Irate neighbors and Sups put the brakes on corporate ferris wheel in GG Park

Rec and Park boss Phil Ginsburg, a master at shilling for the corporate dollar regardless of its environmental impact, is exasperated. His latest corporate boondoggle may be doomed to an early demise.

An irate citizenry is saying Enough!!!!!

Supervisors Connie Chan who represents the nearby Richmond District, Dean Preston from the historic Haight, Aaron Peskin from the North Beach-Chinatown area and Board of Supervisors President Shamann Walton who represents the Bayview-Hunters Point are saying, Hold on. Not so fast.

San Francisco has always been about the almighty dollar. Perhaps there is change in the air. And the 150 foot carnival barkers dream may not be part of the skyline.

San Francisco Chronicle 2.17.2021

The public debate over whether to extend the SkyStar Observation Wheel in Golden Gate Park for four more years went round and round like the big wheel itself, at the meeting of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission Wednesday afternoon. At the end of three hours, the commissioners decided let it go round and round some more, as the issue was continued, by a unanimous 6-0 vote, to its next regular meeting on March 3.

Some members of the Historic Preservation Commission were willing to grant a six week extension to allow further study, and even that was shelved in favor of a continuation, at the request of Supervisors Connie Chan, Dean Preston and Aaron Peskin.

Leading up to the meeting, the commission had received hundreds of emails, two thirds of them opposed to the extension and even that might have been understating it.

People against the wheel questioned the economic benefit to the city and questioned whether the park should be in the business of providing economic benefit to begin with, and specifically to an out-of-state amusement operator.

And it may all start back up again Thursday when the Recreation and Park Commission jumps aboard to address the same issue. Both government agencies must approve the request by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department to extend the contract for four more years so that the private operator of the attraction may recoup its investment and so that the wheel, which costs $18 a ride for adults and $12 for seniors and children, might serve as an engine of economic growth as the city comes out of the pandemic.

Rec and Park had pressed for a decision so that it might start making improvements to the SkyStar, which is powered by a generator that some citizens describe as too noisy, and under lights that some describe as too bright. The power has been kept on even though the attraction has only operated for 39 days, having been shut down twice by COVID-19 restrictions, which delayed its original opening from April 4, 2020 to Oct. 21.

“I don’t know where this went sideways,” said an exasperated Phil Ginsburg, general manager of the Rec and Park Department. “We’ve asked for four years. We don’t know when it will have a chance to run at full capacity. Six weeks won’t cut it.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Debate-over-keeping-SkyStar-Observation-Wheel-in-15958697.php

Banned on Nextdoor for questioning the unfettered rights of car owners.

Lee Heidhues – 2.16.2021

I have been banned on my San Francisco Nextdoor neighborhood site for advocating that the Great Highway adjacent to the Pacific Ocean be permanently designated a car free zone.

In the past week I posted a series ‘Great Highway Reality Check I-V.’ Four of these posts have been posted on this site and migrated to Twitter.

The latest Post ‘V’ was titled ‘Life on the Disinformation Superhighway.’ It included as graphics a couple of photos from The Simpsons TV series. The post made mention of the misinformation and exaggerations directed my way regarding making The Great Highway a car free environment.

There have been approximately 500 comments to date.

There was never one example where I showed personal disrespect toward a Nextdoor user. That is presumably a criteria for Nextdoor banning a user.

The irony of my expulsion is that I have been personally attacked for my views, including one comment directed at me saying I am placing myself “at risk” for opposing the unfettered right of motorists to drive wherever and whenever they choose.

I also been told I should move out of town to Berkeley and that I have no business discussing this matter because I do not own a car.

So much for progressive San Francisco values.

Cops clearing cases? Another half-baked article on crime stats in San Francisco.

The San Francisco Chronicle is at it, again.

Like a story out of the best tabloid journalism the blaring headline trumpets the huge “spike in burglaries” in the City’s Richmond District.

What the story glaringly fails to analyze is how well the SFPD is, or is not, doing its job to “clear” or in more readily understandable language make an Arrest.

In the opening of 2021 SFPD has made arrests in less than 6% of the burglaries. In early 2020 the number of arrests was nearly 18 percent.

In reading the stats at the end of the article the question becomes.

Why have the number of arrests fallen so precipitously? That’s the story to be told.

https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/stay-safe/crime-data/clearance-rates-dashboard

San Francisco Chronicle 2.16.2021

San Francisco’s Richmond District has reported a 370% spike in burglaries this year compared to 2020, according to city data.

The number of burglaries reported stood at 108 as of Feb. 7 according to a report from the San Francisco Police Department’s Richmond Station. That’s up from 23 reported at the same time last year.

San Francisco police define burglaries as an unlawful entry into a home or business to commit a felony or a theft. The department defines “attempted forcible entry,” “forcible entry” and “unlawful entry,” where no force is used, as different types of crimes.

As of Feb. 7, there were 56 forcible entries reported in the Richmond. Last year that number was at 12, according to San Francisco Police Department data.

The number of attempted forcible entries reported as of Feb. 7 was 26. Compared to last year’s single reported attempted forcible entry — a 250% jump.

In all of San Francisco, burglaries have increased by 57% from 2020, according to the police department’s crime statistics dashboard.

“The department has seen an increase in burglaries across the city, particularly after the COVID-19 shelter in place orders took effect,” SFPD spokesperson Michael Andraychak told The Chronicle in an email statement. “We are seeing a trend of garage burglaries in which bicycles are being stolen.”

San Francisco police and residents have seen an uptick in home burglaries since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The Richmond District and the Marina have been among the hardest hit by reported burglaries since late 2020. Police have acknowledged the difficulties in arresting burglary suspects, given that, without physical evidence or eyewitnesses, such cases can be particularly difficult to solve.

Reported car break-ins, on the other hand, have dropped after the shelter-in-place orders and travel restrictions cleared the city of tourists — frequent targets of break-ins — in mid-March.

Here are the number of reported burglaries reported as of Feb. 7 compared to last year in the Richmond, according to city data:

• Attempted forcible entry:

2021: 26

2020: 1

• Forcible entry:

2021: 56

2020: 12

• Unlawful entry (no force):

2021: 30

2020: 11

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Data-Burglaries-in-S-F-s-Richmond-District-up-15954563.php

Golden Gate Park is not a carnival barkers dream. Ferris wheel must go

The eyesore which is the 150 foot tall ferris wheel standing astride the Concourse in Golden Gate Park is the worst example of the proverbial white elephant.

The Ferris Wheel, brought here by out of State money makers, was just the latest toy imported to San Francisco by the money hungry and corporate subservient Recreation and Parks Department.

The Pandemic has limited its use for nearly a year. One day the Pandemic will subside. The promoters are pitching the idea that San Francisco can keep this monstrosity four more years. Who will benefit on this desecration of the Park? The promoters who stand to have a nice four year long payday.

Take it down right now.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 2.14.2021

The 150-foot-tall SkyStar Observation Wheel in Golden Gate Park would stay for four more years under a plan by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department, but environmental groups and some residents of the area oppose the move.

Among those opposing the extension is Supervisor Dean Preston, who represents neighboring Haight-Ashbury. The Haight Ashbury-Neighborhood Council (HANC) has already voted to oppose the four-year plan.

“I’m not seeing the basis for such a long extension,” Preston said by text. “As one constituent said to me ‘this is a park, not an amusement park.”

Seconding that opinion is Sierra Club San Francisco Bay, which objects to the lighting. The local Audubon Society also expressed concern about the lighting.

“Wildlife needs darkness,” Katherine Howard, a member of the group’s executive committee, wrote on a club blog post. “Light pollution can have a negative impact on birds — both resident and migrating — as well as bats, insects, amphibians, and other animals.”

The Historic Preservation Commission, an agency of the San Francisco Planning Department, will vote on the plan Wednesday. If the commission grants the requested Certificate of Appropriateness, the big Ferris wheel will operate in the park until March 2025, and will re-open as soon as San Francisco is removed from the purple tier of restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.

“We want to make good on our promise that people are going to have a ride on this thing,” said Tamara Aparton, spokesperson for the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department.

The amusement arrived in March 2020 to be a major attraction for a citywide celebration of the 150th anniversary of the park, which had been scheduled for April 4. But due to the shelter-in-place order, it did not open until 200 days later, on Oct. 8 and then it was allowed to run at 25% capacity until it was shut down again on Nov. 8, after 39 days in operation.

It has been empty ever since and will stay empty until San Francisco is released from the most restrictive tier of COVID-19 lockdowns.

The SkyStar is operated by Skyview Partners, a private entity firm, and costs $15 to ride for adults, $12 for seniors and kids. Five hundred free rides per month were offered to underserved communities in San Francisco. The arrangement calls for a portion of ticket sales to go to the Golden Gate Park Fund. In its truncated life in the park, 65,693 passengers took the ride, which made three revolutions, lifting to 15-stories in height and affording views to the Pacific Ocean during daylight and to Salesforce Tower at night.

Projections were for half a million riders during the first year and the hope is to provide those 500,000 rides and recoup the costs of having the SkyStar sit idle, by extending it for four years.

The meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission is at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, and open to the public via livestream.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Opponents-decry-city-proposal-to-keep-big-wheel-15951104.php#photo-20088244

Great Highway Reality Check IV. Taking to the street supporting freedom for Cyclists

Text and photos Liz and Lee Heidhues 2.13.2021

Today is the second day of the Lunar New Year of the Ox. To celebrate a group of 50 plus adults and kids cycled through the Richmond District of San Francisco. Many of the streets we traversed are now car free.

I had the opportunity to engage in conversation with several high placed City Hall functionaries who were along for the ride. I also spoke with a well known local print news reporter. I provided them with my unvarnished point of view about maintaining a CAR FREE San Francisco on The Great Highway.

The City Hall executives listened carefully and are receptive to making permanent the long term initiatives now in place which they promoted. I pointed out the entitled motorist community is a vocal and often obnoxious minority which will push unabashedly to drown out and overwhelm those with a different perspective.

I explained that my earlier posts have been the subject of personal attack, including one in which I was told by my advocacy for a CAR FREE Great Highway I am putting myself, “at risk.”

My audience only shook their collective heads.

Depressing and sad. Biden wants Brits to Extradite Julian Assange

Trump may be gone and Biden may be trying to erase his scandalous legacy.

Sadly there are some things which will never change. Julian Assange performed a heroic public service in shining a light on the violence and illegality of American foreign policy.

He is a hero. President Biden if he is truly the compassionate man he claims to be would let Julian Assange get on with his life in peace.

Sadly when I think of Biden the first thought which comes to mind that this is the man who, as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1991, greased the skids so that Clarence Thomas could be elevated to the US Supreme Court. A perch from which Justice Thomas has done everything he can to destroy American civil liberties for 30 years.

New York Times 2.12.2021

Advocates of press freedoms had urged the new administration to instead drop a Trump-era effort to prosecute the WikiLeaks founder.

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has signaled that for now it is continuing its predecessor’s attempt to prosecute Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, as the Justice Department filed a brief this week appealing to a British court to overturn a ruling that blocked his extradition to the United States.

This week, human rights and civil liberties groups had asked the acting attorney general, Monty Wilkinson, to abandon the effort to prosecute Mr. Assange, arguing that the case the Trump administration developed against him could establish a precedent posing a grave threat to press freedoms.

Julian Assange Extradition III 2.12.2021

Rebecca Vincent, the director of international campaigns for Reporters Without Borders, said the group was “extremely disappointed” that the Biden Justice Department had pressed on with the effort to bring Mr. Assange to the United States for prosecution.

“This marks a major missed opportunity for President Biden to distance himself from the Trump administration’s terrible record on press freedom,” Ms. Vincent said.

She warned: “The U.S. government is creating a dangerous precedent that will have a distinct chilling effect on national security reporting around the world. No journalist, publisher or source can be confident that they wouldn’t be criminally pursued for similar public interest reporting.”

Ms. Vincent also characterized the case against Mr. Assange as “political.” In January, however, Judge Baraitser had rejected Mr. Assange’s arguments that the American charges against him were politically motivated, ruling that they had been brought in good faith. The Justice Department had said that it was “gratified” by that part of her ruling.

Julian Assange Extraditiion I 2.24.2020.jpg

The Justice Department had been due to file a brief in support of its appeal of a judge’s ruling last month blocking the extradition of Mr. Assange on the grounds that American prison conditions are inhumane.

The appeal was lodged on Jan. 19 — the last full day of the Trump administration — so the decision to proceed with filing the brief was the first opportunity for the Biden administration to reconsider the disputed prosecution effort. A spokeswoman from the Crown Prosecution Office said on Friday that the American government filed the brief on Thursday.

The brief itself was not immediately available. Filings in British court, unlike in the United States, are not public by default. Marc Raimondi, a Justice Department spokesman, said the American government was not permitted to distribute it, but confirmed its filing.

“We are continuing to seek extradition,” he said.

The case against Mr. Assange is complex and does not turn on whether he is a journalist, but rather on whether the journalistic activities of soliciting and publishing classified information can be treated as a crime in the United States. The charges center on his 2010 publication of diplomatic and military files leaked by Chelsea Manning, not his later publication of Democratic Party emails hacked by Russia during the 2016 election.

Prosecutors have separately accused him of participating in a hacking conspiracy, which is not a journalistic activity. The immediate issue at hand in the extradition case, however, is neither of those things, but rather whether American prison conditions are inhumane.

In January, a British judge, Vanessa Baraitser of the Westminster Magistrates’ Court, denied Mr. Assange’s extradition — citing harsh conditions for security-related prisoners in American jails and the risk that Mr. Assange might be driven to commit suicide if held under them. She held that “the mental condition of Mr. Assange is such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States.”

In its new brief, the Justice Department was expected to defend how the federal Bureau of Prisons handles security inmates and to argue that such conditions were not a legitimate reason for the close American ally to block an otherwise valid extradition request.

During the Obama administration, Justice Department officials weighed whether to charge Mr. Assange. But they worried that doing so would raise novel First Amendment issues and could establish a precedent that could damage press freedoms in the United States, since traditional news organizations like The New York Times also sometimes publish information the government has deemed classified.

The Obama administration never charged Mr. Assange. But the Trump administration moved forward with a prosecution. Its first indictment merely accused Mr. Assange of a hacking conspiracy, but it then filed a superseding indictment charging him under the Espionage Act in connection with publishing classified documents.

In 2019, as Mr. Biden was seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination for president, The Times asked whether he would keep or jettison the novel Espionage Act charges against Mr. Assange the Trump administration had brought.

In a written answer, Mr. Biden demurred from taking a position on the case but drew a line between journalistic activities and hacking.

“Journalists have no constitutional right to break into a government office, or hack into a government computer, or bribe a government employee, to get information,” Mr. Biden wrote, adding, “We should be hesitant to prosecute a journalist who has done nothing more than receive and publish confidential information and has not otherwise broken the law.”

‘Judas and the Black Messiah’ Review: WSJ stellar film critic nails it

The only FACT Joe Morgenstern left out was that the Chicago police murdered Fred Hampton while he was asleep in his Chicago apartment. Otherwise it’s a very honest review of what undoubtedly will be a widely viewed piece of cinema.

I was in the Oakland/San Francisco area during the late ’60s. The Black Panthers had a positive impact on the lives of Black people and the political movements of the day. The reality is the Panthers and other political groups were considered a danger to the power structure and were treated accordingly. Surveillance, harassment and, yes, State sanctioned murder in the case of Fred Hampton on December 4, 1969.

Wall Street Journal – Joe Morgenstern 2.11.2021

Shaka King’s thrilling biopic stars Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield as Fred Hampton and the FBI informant who turned on him.

Fred Hampton in life – dead after murder by Chicago cops 12.4.1969

Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield give a matched pair of phenomenal performances in “Judas and the Black Messiah.” Mr. Kaluuya is Fred Hampton, the controversial chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party in the late 1960s, and Mr. Stanfield is Bill O’Neal, the FBI informant who was instrumental in Hampton’s killing. The film, directed by Shaka King from a script he wrote with Will Berson, is a special sort of twofer—a powerful, and candidly sympathetic, political biography with contemporary relevance, and a morality tale set forth as an exciting action adventure. (The film is playing in theaters and streaming on HBO Max.)

It’s impossible to say which of the two characters is dominant. Hampton is prodigiously energetic, violent on occasion and formidably persuasive, a gifted orator who speaks at the velocity of an auctioneer—I won’t pretend I was always able to keep up—and moves his audiences with denunciations of racial injustice and promises of progress through revolutionary action. Hampton was, remarkably, only 21 when he died following an armed pre-dawn raid on his apartment. Mr. Kaluuya is not 21, and he’s English, not American, a source of concern in some circles. Yet the sheer brilliance of his portrayal sweeps away all questions except how in the world he put such a performance together. (We see Hampton listening to the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr. , not only for their content but their magisterial cadences. We’re told that Mr. Kaluuya, in his turn, worked with an opera coach as part of his preparation for the role’s hurtling dialogue.)

The Judas of the piece, O’Neal, died in 1990; his death was ruled a suicide. In the film’s interpretation, O’Neal is a dunce politically, before and well after he meets Hampton, serves him as a Black Panther security captain and betrays him. A career car thief before infiltrating the Panthers, he had a fondness, grounded in fact, for impersonating an FBI agent, then appropriating car keys from supposed suspects. (In one of the film’s many gripping moments, a couple of Hampton’s lieutenants test O’Neal’s veracity by making him prove that he knows how to hot-wire a car.)

LaKeith Stanfield (Bill O’Neal) and Jesse Plemons (Roy Mitchell)

PHOTO: WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Mr. Stanfield’s quiet triumph—you won’t understand the quietude until you see it—lies in making O’Neal affecting, even fascinating, as well as unprincipled and contemptible. He’s a melancholy rat, trapped by his alliance with the FBI. You can almost see the workings of his mind as he tries frantically to grasp the magnitude of what he has signed up for. He lacks the privilege and education of Clerici, the Fascist assassin in Bernardo Bertolucci’s peerless “The Conformist,” but both men share a spiritual emptiness that can’t be filled.

The production surrounds its two stars with splendid actors in smaller roles. Jesse Plemons is Roy Mitchell, O’Neal’s FBI handler, a pleasant man perfectly comfortable with putting evil deeds in motion. (The film is unsparing in its depiction of a lawless FBI.) Martin Sheen is unrecognizable, and chilling, as J. Edgar Hoover, famously fearful of the rise of a Black messiah and obsessed with Hampton as the candidate at hand. Dominique Fishback plays Deborah Johnson, Hampton’s girlfriend. Ms. Fishback is appealing, in a conventional way, until she becomes absolutely enchanting in a breathtaking scene that lasts almost three minutes. That’s when Deborah, pregnant with Hampton’s child, pleads her case, with an eloquence equal to his, that life should be more than ceaseless war in the name of social justice.

Dominique Fishback (Deborah Johnson)

PHOTO: WARNER BROS. PICTURES

There’s little or nothing in Mr. King’s TV career, or in his only previous feature, “Newlyweeds,” to predict that he would direct a film of this stature, and that’s not to diminish the value of comedy, which has been his preferred genre. In recent interviews he has described “Judas and the Black Messiah,” which was photographed stunningly by Sean Bobbitt, as a Trojan horse, an impossible-to-finance Fred Hampton biopic inside a genre thriller whose financing was difficult but obviously not impossible. It’s also a drama for our time set half a century ago, when, as now, America was struggling with racism, beset by violence and riven by fear and hate. Hampton is long dead, but the force of his story busts the Trojan horse wide open.

blob:https://www.wsj.com/8cd1a902-a584-417a-a4b9-45ddaffdc3f6

Women’s rights activist released from Saudi prison. 3 years for driving a car

The Saudi women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul and Nobel Peace Prize nominee spent three years in prison for advocating that women have a right to drive a car. Yes. Drive a car.

Ms. al-Hathloul also campaigned against the male driven society in which Saudi women have limited rights absent male consent.

This is a country which is a staunch ally of the American government. Where’s the outrage and aggressive condemnation of such mysogynistic behavior in the 21st century?

The Biden Administration is applauding Ms. al-Hathloul’s release. It should. I venture to say that if Trump were still President I would not be writing this blog post.

Deutsche Welle 2.10.2021

A Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Hathloul was arrested just before the ban on female driving was lifted. She had also protested against the male guardianship system, in which women have limited rights without male consent.

Saudi Arabia released women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul after nearly three years in prison, her family announced on Wednesday.

Hathloul was arrested in May 2018, along with about a dozen other female activists, after pushing hard to end the ban on women drivers that had been in existence for several decades in Saudi Arabia. Three weeks after she was detained, the country lifted the ban.

Until that point, Saudi Arabia was the only country in the world to prohibit women from driving an automobile.

The release of al-Hathloul, who is still under probation, sparked celebration among her siblings who had launched a campaign on her behalf.

“Loujain is at home!!!!!!!” her sister Lina al-Hathloul posted on Twitter.

“At home after 1001 days in prison,” she added, along with a picture of the smiling activist.

In December last year, the 31-year-old was sentenced to five years and eight months in prison by the Saudi Specialized Criminal Court on the basis of Article 43 of the country’s Law against Terrorism and Financing Crimes.

The UN described the punishment as “spurious” under broad counter-terrorism laws. The court suspended two years and 10 months of her sentence, most of which had already been served.

US pleased, but critical of Saudi Arabia

The United States called al-Hathloul’s release a “very welcome development,” while adding she should never have been sent to prison in the first place.

“Promoting and advocating for women’s rights and other human rights should never be criminalized,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price.

Al-Hathloul still faces a five-year travel ban ordered by the Saudi court.

Human rights organizations, as well as her family, said Hathloul, who had campaigned for women’s right to drive and to end Saudi Arabia’s male guardianship system, was subjected to abuse, including electric shocks, waterboarding, flogging and sexual assault.

Saudi authorities denied any wrongdoing.

https://www.dw.com/en/saudi-arabia-womens-rights-activist-loujain-al-hathloul-released-from-prison/a-56529093

Great Highway Reality Check Part III. Embarcadero Freeway to Great Highway

2.10.2021 – Lee Heidhues

Great Highway Reality Check Part III. The conversation on Nextdoor re the Great Highway is a reprise of the Embarcadero Freeway. Following the October 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake San Francisco and the State of California made the forward looking decision to tear down the eyesore Embarcadero Freeway. There was a predictable uproar which prophesized traffic would turn into gridlock; neighborhoods would be destroyed, and businesses would collapse. Fast forward 32 years and the waterfront along the Embarcadero is one of San Francisco’s true scenic treasures. All the doomsayer predictions turned out to be incorrect. The only thing that has changed is back in the day we did not have social media such as Nextdoor to sound the clarion call of doom. One day the Great Highway will be a beautiful urban park and another San Francisco treasure. Thank goodness.

SF Sups keep Great Highway CAR FREE. Climate and pandemic big factor.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, having received months of input, has decided to keep the Great Highway CAR FREE while considering a long term solution.

Given the the Pandemic which could well turn into a years long Endemic CAR FREE zones may well become a permanent fixture. A lengthy piece in the Wall Street Journal reports on this sobering reality. (A link is attached)

Those who are naively claiming that life will return to normal, folks can just climb in their cars and resume their pre Covid-19 lifestyles are in for a rude awakening.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-vaccines-raise-hope-cold-reality-dawns-covid-19-is-likely-here-to-stay-11612693803

Excerpted from San Francisco Examiner 2.9.2021

“Regardless of what happens over the coming weeks and months or how long the closure continues, we have a collective decision to make about the long-term future of the Great Highway,” Supervisor Gordon Mar said,”It’s not in response to Covid-19 but in response to climate change.”

“We didn’t decide that, the planet did,” Mar said. “What we do need to decide is how to use the rest of the public space.”

San Francisco supervisors acting as the county’s regional transportation authority allocated roughly half a million dollars of sales tax revenue towards projects related to the Great Highway on Tuesday, an effort to improve traffic safety around the temporarily car-free roadway as well as evaluate the future of the iconic stretch of road along Ocean Beach.

Of the nearly $500,000 of allocated funds generated by Proposition K, the vast majority will go toward addressing the reckless driving, congestion and deteriorating street safety reported by neighbors of nearby residential streets since April, when the Upper Great Highway was closed to vehicles to create more space for outdoor recreation and travel during the pandemic.

Supervisor Gordon Mar, whose district includes the Outer Sunset, struck a deal with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and other stakeholders last week to roll out a comprehensive set of traffic calming and safety measures to mitigate the impacts of more spilling out to outer avenues.

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority approved approximately $425,000 to fund the installation of 25 speed cushions, six changeable message signs, two stop signs and one speed table as early as next month.

“This was a long time coming, to say the least,” Mar said of the package at Tuesday’s CTA meeting.

Whenever San Francisco emerges from the pandemic and the emergency power expires that has made it possible to quickly implement many SFMTA projects such as Slow Streets, Shared Spaces and temporary transit-only lanes, the future of car-free Great Highway will need to be evaluated once again.

Enter the District Four Mobility Study, an ongoing evaluation of how to provide multimodal mobility to residents of San Francisco’s southwestern-most corners.

Though the study started in October 2019, CTA’s most recent allocation of $60,000 in Prop. K sales tax dollars will expand the scope of the project to specifically evaluate the future of the Great Highway between Sloat and Lincoln Avenues, a segment of the roadway that city reports determine will eventually have to be closed down altogether due to the threat of erosion and other environmental forces.

Continuation of the District Four Mobility Study will evaluate what full car closure of the Upper Great Highway might mean for the surrounding neighborhoods as opposed to partial closures or a return to the pre-pandemic status quo.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/supervisors-approve-500l-for-short-term-safety-long-term-evaluation-for-great-highway/

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Shaka King’s thrilling biopic stars Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield as Fred Hampton and the FBI informant who turned on him.

LaKeith Stanfield (Bill O’Neal) and Jesse Plemons (Roy Mitchell)

PHOTO: WARNER BROS. PICTURES

Dominique Fishback (Deborah Johnson)

PHOTO: WARNER BROS. PICTURES

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US pleased, but critical of Saudi Arabia

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