I’ve been so busy over at Jesuit Watch. The good news is that the ability of the Roman Catholic Church to do harm is diminishing worldwide. It’s influence in US politics continues to astonish and disgust. The five RC supremes must be impeached!
I’ve begun to propound the tenets of the karass I’ve mentioned here before, FOME, Familiars of Mineral Existence.
I’ve also been installing a remodeled net-game in mostly beautiful weather. Today in Golden Gate Park we stopped playing for a few seconds to watch a red tail hawk on patrol around the tennis courts.
I’ve been observing local politics and it’s too depressing, but I have to comment about yesterday’s Board of Supervisors discussion of “incivility.”
Wimps! You want incivility! Check out this AFP story, though you don’t have to go much past the lead:
BERLIN (AFP) - German politicians on Wednesday condemned as "tasteless" a mocked-up photo on the cover of a Polish magazine of Poland's ruling twin brothers sucking German Chancellor Angela Merkel's bare breasts.
That would be like the Bay Guardian running a photoshopjob of Gavin Newsom sucking you-know-who’s ****.
In an op-ed Chron piece this morning defender of Ed Jew asked why the rush to get him out of office.
There are allegations of election improprieties (felonies) and public corruption (extortion), but hey!, so what.
Allegations are allegations. That Louisiana guy. Jefferson, finally got arrested, but he spent months in the US Congress after $90k in cash was found in his deep freeze.
The op-ed writer suggests that the anti-Jew vehemence is rooted in racism. This is obvious poppycock. I'm sure there are plenty of corrupt Asian public officials who don’t get the kind of treatment afforded flower-boy Ed.
So why the drumbeat to throw Ed out? The answer to that question is more complicated and probably more nefarious than any garden-variety racism.
Image-googling I came across the above from edjew.net. Man! It cost’s a hundred bucks just to be his friend!
I was maybe eight years old so it was fifty years ago that I met Bob Barker. My family was living in North Hollywood and our next door neighbor, who was a some-time stunt man, was doing a gig for Truth or Consequences, hosted by Mr Barker.
It was at NBC in Burbank so it wasn’t far away. I think my brother and I might have gotten out of school for a couple of hours. My dad took off work and drove us plus the stunt-man’s wife and two girls to the morning taping.
We’d just gotten settled, the two boys and two girls, in one row, my dad and Mrs Benson in the row behind us, when the warm up started.
Announcing during the show (“Mrs Grunwald come on down!!!”) is the gravy part of the second-fiddle's job, his main responsiblity is to warm the audience up before the show. This one did a good job.
One of his jokes sticks in my mind:
Show of hands: how many men are here with their wives?
Ok, how many are here with other men’s wives?
Of course, I turned around and urged my dad to raise his hand. He didn’t.
After the show we went down to the stage and Mr Benson, the stunt man, introduced us to Bob Barker. I got to shake his hand. I was impressed at how personable he was, as if there was nothing in the world he’d rather be doing than greeting us strangers.
A few months later Mr Benson turned up with blond hair. He was stunt doubling for Fred Astaire in the car race scene in On the Beach.
Culturally, North Hollywood in the late 1950’s was a little more happenin’ than San Francisco’s outer Parkside district.
My favorite political commentator (local) was on TV today. h. brown spoke at a Budget/Oversight Committee meeting that had been called on short notice to ram through a four-year contract with the city’s police.
h. pays attention to SFPD issues and strongly advocates steroid testing for violence prone officers.
For a nutty, gadfly, city-hall watcher, the pols take him seriously. They all know him. And they’re all just slightly afraid of what h. might say about them in his next Fog City Journal article. See his latest article here.
We hear Board President Peskin interrupt h. brown in the middle of h.’s allotted two minutes. It was rude and designed to put h. off his stride.
I checked the official agenda on the Board’s website and sure enough, h. was correct. At issue is when the committee planned for the full Board of Supervisors to consider the motion (MOU).The listing of this agenda item includes this statement:
The Chair intends to entertain a motion to send this item (File 070721) to Board as a Committee Report for consideration on June 12, 2007.
Peskin apparently had agreed, possibly because of heat generated over the weekend by h. brown, to wait two weeks before the full BoS considers the package. So Peskin ambushed him.
Anyway, it's impolite to interrupt a speaker who's been waiting hours and has only two minutes to make his point.
At the end, after h. has accused the committee members of election-year largesse, Peskin does a parting nyah-nyah, reminding us that he, Peskin is termed-out from the board.
I hope Peskin tries the private sector. They'll teach him some manners.
The contract is over fifty pages long, see it here.
We in San Francisco’s District 4 are learning more and more about the real estate empire of our supervisor, Ed Jew. Soon we'll have a final tally of residences-owned and a designation of the “official” residence.
Presumably, behind the scenes, investigators are tallying the number of sets of books (financial records) supervisor Jew keeps, and, assuming the answer is an integer greater than one, which set of books is the “official” record.
Pathetically, it all boils down to tapioca. Such is the nature of local politics. It’s the bush leagues (baseball metaphor) of graft. Politicans are not allowed to participate in multi-million dollar military contracting bribes until they’ve proven they can handle little $40k tapioca deals.
It looks like Ed won’t be called up to the majors any time soon.
I found a great report on the $10k donation Ed is trying to make to a local playground-improvement group. The site is new to me, Crooked Street Press. The article, Ed Jew Finds $10,000 in Couch Cushion, is way amusing.
Sub-head and lead:
“I should really clean my couch more often.” -Ed Jew by Fritz
Sunset, San Francisco- Ed Jew was busy doing spring cleaning in his house in the Sunset Wednesday after the FBI trashed the place when he reportedly found $10,000 under one of his couch cushions. No word yet from authorities on if the money found was part of the $40,000 that Jew took from the Quickly chain store.
My other blog, Jesuit Watch, has attracted the attention of a Catholic apologist who is commenting anonymously on current and some previous posts.
The job of an apologist is to defend his or her organization against any and all verbal charges and attacks.
Regarding the Inquisition, for instance, Catholic apologists say that the Church didn’t kill anyone—all executions were performed by civil authorities.
Commenting on my story of the little swindle a Jebbie tried to pull on me, Anonymous called me “a bit paranoid” and suggested that the facts as I presented them couldn’t be true. Check it out in Why the Jesuits?
Apologetics is a dull, thankless job, that draws the same disrespect afforded to lawyers and dieticians.
Some of us are old enough to remember the dis-flavor of CPUSA’s defense of Stalinism.
The other day we saw on the Tucker Carlson show, Medea Benjamin defending Hugo Chavez’ closure of the opposition press.
My best friend, Pud, is on his way back from Venezuela as we speak. Pud says he had a major project about to be inked with the now-closed TV station. The “documentary” was to have propounded Pud’s Yamomami Paradigm for Human Survival. [I’m pretty sure the “paradigm” involves lots of hammock-time and ethno-botanicals.]
“It was the world’s last, best chance,” Pud said over a crackly cell connection, “I’m coming home to get drunk.”
Catholic Answers Forum has an Ask an Apologist section. Check out this Q&A titled Can You Answer a Question About Masturbation?
In answering the sincere young male convert, Father Vincent Serpa, O.P., makes this remarkable statement:
Nowhere will you find a higher understanding of sexuality than in the Catholic Church.
Survivors of re-assigned priest sex abuse might beg to differ.
According to this story in Catholic World News, two books have been added to Poland’s compulsory reading list for high school students. They are a biography of Pope John Paul II and a book by the same pope.
To make room for the Pope, Kafka and Goethe were removed from the list.
A major shame of the so called progressives or Greens in San Francisco is their failure to advocate for public transit.
The recent meltdown of Muni Metro barely raised an eyebrow on our so called progressive Board of Supervisors. It is amazing to me how no elected official in this town takes any responsibility of any kind for the functioning of our transportation system.
Now Board President Aaron “flight-risk monitor” Peskin has concocted a voter referendum to solve Muni’s problems.
This legislation will be voted on in the November election, five months from now. After that, implementation may take, what?, years. So Muni riders have to endure the same shitty service.
It’s hard to find a copy of the proposal but it reportedly has four main sections:
1. Rearranges funding for Muni, supposedly to fill the gap between what they need and what they currently receive.
2. Changes of work/compensation rules for drivers and supervisors.
3. Upgrade entire diesel fleet to biodiesel.
4. Something about bicycling.
Of these only the first two have anything to do with possible improvements in on-time performance.
Biodiesel/green issues may be a good thing, but it has nothing to do with on-time performance.
And why there would be anything in this legislation about bicycling baffles me.
So once again, Muni riders are getting the shaft.
When the referendum passes, the environmentalists and bicyclists will rush to get what the legislation promises to them.
Muni drivers have already expressed vehement opposition to the work rules and compensation components. So those things will take forever to implement, it at all.
Why is the Muni problem so intractable?
Peskin’s plan has some association with SPUR, San Francisco Planning and Urban Renewal something-or-other, a true wolf in sheep’s clothing, that has been steadfastly blocking Muni reform for many years.
I hope Aaron Peskin’s political career ends with his term-limited Supervisorial stint. If he runs for Mayor, I’ll vote for Newsom.
BTW: Peskin as snitch. When he found out that his colleague, Ed Jew, who is under federal investigation for corruption, was taking a trip to China, Peskin notified the FBI that Jew was a “flight risk.”
What a fucking fool! Aaron’s been watching too much Law and Order.
Local politics has me down. I’ve been paying more attention than usual and nothing is very uplifting.
The global ecology situation seems to be heading toward major dieback, just based on world population.
The Ameican culture of production and consumption is unsustainable. Americans seems willing to go to war to keep gas prices low.
The sense of camaraderie and generosity felt by the American survivors of World War II and their offspring seems to have dissipated.
The nation votes against the war and we’re still at war.
Locally we vote for auto access to Golden Gate Park on Saturdays, now we have a compromise with the Bicycle lobby.
Republicans cheer for torture.
[For the record: I was taught that even if the human race should perish, we are never permitted to torture.]
Our most important civic asset is the Municipal Railway System. We have a transit first policy. Yet no politicians or pundits, including blogs-progs, care about Muni’s miserable performance.
“Progressives” recommend private bicycles as the alternative to Muni. But we’re getting green grocery bags, and they’re going to run Muni (late) on reprocessed restaurant griddle grease (only $1.45 more per gallon than regular diesel).
Word is that Jared Blumenthal’s burgeoning Department of the Environment will soon announce a major new initiative to turn shit into Shinola.
My District 4 Supervisor Ed Jew gets caught with $20,000 of FBI sting money in his flower-shop safe. Examiner story here.
The cash, $40k total, came from “businessmen” seeking “help” with the difficult process of getting permit and licenses for some stores they wanted to open. At one point Ed said he couldn’t even remember the names of the men who gave him $40,000 in hundred-dollar bills.
Early on Ed said the $20k remaining in his safe was to be donated to help fix up a playground in his district. (The cash was to be delivered to Rec & Park via flying pig.)
Now I’m not so depressed. This is kind of exciting.
Public corruption is under-reported and under-prosecuted in this town.
The odors emerging from Ed flower shop smell like felonies. It would be a lot of fun if Ed started blabbing. Maybe the FBI will follow the other $20k.
A couple days ago Mayor Newsom and D.A Kamala Harris held a press conference in the Bay View to announce four new gun laws they are introducing. Chron story here.
Supervisor Chris Daly, who spearheaded Prop. H and regularly opposes Newsom, said he was glad to see the mayor focusing on gun control.
Frequently the Mayor’s announcements of new initiatives includes phrases like “first in the nation,” “first in the world,” “groundbreaking,” “a model for the rest of the country.”
Not this time. And I rejoice. San Francisco does enough service as a social-engineering laboratory, its residents as lab rats. At least this time we’re piggy-backing on the efforts of other jurisdictions.
When asked about legal, constitutional challenges to the new laws, Harris said the laws had been modeled on laws implemented and tested in other California cities.
I salute such cost-effective efforts.
In a sort-of related theme, one commenter at this week’s WiFi hearing explained the need for WiFi thusly:
Where she lives, in Bay View Hunter’s Point, they have computers in the libraries, but it’s not safe to walk to the libraries. Solution—provide wifi access to those imprisoned in their own homes.
I guess “free” wifi for the entire city is cheaper than providing effective law enforcement for the “underserved” neighborhoods.
Mayor Newsom is eager to provide free wireless internet access to the people of San Francisco. To this end he is promoting an exclusive franchise agreement with Earthlink/Google to offer 300K wireless (as opposed to 56K dialup) for free and and 1,000K for something like $21.00 per month.
Earthlink/Google receives the right to put up poles and exclusive access to a presumably large advertising audience.
In the couple of months that I’ve been paying attention, the franchise deal is being advocated as a way of delivering internet service (of any kind) to poor people, especially poor school kids, many of whom are black or Hispanic.
So the franchise agreement is presented a matter of social justice.
To its supporters, the question is, Should poor kids have access to the internet?
To critics, the question is, How good a deal is this for San Francisco?
Today there was a hearing before the Board of Supervisors’ Budget Committee about whether to move the proposal forward to the full board.
To Mayor Newsom the deal would be a feather in his cap, an important resume item in his search for higher office. The Board, generally at odds with the mayor is exploring an alternative plan.
The clip below shows the testimony of Kimo Crossman, one of sfmike’s heroes, and a star of his Civic Center Blog.
According to sfmike, Kimo was instrumental in creating public skepticism about the proposed deal.
Kimo points out, among other things, that despite the sales pitch, there is nothing in the proposed contract that guarantees coverage to all San Franciscans.
Check out Civic Center Blog for coverage of the rally on City Hall steps of proposal supporters, prior to going inside for the hearing.
The rally was organized by the Mayor’s reelection campaign.
[I love my cable internet (6000-8000K) service and I don’t have a laptop or blackberry or anything like that, so the presence of WiFi service won’t mean much to me unless it brings down the price of my cable. I had a bad experience with Earthlink and I wouldn’t to do business with them again.]
According to this morning’s Examiner.com story Nathaniel Ford will do what it takes to fix the current Muni crisis caused by the introduction of sevice on the new T-Third streetcar line.
Ford, however, has ensured that all options are being explored with a focus on quality customer service.
He can begin by returning to pre-T-Third scheduling: shut down the T-Third, bring back the 15, and run the same schedules as before the bomb hit.
Since no one has benefited from the introduction of T-Third service, the elimination (temporary) of the T-Third would hurt no one. Returning to normal service on the 15 and other lines eliminated or changed by the T-Third would bring immediate relief to many riders.
This would give Muni management breathing room to figure out how to introduce service on the T-Third in a way that actually improves the public transit experience and doesn’t mess everything up.
After watching yesterday as a Supervisors' Committee furthered the giveaway of public land to Lennar Corporation, I awakened this morning to this bullshit Examiner story.
The gist: There are a number of street paving projects scheduled to be done in District 4. Our District 4 Supervisor, Ed Jew, looked at the District 4 projects in the queue and suggested a change, based on perceived need, in the order in which the District 4 projects by done. This doesn't affect the schedule for projects in other districts in any way.
But in the Examiner story, Board president Aaron Peskin attacks Ed Jew for using "politics" to influence how a city department does its job. Maybe I'm dense, but isn't that what an elected official is supposed to do?
So I sent this email to Aaron Peskin. I'll post his response if any.
Dear Supervisor Peskin:
According to this morning’s Examiner story you are attacking my supervisor, Ed Jew, for practicing “politics.”
As a native resident of District 4, I must take exception to your attack.
The readers of my blog would like to know:
1) Is the Examiner story accurate? Anything you would like to add?
2) Who exactly was harmed by the scheduling change?
3) Since all the work is within District 4, what business is it of yours?
4) If our district supervisor can’t help City departments fine-tune their services to meet his district’s needs, who will?
5) Don’t you do the same thing in your district?
6) Aren’t you just punishing Ed Jew for his insistence (so far) on furthering his constituents’ interests instead of going along with the Board’s majority?
The Board of Supervisors Land Use Committee unanimously voted to approve and send to the full Board a resolution endorsing a controversial development plan.
The “Conceptual Framework,” adds Candlestick Point land to an existing project at Hunters Point being conducted by mega-developer Lennar Corporation.
Some critics refer to this as a “gift” of public land to a private, for-profit corporation, Lennar.
The affected residents of Bay View/Hunters Point fear that their homes and neighborhood will be stolen from them for the benefit of private corporations and upwardly mobile new arrivals to the City.
And rightly so. My impression of the history of redevelopment in San Francisco is one of shame. Basically it’s: Promise the colored folks and poor folks anything in order to get them out of their homes, then, don’t return their calls.
The residents of BVHP will have their homes and neighborhood taken from them, the only question is what, besides promises, they can get in return.
At the meeting today, public comment divided between “let’s move the project forward,” and, “Lennar Corp is a bad actor and should be dumped from the plan.”
As proof of their contention that Lennar Corp is a bad actor, BVHP speakers hammered on an incident in which Lennar Corporation, already grading at the Hunter’s Point facility, failed to monitor the disbursal of asbestos into the surrounding neighborhood.
Other instances of Lennar’s failure to obey environmental regulations, with possible health effects on the neighbors, were cited as examples of why the community doesn’t trust, and why the City government shouldn’t do business with, Lennar.
Here’s my favorite speaker:
All three supervisors, Maxwell, Sandoval, and Dufty, after public comment ended, expressed concern and outrage about the possible environmental threat, and chided Lennar.
They treated the critics as being concerned about discreet health issues, which they wholeheartedly agreed with. The Supervisors completely ignored the commenters’ assertion that Lennar should be dumped from the project, or at least should be investigated.
Basically, the residents were pleading for a developer that might be less rapacious. The supervisors did not even recognize this plea as having been made.
So the message is clear: Lennar is more powerful than the Board of Supervisors, the Mayor, or the voters of SF. BVHP constituents are on their own to negotiate a fair price for their homes.
Good luck.
Lennar Corp has been in the news recently for failing to repair timely gross defects in a new “luxury condo” building in San Francisco. Here’s a recent Chronicle story lead:
When Michael Cullen used the stove at his new $1.5 million penthouse in San Francisco's trendy South Beach, the ventilation failed and his condo filled with smoke. When he filled his spacious new bathtub, it leaked, soaking subflooring beneath bathroom tile and damaging wood paneling.
The entire complex has defects, according to Cullen. The garage walls leak, the water pressure is weak and inconsistent, and the entire west wing of the building experiences temperature swings due to ventilation problems, he said.
The article goes on to explain the difficulty of getting Lennar Corp., the builder, to correct the problems
"It's really disheartening to pay this much for a brand-new home and to have all this stuff happening," said Cullen. "It's been three years of absolute hell fighting ... and I don't see any end in sight."
If a white guy who just paid $1.5 million for a condo finds Lennar unresponsive, imagine what will happen to the mostly black, mostly poor residents of Bay View/Hunters Point.
In 1967 (or so) my teacher, Dan Langton, who always took an anti-heroic attitude about the poetry profession, used to say that he was a poet because, when he graduated from college, he realized it was the only thing he knew how to do.
There’s not much of a career path for poets, at least in the USA.
Dan’s pitch was:
“How much does it take to sustain life these days? Twenty-five dollars a week?” [This was forty years ago.]
“So how many poets in the world make $25/week in royalties for their poetry?
“Zero.”
Working poets require “real” jobs or independent means.
The standard career path is to get an advanced degree, kiss the proper asses to get published in sufficiently stuffy poetry magazines, win some awards, then get a university teaching position. That’s a “successful” poet.
A failed poet was someone who followed this same path but wound up with a high school teaching position.
Then why train poets?
Two reasons:
1) Poetry creation is a major part of some occupations; and
2) Poetizing skills enrich the language and make life more fun.
One of my favorite definitions of “poetry” is “utterances repeated verbatim for pleasure.”
One of the most satisfying events in my life is when someone quotes me. Even better is when I can’t remember having said it, and it sounds really good. Like, did I say that? Good for me!
I woke up smiling this morning thinking about a cheer I created one afternoon years ago. I sat for a few innings with some fans of a softball team I didn’t like very much and they didn’t much like me.
Rolo, a Castro District fashion empire, was kind of snooty, tending toward A-gay. They did, however, have a couple of players that were way cute.
Poor Rolo was getting beaten and they were hanging there heads. They needed some perking.
Their beautiful uniforms (the team was more about fashion than athletics) were white with purple trim, so I made up this cheer:
Purple, purple, white white white, Rolo, Rolo, fight fight fight!
So simple! I shared it with four or five folks near me, and after just one sotovoce rehearsal, we yelled it clean, first time through.
I can’t remember if Rolo’s play perked, but their ears pricked.
Poetry is an essential ingredient of stand-up comedy, advertising, and speechwriting. Also title and headline writing. I guess we should include song lyrics and rap.
Dan Langton used to say that, if you include song lyrics and advertising jingles, the average American knows thousands of lines of poetry by heart.
This is a utilitarian view. Some poets pursue purely personal goals, such as, “To be lucid at the moment of ecstasy.”
I say, “Where’s the beef?”
Yesterday with my old friend Paul, when I expressed pessimism about the future of the human race and the decline of my own culture, he quoted one of my familiar lines: “I’m glad I’m old and I’m going to die soon.”
According to this Reuters story an illegal immigrant from El Salvador was deported two days ago to his native country.
Liberal outrage? Protests in the streets?
Not exactly.
He wasn’t hurting anyone. He was a humble janitor at a motel, but Gonzalo Guevara-Cerritos, 43, had been a Salvadoran army officer who was convicted of participating in the military's 1989 massacre of six Jesuit priests.
Reuters provides this background:
Los Angeles is home to some 250,000 Salvadorans, many of whom fled to the United States during the Central American country's 12-year civil war in which the U.S. government supported the right-wing Salvadoran government and its army.
More than 75,000 people died in the 1980-92 conflict, including 17 priests, most murdered for their leftist political views.
Guevara had served his sentence in El Salvador but he must have wanted to ditch his reputation and start a new life in the U.S.
Guevara, who had been maintaining a low profile for fear of being identified by pissed off Salvadorans, was turned in to ICE by a member of the public, quite possibly a fellow illegal immigrant.
According to the story, former death-squader Guevara was not identified by any public agency. In California, inquiries by public employees about the immigration status of individuals is mostly forbidden.
My city, San Francisco, is a “sanctuary” for people like Guevara, so too, Los Angeles where Guevara was arrested.
Apparently Guevara had broken no U.S. laws except those involving his undocumented status. The only legal reason ICE had to arrest and deport the man was his illegal status.
Yet, who will protest his deportation? Who will tell me that I, acting in concert with my fellow U.S. citizens, do not have the right to kick this mass murderer out of my country?
Viva la Migra!
Click here to go to a School of the Americas Watch pdf showing SOA grads in the news.
My alma mater, St Ignatius High School, sends a contingent to the yearly protests at the now (more ominously) renamed School of the Americas (wikilink). Not only did Guevara and his fellow right wing death-squaders kill the six Jesuits, they killed the housekeeper and the housekeeper’s daughter. This really irked the Jesuits. If a Jebbie dropped the dime on Guevara, good for him!
There is a movement afoot to reconstruct the tennis complex in Golden Gate Park (my home courts).
Pud is preparing an extensive rant on this misguided plan.
For $17 million, we'll get only marginal additional court-hours per year. And that is dependent on lighting the courts.
One rumored new feature involves access to the courts. The complex will be fenced and access will be gained through the newly built clubhouse.
If this is true, it means they plan to have a private concessionaire run the place. (City employees could not be counted on to show up.) This basically means increased court fees.
People who want to play before the concessionaire opens will be SOL. I took these pictures the other morning when I met my friend there for 7:30am singles.
In the winter, we play at “first light.” This is the sort of plan against which I would support raw obstructionist lawsuits to delay groundbreaking, if such there ever be, until after my playing days are over. My doubles partner this morning is 82 years old. Using him as a benchmark, that gives me 24 more years of tennis, requiring 24 years of litigation.
The courts are fine they way they are. For $17 million they could build a supurb new facility in a less crowded part of town. Or, invested at 4%, it would generate $680,000 per year which would fully fund 4 or 5 FTEs to maintain the courts we already have.
I think the dot com boom, with its "fail fast" mentality and over capitalization, created specialists in spending money fast. (Secret: sign big checks.)
When Muni Metro was sold to the voters of San Francisco we were promised that four-car trains would run in the underground.
Four-car trains were to couple and uncouple at West Portal Station and at Duboce/Church for transition to and from surface operation as singles or two-car trains.
This promise has never been delivered. Why? Because it’s “too hard.”
The coupling and uncoupling process was just too difficult.
When Nathaniel Ford tells you any statistics regarding the number of trains going through, say, the Embarcadero Station, he’s talking about two-car trains, not the promised four-car trains.
Want to double Muni Metro Capacity? Run the promised four-car trains.
The idea that our great city (gag) can’t figure out how to couple and uncouple streetcars timely tells us how lame our elected officials really are.
So, what do we do with these folks? Let's give them another $1.5 billion to build some more subway--a subway with lot's of "promise."
The below video clip shows an outbound T-Third streetcar approaching on King Street then, turning left onto Fourth Street. This is one of the bottlenecks noted in the Muni Metro meltdown occasioned by the opening of the T-Third line last week.
If I were a streetcar passenger in a hurry to catch a train at the CalTrain station just across Fourth Street, my blood pressure would climb to aneurism level.
The entire clip lasts 114 seconds, almost two minutes. The clip ends just before the car pulls up to platform "B." Passengers are not allowed to disembark at point "A"—there’s no platform there. As you can see platform "B," where they can get off, is farther from the CalTrain station "C." So they wait two minutes in order to travel farther away (a couple hundred feet) from CalTrain.
This was shot around 11:30am yesterday (Wednesday) and all traffic was flowing smoothly in all directions. Imagine if you were on a streetcar just behind this one, watching the CalTrain train you wanted pulling away from the station.
