most the other Supervisors. Ever since the plan was announced in those halcyon days of 2001, the usual squeaky wheels have been squeaking about the usual things and got the Supervisors to listen. Never let it be said that your Board of Supervisors won't waste a good opportunity to get more Working Class Hero bona fides.

We thought we'd update you on the latest brouhaha being currently ha'ed about in the city which is the Fairmont's announcement a week ago that they were kind of sort of thinking that just maybe they'll convert some of their luxury suites into condos. This announcement quickly got Aaron Peskin's panties in a bunch and he immediately announced he was going to come down against it and introduce a ban into the Board of Supes. First he played the "landmark" card but then quickly switched to the "jobs" card when he realized that the section of the Fairmont that the hotel wants to convert is not the part everyone thinks of when they think of the hotel, but the ugly stepsister portion of it. The jobs card is an especially potent one because all of this is taking place amidst the backdrop of the still going on hotel workers strike. We can see how announcing a new plan that could result in a loss of jobs while in the midst of a strike could be seen as a bit inflammatory. We can also see, however, the confusion caused by Peskin in that he recently led the charge in preventing a waterfront hotel to be built over a certain height despite the fact that larger hotels mean larger work forces and smaller hotels lead to smaller work forces.

One... two... three... -- the City Attorney and the Mayor's Office are pointing counting fingers at each other about a screwup over the time Newsom has to exercise veto power. So on June 24, the Board of Supes denied approval a proposal to build a 40-foot hotel on the waterfront. At the time, Newsom said he might veto the proposal but was interested in maybe working out some kind of compromise to keep the hotel plans afloat. The bill was delivered to Newsom's office on June 30. Here's where it gets screwy. So the City Attorney (and the Board of Supes), calculated that Gavin didn't need to sign the veto until yesterday, the 11th. (We don't have a pocket veto in San Francisco.) However, the city clerk has taken the position that Newsom had to veto the bill within 10 calendar days or it would become law. 10 calendar days from June 30 was Sunday the 10th. Oops. Newsom's now hoping the Board will still be willing to work with him on getting a compromise on the hotel. And it does seem a little weird -- even if we assume that weekends count as "days" for the clerk's office, does July 4, since holidays are usually excluded from time-limit calculations? Meanwhile, as it stands, the bill is now law and there will be no hotel built on the site.

Stage Fog gets you into the great outdoors this week.

Beer: We like it. So Half Moon Bay Brewing Company — a waterfront restaurant that brews its own — seemed a great choice for a foggy afternoon on the coast.

Bono makes appearance at Glide Memorial on Sunday, singing "Stand By Me" and talked of meeting the pope and offering him his "fly" shades.

We fondly remember when we lived in New York oh so many years ago and we had a chuckle with a dear friend about a hilarious article in the New York Times about how they were going to name that little section of SoHo west of Broadway "NoLIta." "Nolita! North of Little Italy! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!" we said. Both of us moved to San Francisco shortly afterwards, and now the name Nolita is so unremarkable that it's become the name of an indie-pop chanteuse's album. Go figure. We were reminded of this touching tale of New York in the 90s by a piece in the Chron's newly re-jazzed San Francisco section, about how the neighborhood by the Farmers' Market and the Waterfront is taking a vote on adopting a cool new moniker for the area. Residents and people who work in the area say it'll help their image and give them more clout at City Hall if they have a buzzy new name to call themselves. We giggled a little when we read this -- but hey, no doubt that "Nolita" has done pretty well for itself since we left New York. Names under consideration include: the East Harbor District, Historic Waterfront, NoMa (oh Noma!), Seawall, and Yerba Buena Cove. We kind of like "Barbary Coast." If you live or work in the area, you're welcome to vote from 6-8 at MacArthur Park. We're looking forward to seeing new Neighborhoodies with whatever name wins the election jauntily festooned on the front!

Mark over at HotelChatter tipped us off to some anonymous photos taken from the inside of local hotelier Joi de Vivre's new boutique hotel on the Embarcadero, Hotel Vitale. While the project was initially given the go-ahead way back in 1997, delays have included the downturn in tourism after the dot-bomb and attacks of September 11th. Now that local tourist spending is on the rebound, Joi de Vivre hopes to cash in on a trend toward luxury spending -- rooms with sweeping views and plush amenities are expected to cost from $269 a night for a basic room to $650 a night for a suite. The Hotel's website boasts:

199 spacious guestrooms and suites, at this newest San Francisco landmark hotel, many with expansive water views, spa-styled bathrooms and a sumptuously soothing interior design

Full service luxury hotel with 24-hour room service, twice daily housekeeping service, valet parking and Wi-Fi in all guestrooms

Circular Suites with panoramic 270 degree "infinity views" of the San Francisco Bay that can be enjoyed from the bed or deep soaking tub