Yeah, San Francisco's nice, we guess. But you know what it REALLY needs? Parking garages. Yeah, get rid of that stupid Yerba Buena garden, and that useless Golden Gate Park, and that , smelly Mission. We're sick of coffee shops, park benches, covenience stores, murals, and jerks like Supervisor Daly (who's sponsoring legislation that would prevent construction of free-standing parking garages in SF, and limit apartment-building parking spots) who are blind to the unadorned beauty of a squat concrete bunker that reeks of gasoline and pigeon droppings.

The argument in favor of garages is something like, "families, businesspeople, and tourists can't get around without a car and asphalt terraces on every corner," and yes, it would suck to haul a family's-worth of groceries home on Muni. But y'know, folks sure do seem to find a way to make it work in cities like NYC and Boston and London, where we can't recall ever seeing many aboveground freestanding garages. (And have you ever tried parking in LA's Beverly Center garage? It's like friggin Labyrinth in there, complete with a Bog of Eternal Stench.)

It's hard to argue that it wouldn't be nice if fewer people drove and more people took mass transit. But Chris' measure doesn't actually improve access to busses and trains, or the dismal quality of SF transit. It just lowers drivers' quality of life to match that of bus riders'. Le sigh. Meanwhile, big-business groups like SFSOS and The Hotel Coalition are crying bloody murder over efforts to keep SF from looking like LA. It's expected to heat up in January; the supes requested that the Planning Department do a study on the whole dealio, so we can expect a lot of clamor as each side makes its case. Stay tuned!

awful