Off-Topic

[Charles Pearson]

"San Francisco is a city where people are never more abroad than when they are at home."-BENJAMIM F. TAYLOR

#2 SAN FRANCISCO

"East is East, and West is San Francisco."-O. HENRY

Edited November 13, 2012 by Zahc

[Charles Pearson]

San Francisco on Steroids and ten times enhanced...

#1 THE BIG APPLE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwaKmF80j8A

56 LEONARD

CONSTRUCTION WORK RE-STARTED

[Charles Pearson]

Z's favorite City in the World: The Eternal City...

ROME

[Charles Pearson]

Back to 80s when most late baby boomers born 1958-64 (or Gen Jones since many us really have nothing in common with people born in 1940 when my mother was born for pete's sake) were in college and far away from sleepy little hometowns of our birth or relatively new to the workforce. We (or so I did) loved Romeo Void (a San Francisco new wave band--1979-84--born out of San Francisco Art Institute) and PET SHOP BOYS...

San Francisco

New Wave

1980s: Romeo Void

GenJones Defined

PET SHOP BOYS

Edited November 18, 2012 by Zahc

[Charles Pearson]

After some complaints about naked men in the Castro, San Francisco City Supervisors voted 6 to 5 to ban public nudity on Tuesday in the City by the Bay. Nudity remains OK for Street fairs, festivals and parades...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHVOM7mOHUw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtDoH2FVKvg

Annual Folsom Street Fair held in September

[Charles Pearson]

Southern Roots

Favorite Southern Bands

R.E.M.

Athens, Georgia

Johnsonville, South Carolina

Downtown Johnsonville

US Highway 378/Myrtle Beach Highway, Florence County

Marshall Tucker Band

Spartanburg, South Carolina

Class of 1977, Johnsonville High School, SC

Big Mack (RIP 1958-2009), Staci, Angie, David, Pam, Charles,

Barry (RIP 1958-1980), Staci, Pam, Sonya, Junior-Senior Prom "Summer Breeze" in old gym...

Old Johnsonville High School Gym used 1930s (?)-1981

West Broadway Street, Johnsonville

Edited November 24, 2012 by Zahc

[Charles Pearson]

Hakkasan San Francisco opens today

Today, Hakkasan — the global upscale Chinese powerhouse with locations in New York, Miami, Dubai, Mumbai, London and more — opens its San Francisco location, right on the corner of Kearny and Market.

 

Regardless of how it’s received, it’s a very notable opening for San Francisco. The 170-seat restaurant, bar and lounge cost (at least) $7 million to build. As you can in the gallery above, flashy concepts like this usually opt for cities other than San Francisco to open — Vegas, LA, Miami, Tokyo and so on. It’s not a national enterprise; it’s a global one, something that it’s probably fair to say the Bay Area hasn’t ever had....

[Charles Pearson]

Best Pizza?

South of Market's

Una Pizza Nepoletana

 

Four nights a week, Anthony Mangieri creates what many consider among the best pizza in America at Una Pizza Napoletana, a nondescript, spartan restaurant carved out of a San Francisco auto garage South of Market.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Repetition-leads-to-magic-for-pizza-chef-4168446.php#ixzz2HKmhUV3L

[Charles Pearson]

State lacks doctors to meet demand of national healthcare law

Lawmakers are working on proposals that would enable physician assistants, nurse practitioners, optometrists and pharmacists to diagnose, treat and manage some illnesses.

 

 

SACRAMENTO — As the state moves to expand healthcare coverage to millions of Californians under President Obama's healthcare law, it faces a major obstacle: There aren't enough doctors to treat a crush of newly insured patients...

 

LA TIMES

Edited February 11, 2013 by Charles Pearson

[Charles Pearson]

Easy again to get to SFO...BART is running after four days of no-BART and a nightmare for commuters dependent on BART into San Francisco. As of Friday 5 July, the Strike is ON HOLD...

Edited July 6, 2013 by Charles Pearson

[Charles Pearson]

iconicChicago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBtKmEhj1Ww&feature=share&list=UU0byCmQIfSY3itOHCO7prYQ

[Charles Pearson]

nYc

http://youtu.be/d5W1IKPABbw

[Charles Pearson]

Finally Wi-Fi (a gift from Google) for All...Well, sort of...

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Google-will-pay-for-free-wireless-in-S-F-parks-4682622.php

A late adopter

Despite being a hub for tech companies -and City Hall's location 35 miles from Google headquarters - San Francisco has been a surprisingly slow adopter in some ways. For example, many older recreation facilities still use dial-up connections, said Recreation and Park Director Phil Ginsburg.

 

"We really are trying to make our parks system as technologically robust as we can, and this is going to go a long way," he said. "This is a best practice; New York City parks have Wi-Fi, in Paris every city park has Wi-Fi. We want to make it easier for people to spend more time in parks and enjoy them. ... This is a great equalizer."

 

Veronica Bell, a senior manager for public policy and government relations at Google, said the company is "proud to provide free Wi-Fi in San Francisco, a city where thousands of its employees work and live.

"We hope that free Wi-Fi will be a resource that the city and other local groups will be able to use in their efforts to bridge the digital divide and make their community stronger," she said in a statement. The company has funded Wi-Fi projects in New York's Chelsea neighborhood and at Boston's South Station.

Edited July 24, 2013 by Charles Pearson

[Charles Pearson]

NyC2

http://youtu.be/PXurzLXt1Dg

[Charles Pearson]

NyC vs CHICAGO

 

 

Monday, August 5, 2013, by Ian Spula

 

0

NEW YORK VS. CHICAGO

 

 

New York and Chicago have been locked in a skyscraper contest since 1885, according to urban economist Jason Barr. The two cities have the nine tallest buildings in the U.S. and more than half its buildings taller than 785 feet. "The data just supports this idea that New York, for example, will positively add to its skyline when Chicago does," says Barr. "There will never be a winner. This idea of cities competing with each other is part of the nature of the beast. It's always going to go on." [Atlantic Cities, photo: Shutterstock]

[Charles Pearson]

San Francisco real estate market booming with healthy tech industry  by Joshua Sabatini

 

San Francisco's tech industry rush has translated into a golden commercial real estate industry with high office rents and big sale prices, but now there are concerns about where the nation's hottest market is headed.

 

During a 10-month period from July 2012 to April, 48 properties valued at $20 million or more exchanged hands — illustrating the strength of the market and how San Francisco ended up with higher-than-expected property-sales taxes.

 

The sale prices of those properties totaled more than $4.5 billion, with 15 fetching more than $100 million and the 48-story tower at 101 California St. going for $910 million...

 

The largest transaction in the 10-month period was for 101 California St., acquired by a Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, but it did not set a record. That honor goes to the early 2006 sale of the Bank of America Center at 555 California St., which went for $1.1 billion to a Donald Trump partnership.

 

The sale of 333 Market St., a 33-story office tower in the Financial District, exhibited how quickly a property can soar in value. It sold for $395.3 million to the Atlanta-based Wells Real Estate Investment Trust II in December. The same building sold for $333 million in 2010.

 

Dolby Laboratories moved to the mid-Market Street tech hub near Twitter with the $109.8 million purchase of 1275 Market St. Neighbors include other tech companies such as Zendesk, Zoosk, One Kings Lane and CallSocket...

[Charles Pearson]

Downtown San Francisco office rents climbed 23 percent in 2012  by Chris Roberts @cbloggy

Related Stories

• Surging city revenues should not be treated like a windfall

click to enlarge

George Rose/Getty Images

The downtown skyline is viewed from Telegraph Hill and Coit Tower on April 15, 2013, in San Francisco, California.

 

The hard times of the Great Recession are an ever-fading memory in San Francisco's downtown, where a broad economic recovery is fueling sharp commercial rent increases and decreasing vacancies.

 

Firms signed leases on 8.5 million square feet of office space in 2012, paying an average of $52.21 per square foot. That's a 23 percent rent increase over the 2011 rate of $41.32 per square foot, part of a robust economy that's "surpassing rates set during the last tech boom," according to the annual Downtown Plan Monitoring report...

[Charles Pearson]

Kayak-whale encounter of a lifetime (4-pic gallery)

 

In a pulse-pounding moment last week, a 40-foot, 80,000-pound humpback whale surfaced high in the air aside a stunned ocean kayaker in Monterey Bay, took a look and then swam on its way with another whale.

 

In a photo of a lifetime, fieldscout and contributing photographer Giancarlo Thomae was alongside and got the shot, an amazing tack-sharp photograph with perfect composition.

 

The kayaker was Karen Hatch of Kayak Connection out of Moss Landing, a popular spot to rent kayaks to view sea otters in adjacent Elkhorn Slough and the mouth of the harbor. I’ve worked with Karen on many stories.

 

The giant whale could have flipped her into the air like Moby Dick tossing Ahab, but instead...

[Charles Pearson]

A handful of celebrants 'Go Topless' in Dolores Park by Julian Guthrie, Published SFChron 2:24 pm, Sunday, August 25, 2013

 

Equal Topless Rights......

 

(08-25) 14:22 PDT -- A woman who traveled two hours from the Central Valley to be in San Francisco on Sunday for "Go Topless Day," stood in the sunshine of Dolores Park, shook her bare breasts and exclaimed, "The bells of liberty! Let them ring!"

 

"I'm a healthy senior citizen and I think it's so unfair that men with bigger boobs than mine are free to bare them in public," said the woman, who gave her name only as Judy P. "I'm here for gender equality."

 

In an estimated 30 cities across the country, topless women - and pro-nude men - gathered to support the "Go Topless" women's organization fighting for equal topless rights...

[Charles Pearson]

How SF sees SF

SF Chronicle

 

 

Last year, 16.5 million people visited San Francisco, many coming with their cameras or smartphones ready to capture every photo-worthy moment of their trip. Along with New York, London and Paris, San Francisco is one of the most photographed cities in the world. But landmarks get most of the focus. According to one survey, Union Square is the most-photographed spot in the city.

 

That’s great, but what about “our” landmarks? The places that visitors rarely get a chance to see, let alone photograph.

 

No one knows a city better than the people who breathe life into it every day – the harried consultant in the Financial District, the startup engineer in SoMa, the mural artist in The Mission, the musician in the Haight. We wanted to get a more authentic view of San Francisco from those who know it best...

[Charles Pearson]

Oakland classes offer black males hope

 

Story by Jill Tucker and photos by Lacy Atkins

 

Stationed at the doorway to his classroom at Oakland High School, Tiago Robinson greeted each student with a handshake.

Every student was black, and each one was male...

 

The class quieted down, and Robinson started to teach. His goal this day - as it was every day - was to help these teens learn how to navigate the world in and out of school. To try and create strong, successful black males by demonstrating the man he'd become.

 

This was manhood development, an hour-long daily class just for black males. Offered at 11 Oakland schools last year, it is a key component of the district's five-year plan to challenge the relentlessly bleak statistics facing African American males in the city: that they are almost as likely to be killed as they are to graduate ready to attend a state university, that more than a third drop out of high school and that only half graduate on time.

Edited September 4, 2013 by Charles Pearson

[Charles Pearson]

Muni Slaying Suspect Waving Gun Goes Unnoticed While Passengers Engrossed In Phones, Tablets

...After this I've decided to pay a bit more attention to my surroundings...

 

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS/AP) — Investigators say a suspect in the random slaying of a university student flashed a gun several times on a crowded commuter train in San Francisco, but passengers were so absorbed in their phones and tablets they didn’t notice.

 

Nikhom Thephakaysone is accused of fatally shooting 20-year-old Justin Valdez in the back of the head as Valdez exited the train. The 30-year-old Thephakaysone has pleaded not guilty to murder and other charges in the Sept. 23 slaying.

 

District Attorney George Gascon said passengers close to Thephakaysone didn’t notice the gun because they were so engrossed in reading and texting...

 

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2450076/Justin-Valdez-murder-San-Francisco-commuters-absorbed-phones-didnt-notice-man-waving-gun.html

Edited October 9, 2013 by Charles Pearson

[Charles Pearson]

CityTarget 2

 

A dead zone once occupied by Sears Roebuck, Mervyn's, Good Guys and other chains of yore is coming back to life.

On Wednesday, San Francisco's second CityTarget opens a 119,000-square-foot store strategically located in a western part of the city that's been without a major general merchandise discount retailer for years.

 

"Now we don't have to go downtown to go shopping," said Johanna Loacker, 18, a business major at nearby USF who, with fellow undergrad Erica Cruz, was snapping photos outside the main entrance at Masonic Street and Geary Boulevard on Monday. "We've been counting down the days on our phones," said Cruz.

 

The new store, CityTarget SF West, is Target's eighth urban-oriented store to open since July 2012, including the CityTarget anchoring the Metreon in downtown San Francisco.

 

At the same time, the Minneapolis chain, with 48 locations in the Bay Area, continues....

[Charles Pearson]

San Francisco's Housing Market Ranks Last in Affordability for the Middle Class

 

We already knew that high cost of living is San Franciscan's top concern right now. New data from real estate aggregator Trulia adds insult to injury: showing that San Francisco's housing market ranks dead last in availability to the middle class, with a meager 14% of homes for sale within the realm of affordability to those with a median household income. San Francisco's metro area beat out the New York and Los Angeles for this position.

 

Orange County actually came in 2nd-to-last place, with 23% of homes for sale affordable for the middle class; LA came in 3rd-to-last with 24%, and New York came in 4th-to-last with 25%. Keep in mind that these percentages are for metro areas. Manhattan still wins out with only 2.5% of homes for sale affordable to the middle class - the average size of which is 500 square feet. The county-by-county breakdown is also interesting. For those of you always contending that Oakland is San Francisco's Brooklyn, think again. It's actually more equatable to SF's Queens.

 

If you're wondering how Trulia made these calculations, here are their ground rules: the median household income numbers come from the Census, and then placed under the assumption that a family makes a 20% down payment and will not spend more than 31% of its pre-tax income on housing costs - including property taxes and insurance.

[Charles Pearson]

Twenty-four years ago today at 5:04 p.m., I was about to leave work at California Medical Association, third floor in the Communications dept that was half-full since most of our staff had already departed for home to beat the expected traffic jams since the World Series was about unfold between San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's at Candlestick, and as I was walking past the copy room and on my way to the rest room that I figured I better use before climbing aboard a dreaded #5Fulton Muni to get home to 21st Avenue and Fulton Street beside Golden Gate Park in the Inner Richmond District where I lived back then with partner Jim and our Burmese cat Smitty Pearson-McGrath, I noticed the same woman photocopying a bunch work, which gave me a feeling of deja-vu since that morning I had seen the same woman photocopying and I stopped and looked up and heard the woman screaming, "Charles! Charles! Get in the doorway. It's an earthquake..."  The shaker lasted only a few seconds but it seemed like an hour, and everything in our office was suddenly pitch black, and remember Gretchen, our graphic office, screaming when a bookcase tumbled over in her office...

 

Twenty-four years ago today at 5:04 p.m., I was about to leave work at California Medical Association, third floor in the Communications dept that was half-full since most of our staff had already departed for home to beat the expected traffic jams since the World Series was about unfold between San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's at Candlestick, and as I was walking past the copy room and on my way to the rest room that I figured I better use before climbing aboard a dreaded #5Fulton Muni to get home to 21st Avenue and Fulton Street beside Golden Gate Park in the Inner Richmond District where I lived back then with partner Jim and our Burmese cat Smitty Pearson-McGrath, I noticed the same woman photocopying a bunch work, which gave me a feeling of deja-vu since that morning I had seen the same woman photocopying and I stopped and looked up and heard the woman screami

Twenty-four years ago today at 5:04 p.m., I was about to leave work at California Medical Association, third floor in the Communications dept that was half-full since most of our staff had already departed for home to beat the expected traffic jams since the World Series was about unfold between San Francisco Giants and Oakland A's at Candlestick, and as I was walking past the copy room and on my way to the rest room that I figured I better use before climbing aboard a dreaded #5Fulton Muni to get home to 21st Avenue and Fulton Street beside Golden Gate Park in the Inner Richmond District where I lived back then with partner Jim and our Burmese cat Smitty Pearson-McGrath, I noticed the same woman photocopying a bunch work, which gave me a feeling of deja-vu since that morning I had seen the same woman photocopying and I stopped and looked up and heard the woman screaming, "Charles! Charles! Get in the doorway. It's an earthquake..."  The shaker lasted only a few seconds but it seemed like an hour, and everything in our office was suddenly pitch black, and remember Gretchen, our graphic office, screaming when a bookcase tumbled over in her office...