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/

San Francisco Great Highway Reality Check. Part II

This morning I posted Part I of the Great Highway Reality Check on Twitter. The responses have generally been the expected all too typical whining and kvetching.

So, in the spirit of being positive I posted on Twitter several available and logical ways to get around the Western end of San Francisco. It’s not rocket science, folks.

Lee Heidhues 2.9.2021

Great Highway Reality Check Part II. Now that the Nextdoor community has expended its Exhaust I will now list some alternatives for the annoyed and besieged motorist. There are alternatives which every motorist knows full well but has yet to acknowledge. Why? Motorists would be obliged to go out of their way en route to the destination.

• Going west coming off the GGP Panhandle. People can take Kezar Drive to Lincoln Way and continue to Sunset Drive. Drive south on Sunset to Sloat Blvd. Motor to the Great Highway and continue south.

• Going south through Golden Gate Park.(Option 1). Motorists can enter the Park at 25th and Fulton. Continue to Transverse Drive. Continue to Lincoln Way. Turn West and continue to Sunset Boulevard. Drive to Sloat. Continue to the Great Highway and continue south.

• Going south through Golden Gate Park.(Option 2). Enter the Park at either 36th or 30th Avenue. Head east on JFK Drive. Turn south at Transverse Drive. Continue to Lincoln Way. Turn West and continue to Sunset Boulevard. Motor to Sloat. Drive to the Great Highway and continue south.

I am not providing the eastbound or northbound alternatives because the astute motorist can figure it out. Suffice it to say, there are feasible options.

Great Highway San Francisco Reality Check

Every Picture Tells a Story – Ongoing Series.

2.9.2021 – Lee Heidhues

Great Highway Reality Check. The occasional reality check in the up in the clouds environs of Nextdoor is sometimes appropriate to bring folks down to earth next to the ocean. Attached are two photos taken at approximately 5:30pm during rush hour on a weekday. A fair and balanced (to quote Fox News which Nextdoor could be titled) is recommended. To the left is the Beach Chalet soccer fields lights aglow. Behind the lights is the beginning of the Great Highway CAR FREE zone. As you will, hopefully, admit there is virtually NO vehicular traffic either going towards or coming from Lincoln Way. So all this rampant editorializing about conditions confronting the long suffering motorist is just so much …. I leave it to the reader to fill in the blank.

No Bail. Judge orders teen held in jail after fatal San Francisco attack on senior

When there is a serious crime the DA will adhere to his campaign platform. Chesa Boudin will do whatever is necessary to prosecute and obtain Justice.

I doubt if there is an uptick in serious crime in San Francisco.

It’s not true. There has always been an abundance of crime. Now it is reaching into the more affluent neighborhoods. When the marginalized, as is often the case, are the victims of crime it receives scant attention.

However, the public, egged on by the mainstream media, the Police Officers Association and online forums such as Nextdoor has found its culprit. Blame the District Attorney. The crime surge is a fiction woven out of whole cloth.

Reading the daily continuing political assault on District Attorney Chesa Boudin one could have the impression that San Francisco until recently was a crime free City.

San Francisco Examiner 2.8.2021

A teenager charged with murder in the fatal attack on an elderly man who was shoved to the ground in San Francisco (see photo above) will not be released from custody while awaiting trial, a judge ruled Monday.

Antoine Watson, 19, has been held in County Jail since being arrested Jan. 30 for allegedly charging into 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee two days earlier in the Anza Vista neighborhood.

Antoine Watson in San Francisco Superior Court

The ruling came after prosecutors argued Watson should remain in custody without bail for committing a “violent, unprovoked attack on a vulnerable victim incapable of protecting himself from harm.”

The Jan. 28 incident was captured on surveillance video that has since been widely shared on social media and made national news amid concerns about rising anti-Asian sentiment during the pandemic and other attacks against Asian American elders.

Ratanapakdee, who was originally from Thailand, was on his morning walk when authorities say Watson charged at him from across the street near Anzavista and Fortuna avenues at around 8:28 a.m.

“The video shows that the elderly man had no opportunity to protect himself,” Assistant District Attorney Sean Connolly wrote in a motion seeking to detain Watson. “There was no evidence depicted that the elderly man did anything to provoke the attack.”

Prosecutors have not alleged a motive for the killing, but Watson has not been charged with a hate crime.

Watson was “apparently vandalizing a car” when Ratanapakdee looked toward him and changed directions on his walk, Connolly said in his detention motion, citing surveillance footage from the scene.

The teenager then sprinted “full speed” at Ratanapakdee an instant after the elderly man looked back at him, according to the motion. Ratanapakdee was sent flying backward and landed onto the pavement.

A witness told police they heard a voice yell “Why you lookin’ at me?” twice before hearing the apparent impact, prosecutors said.

Sliman Nawabi, a deputy public defender representing Watson, disputed the perception that the attack was racially motivated.

“There is absolutely zero evidence that Mr. Ratanapakdee’s ethnicity and age was a motivating factor in being assaulted,” Nawabi said. “This unfortunate assault has to do with a break in the mental health of a teenager. Any other narrative is false, misleading, and divisive.”

Nawabi said Watson comes from a biracial family that includes Asians and had “no knowledge of Mr. Ratanapakdee’s race or vulnerabilities” since the elderly man was wearing a mask, hat, sweater and jeans.

Still, Nawabi said he condemned anti-Asian attacks and empathized with anger over them.

It’s unclear why Watson may have been in the area that morning. Police arrested him in Daly City after running the plate on a silver BMW he and a woman left at the scene.

Watson had been cited by police for reckless driving, speeding and failing to stop at a stop sign following a collision involving the BMW earlier that day.

Body-worn camera footage from the encounter helped investigators link Watson to the incident.

Police also arrested a woman in connection with the case, but District Attorney Chesa Boudin has said she was seated in the car and played no apparent role in the attack.

Watson is facing up to life in prison. He previously pleaded not guilty to murder and elder abuse, and is due back in court March 4.

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/judge-orders-detention-for-teen-held-in-fatal-attack/

Great Highway is car free. San Francisco officials need to keep it that way

Now that San Francisco has made a determination to maintain the Great Highway as a car free zone I want my elected Supervisor to stand tall and support this decision. Following is a letter I sent to newly sworn in Supervisor Connie Chan. She represents the Richmond District which encompasses Golden Gate Park and whose border is at the Pacific Ocean near the Great Highway.

Supervisor Chan

I am a longtime outer D1 resident and decades long cyclist.

My wife, a native San Franciscan, and I have never owned a car.

Both of us are ecstatic that the MTA has decided to maintain the Great Highway as a car free zone.

The MTA made a decision which is in step with San Francisco’s historic progressive nature when it comes to protecting the environment and making The City a mecca for outdoor recreation.

Last year Peter Hartlaub in the Chronicle published a piece in which he discussed several ways to make San Francisco environmentally friendly.

Peter wrote there were a couple of easy fixes. Making both Golden Gate Park and The Great Highway car free zones.

The City has taken this step.

As someone who ran as the “progressive” D1 candidate I trust that you will promote a forward looking agenda.

A permanently car free Great Highway is the proper action politically and environmentally.

In solidarity,

Lee Heidhues

Outer D1 voter

Photos – Lee Heidhues

The kids are now safe. Carjacking thief who abducted 2 toddlers still at large.

This was a HUGE story late Saturday night in San Francisco. A thief drove off with a van in which two toddlers were seated while their father made a food delivery.

Social media, law enforcement and the media all swung into action. Several hours later the toddlers were found safe and unharmed miles away in the vehicle.

A lot of credit for sounding the alarm goes to my friend Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, a San Francisco native, reporter now working at the local station KQED. Joe was relentless in rallying the public.

The father is a gig worker who was forced, due to the low wage, forced to have his kids with him while he worked. This story is more than just solving a crime. It is a lesson on the disruption the current Pandemic economy is doing to families.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 2.7.2021

San Francisco police officers found two missing children early Sunday after their father’s SUV was stolen while they were inside.

Police said Jeffery Fang left his silver Honda Odyssey parked on the 2100 block of Jackson Street with the engine running while he made a DoorDash food delivery at 8:47 p.m. Saturday. His two young children — a 1-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl — were in the vehicle when it was stolen, police said.

Police said around 1:15 a.m. they found the children, who were safe, along with the vehicle in the Bayview district.

“Children have been located and are safe! Medical attention summoned just as a precaution,” said David Lazar, deputy chief of the investigations bureau, on Twitter.

Fang, whose only source of income is from the gig economy, said he does not earn enough to hire a babysitter to watch his children and that he is also wary of them potentially contracting the coronavirus from caretakers. Typical day care hours are also inconsistent with peak food delivery times, which net the highest profits for workers.

With limited options, Fang decided that the best and safest thing to do was to take his children with him while he worked.

California Highway Patrol issued an Amber Alert for San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, Marin, and Santa Clara counties shortly before 11 p.m. and police mobilized all available units, including motorcycle, traffic enforcement and dirt bikes, to search for the children, who were identified as Winnifred Fang and Sean Fang.

The carjacking suspect is male, approximately 5 feet 10 inches tall, with black hair and brown eyes, around 20 to 30 years old, and should be considered armed and dangerous, California Highway Patrol said. Police said he was remains at large.

“Doordash pays workers below min wage. This leads to workers & their families not able to afford childcare. This is on @doordash,” Gig Workers Rising, a community of app and platform workers organizing for better wages, working conditions and jobs, said in a tweet Sunday.

“As a gig economy worker, the money stops the minute you stop working, and the pay is already low enough as it is,” Fang said. “You’re not obligated to work more than you want, but in order to make ends meet, there are only certain hours good enough for you to really be out there.”

It’s a dilemma for many parents of younger children, especially those who are in the gig economy or those who work hours outside of the typical 9 to 5, said Mary Ignatius of Parent Voices, a parent-led organization that advocates for accessible and affordable child care.

“It was panic and fear, and I needed to do something to get them back,” Fang said Sunday. “I just had to find them.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/Suspects-who-drove-off-with-2-children-in-stolen-15932192.php

The original 9.11. The US and Chile’s coup September 11, 1973

While the American public is justifiably fixated on the upcoming Impeachment Trial of Trump following the abortive Coup D’Etat on January 6, 2021 there was another Coup. This one successful. The American government was deeply involved in its implementation, execution and creation of the Fascist government which violently seized power on 9.11.1973.

Perhaps the most visual memory of this period is the 1982 Academy Award winning film by the Greek director Costa Gavras. It recounts the disappareance and murder by Chilean authorities of Charles Horman, an American journalist who was traveling in Chile with his wife. Those ultimately responsibile for this crime have, nearly 50 years later, never been brought to justice.

The Costa Gavras film puts a human face to a terrible political murder. The American government, having help foment the Coup, is just as responsible as the Pinochet government.

A detailed Wikipedia link to the murder of Charles Horman and the Coup is attached.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Horman

Photo – Augusto Pinochet and American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger -1976

The Guardian – 9.11.2013 – Joyce Horman

Forty years ago, during Chile’s bloody coup of 11 September 1973, my husband, Charles Horman, stepped into a car driven by “Captain” Ray Davis, the head of the US military group in Chile, for a ride from the coastal resort town of Viña del Mar to the capital of Santiago. That one journey forever changed our family, and placed me on a quest for justice that persists to this day.

Charlie was a journalist, and we both were enthusiastic supporters of the democratically-elected socialist president, Salvador Allende. When General Augusto Pinochet launched his coup against Allende from the same coastal town Charles was visiting, my husband was surprised to see not only many Chilean tanks and helicopters moving out, but US warships cruising just off the coast, and US military personnel on the ground. He overheard some of those personnel enthusiastically and eagerly taking credit for the success of the coup, implying US military involvement. Charlie dutifully took his notes.

Before he, and our visiting friend from New York, Terry, began their journey with Davis, Charles knew he had come upon dangerous information. The drive past heavy military roadblocks into the heart of Santiago where Pinochet’s forces were on a search-and-destroy mission for Allende supporters, provided the perfect opportunity for Davis to evaluate Charles and his loyalties. This reality did not escape my husband, and he began to fear Captain Davis.

Charles returned to our home in Santiago, and as he recounted his journey and discoveries to me, we resolved to leave the country. On 17 September, we separately embarked on our errands for the day, and kissed each other goodbye. I did not realize at the time that I would never see my husband alive again.

Later that day, Charles was abducted from our home by more than a dozen Chilean soldiers. He was brought to the national stadium, where some of the most brutal of the regime’s crimes were carried out against presumed Allende “sympathizers”. When I returned to find our home in disarray, and Charles missing, I feared the worst.

In the days and weeks that followed, Charles’ father, Ed Horman, and I sought the help of American officials. Rather than aiding our search, however, they inquired about our social circles, and asked if we had been “annoying” the Chileans. Gradually, it dawned on us that our worst fears were well-founded. If it had been made public, the information that Charles had acquired would have risked derailing the recognition of Chile’s junta by the US government. In that context, Charles was transformed from an American citizen who was entitled to protection, to a vulnerable and disposable threat to powerful forces.

A month would pass before it was revealed, through help from the Ford Foundation, that Charles had been executed – his bullet-ridden body buried in a wall in the national stadium. Yet, it was not until after Pinochet’s 1998 arrest in London, that an era of renewed pressure for accountability regarding the regime’s crimes would drive the Clinton administration to declassify many previously-redacted texts about that terrible time. According to one document:

US intelligence may have played an unfortunate part in Horman’s death. At best, it was limited to providing or confirming information that helped motivate his murder by the GOC [government of Chile]. At worst, US intelligence was aware the GOC saw Horman in a rather serious light and US officials did nothing to discourage the logical outcome of GOC paranoia.

Throughout these 40 years, our family has never relented in our search for truth and accountability around Charles’ death. We filed a case against Henry Kissinger in 1976. In 1981, it was dismissed “without prejudice” – free to re-open when more evidence became available. I personally testified in the House of Commons during Pinochet’s arrest in London. Our December 2000 case in Chile against Pinochet forces is still under investigation.

Missing Costa Gavras 1982 2.6.2021

Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon in Missing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_(1982_film)

A year ago, Chile’s supreme court approved investigative Judge Zepeda‘s request for extradition of Ray Davis to Chile concerning the deaths of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, another American journalist who was killed during the coup. The US has not yet been served with the extradition request; if and when that happens, it would set an important precedent for a US military officer to be charged by another country for the death of American citizens.

In the 40 intervening years, some wrongs have been revealed and some cases have been tried in Chile, which is, again, a democracy. Pinochet’s arrest certainly served as a lightning rod to broaden the global mechanisms to hold human rights violators accountable. But there is still a long way to go: the United States military continues to lie to the public, and take every opportunity available to cover up their abuses of power. We all have an interest in uncovering the truth about whether Captain Ray Davis played a role in the death of my husband.

In that sense, Charles’ story is just as relevant today as it was 40 years ago, and makes the cases against those responsible just as pressing. Charles’ mother, Elizabeth, often used the refrain, “we will leave no stone unturned.” That, too, is my mission, and should be the goal of all those dedicated to a just world in which no individual is too big, or too powerful, to answer for their crimes.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/11/justice-charles-horman-us-chile-coup

San Francisco Great Highway at the Pacific to remain a car free zone.

I am stunningly happy and beyond joyful that San Francisco has decided to keep cars off the Great Highway. This decision, along with the closure of Golden Gate Park to cars, is the most environmentally positive decision taken by San Francisco government in my lifetime.

Excerpted from San Francisco Examiner 2.4.2021

A traffic calming plan approved by San Francisco will have no bearing on the current vehicle-free status of the Upper Great Highway.

SFMTA data shows nearly 4,000 people each weekday and more than 12,000 each weekend enjoy car-free activity along the Great Highway. Advocates have called for it to be permanently closed to vehicles, and some have even floated the idea of turning it into a state-of-the art public park.

Officials simply hope it will help make everyone who enjoys, plays or lives near one of San Francisco’s crown jewels feel safer.

Following an outcry over the traffic impacts of closing the Great Highway to cars, city officials announced on Wednesday a comprehensive set of traffic safety measures that they believe will mitigate the negative impacts on surrounding streets.

Supervisor Gordon Mar, whose district encompasses the Outer Sunset, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and other stakeholders have negotiated a deal to install dozens of traffic calming tools over the next two months around the Lower Great Highway.

Measures include 24 new speed cushions, 12 all-way stop signs, six changeable message signs to divert traffic to main corridors and one speed table, as well as a commitment to provide traffic enforcement on each weekend day for the next six weeks and additional deployment of parking control officers.

Implementation will begin as early as March, and all infrastructure should be installed by April 31.

“The transformation of the Great Highway has provided tremendous benefits, but safety always must come first,” Mar said in a statement. “We can’t sacrifice safety for recreation, and I believe with this plan we can have both.”

Mar originally supported the closure of the Upper Great Highway to vehicles in April 2020 as a way to provide space for socially distant recreation. Since then, it’s been embraced as a new kind of public space, not just as an outdoor haven for thousands of people and families from all over The City, but also as a backdrop for community-building, marches for social justice and public art.

Photos – Lee Heidhues

https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/new-traffic-plan-announced-to-make-streets-near-car-free-great-highway-safer/

Vladimir Putin Has Become America’s Ex-Boyfriend From Hell

Headline of the Day..If not the year.

This is the Headline in a column by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times.

The article may be incisive and informative. But the Headline says it all.

Excerpted from New York Times – 2.2.2021 Thomas Friedman

For a country with so much human talent, that’s pathetic. Russia today is a Czarist economy with a space station — Dr. Zhivago with nuclear missiles and hackers. Meanwhile, scientists who fled Russia have made Israel and Silicon Valley tech superpowers. A rare success is Russia’s Covid-19 vaccine, but it is difficult to mass produce.

When did you last buy a computer, smartphone or app from a Russian company? A Russian car? A Russian watch? Russian-made commercial aircraft? I’d rather take a bus than fly on one. The only Russian exports that appeal to Westerners are caviar, vodka and nesting dolls — and we’re full up on all three.

The recent discovery of a massive, highly sophisticated hack, almost certainly by Russia, of key U.S. technology companies and government agencies puts the new Biden team in a real quandary: How, when or even whether should they retaliate against Russia’s president? I have a lot of sympathy with that quandary — because Vladimir Putin has become America’s ex-boyfriend from hell.

There was a time when Russia — formerly the core of the Soviet Union (a country with double the population of the one Putin now rules) — was very important to us. It once threatened to conquer all of Europe and spread communism across the globe. That time was the Cold War. That time is long gone. Our most important global rival today is China.

Putin is not very important to us at all. He’s a Moscow mafia don who had his agents try to kill an anti-corruption activist, Aleksei Navalny, by sprinkling a Soviet-era nerve agent, Novichok, in the crotch of his underwear. I’m not making that up! Russia once gave the world Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Dostoyevsky, Sakharov and Solzhenitsyn. Putin’s Russia will be remembered for giving the world poisoned underwear.

But to distract his people from his corruption and maintain his grip on power, Putin presents himself as the great defender of the Russian Motherland, and its Orthodox Christian culture, from godless, pro-gay Westerners. And to inflate his importance — in his own eyes and in the eyes of Russians — he keeps stalking us. He meddles in our elections, hacks our companies, while denying it all with a smirk and relishing the notion that so many Americans think he installed Donald Trump as president.

Top photo – Vladimir Putin and then President Bush take a spin together.

Fred Hampton, murdered by FBI and Chicago cops, subject of new film

The murder of Fred Hampton may be ancient history but it is a story which needs a full airing

The release at the Sundance Film Festival of “Judas and the Black Messiah” is the vehicle for people to relive the State sanctioned murder in Chicago on December 4, 1969 of the charismatic young black leader.

The complicity of the FBI and Chicago police in the murder was covered up for years. It was only through the Courts and persistence of civil rights attorneys that the government involvement saw the light of day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hampton

Fred Hampton in life – Fred Hampton after murder by Chicago police

Democracy Now 2.1.2021

A highly anticipated new feature film, “Judas and the Black Messiah,” tells the story of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton and William O’Neal, the FBI informant who infiltrated the Illinois Black Panther Party to collect information that ultimately led to Hampton’s killing in 1969 by law enforcement officers. The film is premiering at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival and stars Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton, LaKeith Stanfield as O’Neal and Martin Sheen as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Shaka King, the film’s director and co-writer, says focusing on Hampton and O’Neal was a way “to make ‘The Departed’ inside the world of COINTELPRO,” referring to the decades-long illegal FBI program to undermine Black and radical political organizations. “I just thought that that was a very clever vessel and intelligent way to Trojan-horse a Fred Hampton biopic.”