My neighbor Joseph Grovers is a dedicated long distance runner.
A years long runner in high school, college and now an active competitive runner. His latest exploit was being part of a “Centipede” team in this year’s Bay to Breakers. His team finished third in the competition with a sub 40 minute time in the nearly eight mile race across San Francisco. A link to a video clip of Joseph’s team climbing “Hellish Hayes Street” is attached.
A bubbly happy group of Bay to Breakers participants left behind by the Centipede team. Photo-San Francisco Chronicle
Joseph Grovers 5.22.2023 – Special to Lee’s Perspective
The members of our Centipede line-up:
Zach Litoff, Josh Rosenkranz, Simon Ricci, Jonathan Charlesworth, Richard Skogsberg, Tristan Santos, Brody Barkan, Joseph Grovers, Franklin Rice, Ben Eversole, Quinn Todzo, Michael Roberts, Jason Karbelk, Ryan Somerfield, Will Goodness.
The happy, chilly Centipede team at Ocean Beach. Joseph is third from left. Top rowAll the Centipedes. Including the Doggy Diner themed women’s Centipede hanging out at Ocean Beach after the race
We’re all runners who ran collegiately to some extent, whether club cross country / track, or NCAA team. And we all now reside in San Francisco, practice with & compete for West Valley Track Club.
WVTC had a B Centipede on the men’s side, a centipede for the women(dressed in a Doggy Diner theme, paying homage to the dog heads on JFK and former SF restaurant chain)
I’m a Bay Area native, from Newark specifically. I ran while at Newark Memorial, then continued competing in cross country and track at UC Davis, for the club team.
After Davis, I returned home to the Bay Area and trained independently. After a few years, I joined West Valley Track Club in San Francisco.
Start of the race in downtown San Francisco. Photo-San Francisco Chronicle
Top photo. Joseph’s Centipede team cruises down JFK Promenade in Golden Gate Park near the DeYoung Museum
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich has been wrongfully, and for no reason, imprisoned in Russia nearly two months.
It’s obvious that Putin is blithely ignoring the worldwide protests by journalism organizations, governments, NGOs and thousands of individuals who are protesting this outrage.
Evan Gershkovich is only one of several Americans who have been unjustly arrested and detained by Putin. Paul Whelan has been incarcerated for five years. Falsely accused of espionage. Brittney Griner was arrested and held captive for 10 months in 2022. Falsely accused of bringing marijuana into Russia.
Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Geshkovich. Basketball player Brittney Griner. Citizen Paul Whelan – Pawns of Putin
All these arrests and incarcerations are political blackmail to harass the American government. Criminally using American citizens as a bullying and intimidation tactic.
Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal 5.19.2023
WASHINGTON—The Russian government has rejected for a second time a request from U.S. officials to visit detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in a Moscow prison.
Gershkovich was confined to a prison in Moscow. On April 18 he appeared before a judge, who denied his appeal to lift his pretrial detention.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry linked the move to a complaint that its journalists didn’t get U.S. visas to travel with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the United Nations in New York last month. The ministry had rejected an earlier request for a consular visit over the same complaint. Russian reporters aren’t behind bars in the U.S.
The State Department said it had sought a meeting with Gershkovich on May 25. “We strongly object to Russia’s ongoing failure to comply with its obligations under the Consular Convention to provide us consular access to detained U.S. citizens,” a State Department spokeswoman said. “Regardless of the hurdles, our team is focused on ensuring timely consular access to all U.S. nationals detained abroad.”
Evan Gershkovich – ‘What does Russia accuse him of? – We still don’t know.
U.S. Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy visited Gershkovich a month ago in the first access provided to U.S. officials since his detention in March.
Gershkovich, 31 years old, was detained on March 29 by Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, while he was on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg and held on an allegation of espionage that The Wall Street Journal and the U.S. government vehemently deny.
Fox News is being sued again. This time by Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia) who briefly ran the short lived Disinformation Governance Board, responsible for monitoring disinformation campaigns by other nations.
On May 2, 2022, the The Department of Homeland Security released a statement which said that the board would monitor disinformation spread by “foreign states such as Russia, China, and Iran” and “transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling organizations”
What is most alarming about Ms. Jankowicz’ experience is the vicious manner in which she was attacked and harassed by Fox News. Exposing her to hate all too typically displayed by the shallow minded and ready to believe anything Fox audience.
Attached is a link to an interview with Ms. Jankowicz after her resignation on Amanpour and Company.
The woman suing Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News for defamation in the wake of the $787m settlement with the voting machine company Dominion has accused the media giant of waging a campaign of “vitriolic lies” against her that amounts to a threat to democracy.
Nina Jankowicz (@wiczipedia) who briefly ran short lived Disinformation Governance Board, responsible for monitoring disinformation campaigns by other nations.
Nina Jankowicz sued Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for allegedly damaging her reputation as a specialist in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. The lawsuit was lodged in a Delaware state court exactly a year after she resigned as executive director of a new Department of Homeland Security unit combatting online disinformation.
“Every time they talked about me on Fox, a new wave of harassment would start. I would get a spike especially when (Tucker) Carlson and (Sean)Hannity mentioned me.”
The Disinformation Governance Board was abruptly shut down in the wake of a storm of virulent rightwing criticism, allegedly fueled by Fox News. Jankowicz and the new DHS division she led were attacked as being part of a conspiracy to censor rightwing comment spearheaded by Joe Biden.
In an interview with the Guardian, she said her motive in suing Fox was to ensure accountability for what she alleged was a campaign of lies against her that undermined American democracy. “There needs to be consequences,” she said.
“It was lies, very personal and very vitriolic lies. And I don’t think that is democratic.”
She added that what she claimed was Fox’s reckless disregard for the truth had implications for the future of the country. “If we can’t agree on statements of fact, how can you live in a democracy?”
As an authority on disinformation campaigns, Jankowicz said she could predict the cycle of events that unfolded. Whenever Fox hosts attacked her on air, a swarm of online hate would be directed at her culminating in multiple death threats.
I confess to be genuinely shocked and dismayed when I read this investigative piece in The Jewish News of California.
At least in California there are laws on the books which can be utilized to convict and imprison those who engage in these hate crimes.
The California penal code section 11411 classifies as a misdemeanor the placing or displaying of a swastika on “private and nonprivate property… with the intent to terrorize a person.” Updated in the 2021-22 legislative session, the crime now carries a prison sentence of one to three years.
It is almost beyond belief that such Nazi like behavior is common place in America nearly 80 years after Hitler’s demonic genocidal regime was crushed to rubble in May 1945.
Horrifically this repulsive ideology has survived and even more scary is the fact it is alive and well in America in 2023.The authorities need to stop dancing around with all this free speech rhetoric. The people and their hate mongering must be put down and crushed by any means necessary.
These are the same people, encouraged by closet fascist Donald Trump who brought us the January 6, 2021 attempted Coup d’etat.
Pictures of Goyim Defense League banners supporting Kanye West’s comments about Jews went viral after they were captured in Los Angeles, Oct. 22, 2022. (Screenshot from Twitter)
Excerpted from The Jewish News of Northern California 4.28.2023
They’ve hit big cities and small towns. Elementary schools and college campuses. City parks and the front yards of suburban homes.
Even in San Francisco with its large Jewish community.
Flyers claiming Covid is a Jewish plot, which hit San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood in January 2022, were discovered by a father and daughter on their weekly Sunday morning walk. Rivka, 13, had just had her bat mitzvah.
“It was an opportunity to teach [her] to never take anything for granted,” her father, Joe Staenberg, told J. at the time. “We should not ever think for a moment, even living in Pacific Heights, that antisemitism doesn’t exist.”
In live, near daily video streams, Goyim TV ringleader Jon Minadeo Jr., until recently a resident of Petaluma, directs his viewers to a website featuring online, printable PDFs of the antisemitic flyers. He encourages viewers to print, pack and drop as many as they can, wherever they may be, and offers rewards — like free antisemitic T-shirts — to those whose propaganda campaign successfully generates coverage on TV news.
They’re carefully designed and pop with color. Most are folded and stuffed into plastic sandwich bags, weighed down with rice or pebbles so they won’t blow away.
They are flyers that blame Jews for Covid, deny the Holocaust and claim Jewish control of the media.
Hate crime charges in these cases are unlikely, a police spokesman told the Palm Beach Post, as perpetrators have not technically committed a crime.
All are the work of Goyim TV, also known as the Goyim Defense League, a virulent white supremacist network that for years was based in Petaluma. It lurks in dark corners of the internet — and its followers emerge in the dead of night with stacks of hateful leaflets.
Analysis of Goyim TV flyer incidents across the U.S. includes this map — (Screenshot/Google Maps)
A new national data mapping project by J., based on media reports, shows the breadth of the group’s activity going back to August 2019, when the first flyer drop in Novato was recorded by J.
J.’s analysis, which concluded in March 2023, comes as jurisdictions large and small, particularly in Florida where Goyim TV is now headquartered, are wrestling with what to do about the proliferation of flyer drops and other activity. Lawmakers in Florida are even trying to make the acts a felony.
Keeping its focus on incidents that were covered by news outlets, J.’s review found 233 reports of Goyim TV flyer drops across the country over the past 3½ years, covering 177 cities and towns in 36 states. Based on even higher ADL numbers, it is evident there are many more incidents that do not make the news.
The Anti-Defamation League’s recent annual audit of antisemitic incidents reported a dramatic increase in all incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault against Jews in 2022. The organization counted 3,697 reported incidents, a 36% increase over 2021.
Jon Minadeo during a December 2022 Goyim TV livestream.
Of the ADL’s 2022 total, the distribution of antisemitic flyers accounted for 852 incidents, well over half of them attributed to Goyim TV. It was a major uptick from 2021 “largely due to the growth of the Goyim Defense League (GDL) and its accelerated tempo of antisemitic propaganda campaigns,” the ADL audit said.
Yet Goyim TV’s activities are not limited to dropping antisemitic literature.
In several instances, Minadeo and others have embarked on so-called “Name the Nose” tours, on which they distribute propaganda and drive through cities harassing passersby and shouting slurs from their car windows.
In October 2022, followers hung a banner reading “Kanye is right about the Jews” over Interstate 405 in Los Angeles, after the rapper tweeted antisemitic comments. In February of this year, Goyim TV members went to NASCAR’s Daytona 500 race in Florida and hung a banner reading “Henry Ford was right about the Jews” over the speedway. Later, they used a laser projector to cast “Hitler was right” on the track wall.
I confess to be genuinely shocked and dismayed when I read this investigative piece in The Jewish News of California.
At least in California there are laws on the books which can be utilized to convict and imprison those who engage in these hate crimes.
The California penal code section 11411classifies as a misdemeanor the placing or displaying of a swastika on “private and nonprivate property… with the intent to terrorize a person.” Updated in the 2021-22 legislative session, the crime now carries a prison sentence of one to three years.
It is almost beyond belief that such Nazi like behavior is common place in America nearly 80 years after Hitler’s demonic genocidal regime was crushed to rubble in May 1945.
Horrifically this repulsive ideology has survived and even more scary is the fact it is alive and well in America in 2023.The authorities need to stop dancing around with all this free speech rhetoric. The people and their hate mongering must be put down and crushed by any means necessary.
These are the same people, encouraged by closet fascist Donald Trump who brought us the January 6, 2021 attempted Coup d’etat.
Pictures of Goyim Defense League banners supporting Kanye West’s comments about Jews went viral after they were captured in Los Angeles, Oct. 22, 2022. (Screenshot from Twitter)
Excerpted from The Jewish News of Northern California 4.28.2023
They’ve hit big cities and small towns. Elementary schools and college campuses. City parks and the front yards of suburban homes.
Even in San Francisco with its large Jewish community.
Flyers claiming Covid is a Jewish plot, which hit San Francisco’s Pacific Heights neighborhood in January 2022, were discovered by a father and daughter on their weekly Sunday morning walk. Rivka, 13, had just had her bat mitzvah.
“It was an opportunity to teach [her] to never take anything for granted,” her father, Joe Staenberg, told J. at the time. “We should not ever think for a moment, even living in Pacific Heights, that antisemitism doesn’t exist.”
In live, near daily video streams, Goyim TV ringleader Jon Minadeo Jr., until recently a resident of Petaluma, directs his viewers to a website featuring online, printable PDFs of the antisemitic flyers. He encourages viewers to print, pack and drop as many as they can, wherever they may be, and offers rewards — like free antisemitic T-shirts — to those whose propaganda campaign successfully generates coverage on TV news.
They’re carefully designed and pop with color. Most are folded and stuffed into plastic sandwich bags, weighed down with rice or pebbles so they won’t blow away.
They are flyers that blame Jews for Covid, deny the Holocaust and claim Jewish control of the media.
Hate crime charges in these cases are unlikely, a police spokesman told the Palm Beach Post, as perpetrators have not technically committed a crime.
All are the work of Goyim TV, also known as the Goyim Defense League, a virulent white supremacist network that for years was based in Petaluma. It lurks in dark corners of the internet — and its followers emerge in the dead of night with stacks of hateful leaflets.
Analysis of Goyim TV flyer incidents across the U.S. includes this map — (Screenshot/Google Maps)
A new national data mapping project by J., based on media reports, shows the breadth of the group’s activity going back to August 2019, when the first flyer drop in Novato was recorded by J.
J.’s analysis, which concluded in March 2023, comes as jurisdictions large and small, particularly in Florida where Goyim TV is now headquartered, are wrestling with what to do about the proliferation of flyer drops and other activity. Lawmakers in Florida are even trying to make the acts a felony.
Keeping its focus on incidents that were covered by news outlets, J.’s review found 233 reports of Goyim TV flyer drops across the country over the past 3½ years, covering 177 cities and towns in 36 states. Based on even higher ADL numbers, it is evident there are many more incidents that do not make the news.
The Anti-Defamation League’s recent annual audit of antisemitic incidents reported a dramatic increase in all incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault against Jews in 2022. The organization counted 3,697 reported incidents, a 36% increase over 2021.
Jon Minadeo during a December 2022 Goyim TV livestream.
Of the ADL’s 2022 total, the distribution of antisemitic flyers accounted for 852 incidents, well over half of them attributed to Goyim TV. It was a major uptick from 2021 “largely due to the growth of the Goyim Defense League (GDL) and its accelerated tempo of antisemitic propaganda campaigns,” the ADL audit said.
Yet Goyim TV’s activities are not limited to dropping antisemitic literature.
In several instances, Minadeo and others have embarked on so-called “Name the Nose” tours, on which they distribute propaganda and drive through cities harassing passersby and shouting slurs from their car windows.
In October 2022, followers hung a banner reading “Kanye is right about the Jews” over Interstate 405 in Los Angeles, after the rapper tweeted antisemitic comments. In February of this year, Goyim TV members went to NASCAR’s Daytona 500 race in Florida and hung a banner reading “Henry Ford was right about the Jews” over the speedway. Later, they used a laser projector to cast “Hitler was right” on the track wall.
Are the trains still running on time? Not all the time these days.
The ceiling of the multi-level Berlin Hauptbahnhof
Liz and I have spent time riding the trains in Germany going back to the early 1970’s.
The once vaunted German rail system Deutsche Bahn is in the crisis mode. Aging infrastructure has severely impacted the efficiency of the German transportation network.
Now the German government appears to be pouring resources into the transit system. It remains to be seen whether the investment will pay off in the near future.
Deutsche Bahn passenger train heads into a station
Excerpted from Deutsche Welle 5.16.2023
It remains one of the most enduring cliches about Germany for those who don’t live there: the trains run on time.
It’s not just passengers who are affected. Some of Europe’s biggest logistics companies have repeatedly called out DB’s freight and cargo business in recent years for its persistent delays.
Tardiness is not the only problem. The company has been consistently posting losses in recent years and is currently more than €30 billion ($32.6 billion) in debt. Passengers routinely complain of overcrowded trains and expensive tickets.
The company itself has no illusions about the scale of the problem. “The current operational situation is not acceptable for us, travelers or railway companies,” a DB spokesperson told DW.
Jon Worth, a railway transport analyst resident in Berlin, says Germany’s railways are in a “delicate situation.” He says the main problem is widely acknowledged: a lack of investment in infrastructure.
Night time train travel in Germany
“Railways in Germany are at the limit,” he told DW. “Germany runs a lot of trains on very old and decrepit infrastructure and has simply not been investing in the tracks, the bridges and the signals as much as would be necessary in order to manage to run things with a stable and reliable service.”
Karl-Peter Naumann, the honorary chairman of the public transport advocacy group PRO Bahn, agrees that outdated infrastructure is the main problem. “For customers, that means punctuality and, as a direct result, missed connecting trains,” he told DW.
Responsibility for the lack of investment goes back a few decades, according to Worth. “Ultimately the problems stem from decisions made a good 20 years ago,” he said. Naumann agrees: “Too little has been invested in the expansion and maintenance of the rail infrastructure in the last 30 years.”
The Walgreens security guard was just following orders.
Now that D.A. Brooke Jenkins has decided not to prosecute the Walgreens Rent a cop who murdered Banko Brown the local media is flooding readers and viewers with the grisly video of the crime.
I cannot bear to watch the Video. It smacks of voyeurism to watch Banko Brown shot down In Cold Blood by the Walgreens Rent a Cop.
The Cop Shop DA Brooke Jenkins is, predictably and negligently, going to do nothing.
Watching the video will only infuriate and depress me further. The stills are dispositive enough that this was Murder. The Feds need to step up and prosecute this civil rights violation. Walgreens engages in inter-state commerce. The Feds have “standing”. Just do It.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 5.15.2023
A security guard who shot and killed a suspected shoplifter at a Walgreens store last month had been directed by his employer to engage in “hands-on” recovery of stolen items, which the guard said compelled him to confront the man, according to documents released Monday that added new layers to the debate over how to handle retail theft in San Francisco.
Life seeping away from Banko Brown after being shot by a Walgreens Rent a Cop in San Francisco – 4.27.2023
According to the D.A.’s report released Monday, on the date of the Walgreens confrontation, the company that employed Anthony — Kingdom Group Protective Services — “had recently changed the policy concerning what their guard-employees were to do in the way of active recovery of property from persons seen stealing merchandise from the Walgreens.”
Guards were instructed “to engage in ‘hands-on’ recovery of merchandise,” according to the report. “The guards … were to actively work to retrieve or recover any stolen items once it was clear that the individual who concealed the items intended to leave the store without paying.”
Banko Brown, 24, died April 27 outside the store after a confrontation captured on surveillance video also released Monday. The video showed guard Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony shoot Brown as he stepped backward onto the sidewalk, moments after he turned and made a slight movement toward Anthony. District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said Monday she would not charge Anthony.
The Wall Street Journal is not reluctant to practice tabloid style journalism.
In a lengthy piece more suited for The New York Post the WSJ lays out in granular detail the facts and players involved in the murder of tech entrepreneur Bob Lee last month.
The murder, initially attributed to one of San Francisco’s myriad unhoused, fed into the current law and order paranoia sweeping San Francisco. And fed into the current faddish narrative the City is in a “doom loop” of rampant crime and economic collapse.
The true source of the crime, in all its sordid details, quickly became known. And since has gone global.
It’s somewhat fitting that the Wall Street Journal, rather than the super tabloid New York Post, is running this story.
Rupert Murdoch owns both publications.
Excerpted from The Wall Street Journal 5.14.2023
The WSJ expose graphic headlines its “investigative” piece
This account is based on interviews with friends, co-workers and acquaintances of Bob Lee and the Momeni family, and records released by city agencies, including the District Attorney’s office.
SAN FRANCISCO—In certain wealthy tech circles it is known as “The Lifestyle,” an underground party scene featuring recreational drug use and casual sex.
A successful tech executive named Bob Lee liked to hang out with that crowd, according to people who also participated. So, too, did Khazar Momeni, the wife of a prominent plastic surgeon, these people said.
On the afternoon of April 3, a Monday, the partying took a dark turn. According to San Francisco prosecutors, Ms. Momeni’s older brother confronted Mr. Lee about her. Was she taking drugs or doing anything inappropriate, he wanted to know. Hours later the brother, Nima Momeni, stabbed Mr. Lee with a kitchen knife and left him to bleed out in the street, prosecutors alleged. Mr. Momeni, who was arrested on suspicion of murder, is being held without bail. He plans to plead not guilty, his attorney said.
Nima Momeni, accused killer of Bob Lee in San Francisco Superior Court
Surveillance footage from the Millennium Tower shows Mr. Momeni pull up in a white BMW, and then later, around 2 a.m., Messrs. Lee and Momeni leave the building and climb into Mr. Momeni’s car together.
Prosecutors allege that Mr. Momeni drove Mr. Lee to a dark and secluded area several streets over, in San Francisco’s Rincon Hill neighborhood. The area is punctuated with upscalecondo buildings. The lights of the Bay Bridge that connects the city to Oakland and Berkeley sparkle behind office towers.
They allege that Mr. Momeni used a silver kitchen knife with a four-inch black blade to repeatedly stab Mr. Lee. Mr. Momeni drove quickly away from the scene, according to court documents that cite surveillance video.
Mr. Lee, bleeding profusely, called 911 for help before collapsing on the sidewalk. He was rushed to a hospital, where he later died.
Mr. Lee’s death has transfixed San Francisco. At first viewed by critics including Elon Musk as a symbol of the city’s increasing street violence, the episode instead laid bare risk-taking behavior in the upper reaches of Bay Area society, fueled by cocaine and designer drugs.
Mr. Momeni is expected to appear at an arraignment and detention hearing later this month. Prosecutors haven’t offered a motive for his alleged crime. His attorney, Paula Canny,said, “My team and I continue to work hard to investigate all the many aspects of this case and the goings-on of the weeks preceding the incident.”
During the pandemic, with the San Francisco party scene largely shut down, Mr. Lee spent months traveling around Los Angeles and Mexico, said Gift Kerati, a friend of his from Thailand who said she spent much of that time with him.
Bob Lee and friend in Cabo, Mexico
Ms. Kerati, who met Mr. Lee at a private party in Acapulco, said that Mr. Lee had several girlfriends during that time and other women he was sleeping with, but that he was always respectful toward them.
“He is literally one of the best human beings I’ve ever met,” said Ms. Kerati. She said Mr. Lee attended parties and used drugs because he liked to share experiences with a lot of different people, from all walks of life.
Ms. Momeni and her older brother Nima were born in Iran to a family that is Zoroastrian, an ancient religion whose members were persecuted in that country, according to people familiar with the family. They moved to the U.S. with their mother, a dental assistant, and settled in the Bay Area. The siblings were very close, with Mr. Momeni frequently following his sister, who goes by “Tina,” around clubs or parties.
At another point, following a breakup with a longer-term girlfriend, Mr. Lee told friends that he was casually sleeping with Ms. Momeni, according to people familiar with their relationship.
Khazar Elyassnia (left) and Dr. Dino Elyassnia (right) attend the arraignment of Nima Momeni at the Hall of Justice in San Francisco, April 14, 2023. Khazar is the sister of Nima, who is accused of the killing of Bob Lee, the Tech CEO that was stabbed on April 4th
Ms. Momeni “was married, but the relationship had possibly been in jeopardy,” prosecutors have alleged in court documents.
Ms. Momeni’s husband, Dino Elyassnia, is a prominent San Francisco plastic surgeon. His Instagram page, with more than 30,000 followers, shows the results of nose jobs and face-lifts. “Happy International Women’s Day to my wife and all the amazing women I work with every day in our office,” wrote Mr. Elyassnia in a March post, showcasing a photo of Ms. Momeni in a tank top.
The continued despoliation of historic Golden Gate Park has no end in sight.
The latest turn of the screw in turning this urban sanctuary into a promoter’s fever dream has selected the Polo Fields at the west end of the Park as its chosen bed.
Citing a yawning budget deficit as the excuse to further destroy the Park, Mayor London Breed and Recreation and Parks Director Phil Ginsburg want to piggyback on top of the yearly Outside Lands concert. A yearly environmentally destructive event which has wreaked havoc in the Park since 2007.
People People People. Trampling through Golden Gate Park during Outside Lands
The dim bulbs at City Hall are playing a false tune. They now want to follow Outside Lands with another mammoth musical disaster in the week after Outside Lands concludes.
The promoter for this proposed act of greed and environmental degradation is Another Planet Entertainment. http://www.apeconcerts.com The same avaricious promoter which sponsors Outside Lands and many large scale profit generating events.
The San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission, https://sfrecpark.org, followed by the Board of Supervisors, https://sfbos.org/, must approve the proposal. Rest assured it’s a done deal and the public hearings will be no more than perfunctory nonsense. Money talks.
Mayor Breed claims these “events … show off the beauty of our parks.” What the Mayor fails to ad is that these events also destroy and despoil the parks.
Excerpted from The San Francisco Chronicle 5.12.2023
San Francisco Mayor London Breed has unveiled a new plan to bring more summer concerts to Golden Gate Park starting next year.
“Music has been a vital part of the park’s history, from the Summer of Love to the annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and Outside Lands festivals of today,” she said in a statement. “These kinds of events bring excitement to our city, show off the beauty of our parks, and help support our local economy.”
The proposal, announced first to The Chronicle on Friday, May 12, calls for two or three days of headliner-driven events on the weekend following the annual Outside Lands music festival.
Whether outside the fence or inside the devastation done to Golden Gate Park during Outside Lands is incalculable and long term
The San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission is scheduled to vote on Thursday, May 18, on whether to recommend granting a permit to Another Planet Entertainment to organize ticketed concerts at the Golden Gate Park Polo Field for three years beginning in 2024. APE produces Outside Lands, but these concerts would be separate, smaller events that would utilize a portion of the festival’s existing infrastructure, which would remain in place to minimize the impact on the park.
The permit fees for the city, amounting to $1.4 million for a two-day event and $2.1 million for a three-day event, would help the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department continue offering programming to residents and maintaining park facilities, according to city officials.
Currently, the city faces a budget deficit of $780 million over the next two years.
“We’ve all been asked to cut back,” Tamara Barak Aparton, deputy director of communications and public affairs for the Recreation and Park Department, told The Chronicle. “We don’t want to cut our recreation programs or park maintenance, so we are looking at ways to supplement them.”
Once again we have the mainstream media carrying the water for the entitled motoristsunder the guise of giving a sympathetic hearing to small business owners.
To the point of giving credence to the absurd comment the diminution of parking spaces “will put them out of business.”If business owners have a good product to offer, the customers will come.
The latest incarnation of supporting the whiny motorists is giving voice to their displeasure over the fact San Francisco is facilitating public transit.These motorists need to exit their climate killing cars. Walk. Cycle. Take public transit.
The motorists continue to fight the battle to drive and, yes, park anywhere anytime.
Last year the entitled motorists received a long over due smackdown when the voters overwhelmingly approved ballot measures to create a 1.5 mile car free space, now called JFK Promenade, in Golden Gate Park. In the same election the voters turned back an effort to permit cars full time on The Great Walkway at the city’s western edge along the Pacific Ocean.
The entitled motorists obviously haven’t, yet, gotten the message. Sadly, they probably never will.
The mainstream media needs to stop being the handkerchief holder for these whiners and report the story that autos no longer rule the roads in San Francisco.
Changes on Geary Boulevard will make it easier for bus riders
Excerpted from The Standard 5.4.2023
“Parking loss is a trade-off for better bus service and safer streets for people walking,” SFMTA spokesperson Stephen Chun said.
A plan to remove parking spaces and add bus-only lanes to a major commercial corridor in San Francisco has enraged multiple mom-and-pop shop owners who worry it will put them out of business.
A total of 70 parking spaces would be removed from Geary Boulevard, while 22 new spaces would be created on nearby streets, resulting in a net loss of 48 spaces, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which is behind the plan.
Owners of Joe’s Ice Cream feel elimination of parking spaces will melt their business
Beyond adding bus-only lanes on Geary Boulevard from Stanyan Street to 34th Avenue, the Geary Bus Rapid Transit plan would also convert angled parking on Geary Boulevard between 15th and 26th avenues to parallel parking. New parallel parking areas would include commercial loading zones where parking is restricted for part of the day.
Lee's Perspective 