Upon Dog Hill
I like to think of Bernal Heights as populated by intelligent dogs who have humans as pets. Kind of like Planet of the Apes, but with better restaurants and 4G.
Signs of dog superiority abound in Bernal, as we see in this case of canine giganticiscm:
Today, however, our dog overlords discovered a strange new object that descended overnight upon their greening hill:
“Dude! A chair! On a hill!”
This dog is not as happy to see the upholstered invader.
(Not quite sure what the dog with the red ball is thinking.)
Is this chair the Kubrickesque monolith that will give dogs opposable thumbs and mastery of tools? Alas no, for the downfall of dog civilization will be its limited attention spa¡SQUIRREL!
The chair stands alone.
But little do dogs know that our chair points towards a greater power, the all knowing and all-seeing Sutro.
While Sutrito is a minor deity, it does come with its own hawk.
Chert calmed by grey and green.
Sutrito rotational GIF:
And for good measure, a 10K pixel panorama with dramatic skies.
BART Paleofuture
Eric Fischer has let loose with the historo-scanner once again.
1970: A line to see the brand new shiny 24th St BART station (looking south at the SW escalator — the side towards Valencia and 25th).
Mmmmm, Shoe Cafeteria!
Kidding. Actually a shoe store.
And 2829 is today’s Foot Locker. (Seriously.)
Note the miniature trees up on Bernal alongside the AT&T microwave antenna.
And here we see a map of BART before the loss of the Geary Line that would have gone to 25th Ave. (This is the part of the post where you get to yell AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGRGGGGGGGRGRGGGGGGHGHHHHHHHH.)
Eric notes that the Marin line that would have come in over the Golden Gate Bridge didn’t actually connect into the rest of the system — you would have had to transfer at Kearny St Station, next to Montgomery.
Here’s a 1961 elevation survey along with aerial shots:
As Eric notes, in the 1961 aerial shots you can see where they were literally destroying the Western Addition.
1978, NE corner plaza. Note the mural (anyone know where that 1970s essay predicting the gentrification of the Mission is?) Also, you can see the very edge of the Smile Awhile sign.
1978: bikes on BART. Eric notes that bikes were only allowed on the last car then.
Reader @srlawton notes bike restrictions were tighter then:
http://twitter.com/srlawton/status/269234974266372096
This is pretty much what I look like when I ride BART. (1978, as if you couldn’t tell.)
Burrito in Real Life
Burrito is coming.
Burrito still life:
3D burrito studies:
GIF, obviously the best form factor for revealing the intricacies of the 3D burrito.
The Ballad of No More Burrito
Millions of Hoodies
Behold, a map! I took the results of the hoodies per person survey and MADE A MAP OF HOODIES IN SAN FRANCISCO.
For those tuning in late, here is the original question:
http://twitter.com/brittneyg/statuses/261131094580162560
Click for navigable version with pop-ups. (This is the first map I made in TileMill/MapBox, so I basically don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but not to shabby, eh?)
Some hoods are hoodier than others! Sample size for some zips isn’t ideal, but NW SF is leading the pack. Fog trumps fashion, apparently.
(Note this just shows the hoodie decile with the highest value, though that got tricky with some of the zips with low response rates where a bunch of deciles were tied — in that case I tried to pick a reasonable value. (Note: thing I never expected to ever type: “hoodie decile”.))
Unsurprisingly, most responses came from the Mission, Noe, Castro and Hayes Valley. Here’s a heat map of the total responses by zip. (Sorry, don’t know how to make a color-coded legend in TileMill yet. I also haven’t figured out how to clone a map yet, so all you get is this lovely PNG for now.)
But not terribly surprising given Burrito Justice and Mission Mission readership demographics. A table of the response rate by ZIP code:
And a stacked area chart:
To answer @brittneyg’s original question: Can we safely extrapolate? We have a sample size of about 500 responses, with an average of about 4 hoodies per person. I am no Nate Silver, but I think it’s safe to say there are more hoodies than people in San Francisco, especially with that fat tail. If we run with a conservative estimate of 4 hoodies per person, we are looking at over 3 million hoodies in 49 square miles.
Thanks again to @brittneyg, @alexismadrigal, and especially @therealWBTC for the poll!
La Lengua Street Fair on 29th St
Saddest. Street fair. Ever.
Ha, kidding! It’s the rapture!
(10000 pixel panorama, click to zoom.)
Actually, it’s some sort of road paving. (I hope.)
Here’s a polar projection, just to confuse you further.
Let me briefly put on my grumpy old man hat and request that the city put in some sort of bollard/barricade/planters to keep people from making u-turns at 29th & Tiffany. (Or a trebuchet — that would work too.)
(And I hear the city won’t let Front Porch add a parklet in front of their entrance. Too close to a driveway/the Safeway entrance or something like that? Boo! I demand a balustrade.)
Shot east on 29th looking towards Mission, just because I like the colors.
(Whoa, this image is exactly 3300 pixels wide.)
Land of the Giants
Giants Parade 2012, good times!
Romo!
Great speech.
Giants panoramas. (Click to zoom.)
Not just the keys to the city, but the broom to the city! (Though how about the keys to Muni? That could work.)
Sitting on a Dock by the Bay, Watching History Sail Away
Loyal readers — you have a chance to see a piece of history! Behold the Alma, a scow schooner, which the being used to celebrate the Year of the Bay.
Built in 1891, the Alma was a scow schooner — these were the “flatbed trucks” of their day, hauling cargo around SF Bay. The Alma was built in Hunters Point, and it’s taking a trip back (both in time and space).
So RSVP and come to the EcoCenter at Heron’s Head Park at 10:30 on Thursday, November 1 to herald the Alma’s arrival.
RSVP: alma@beautifulcommunities.org or 415-822-8410
More from the Year of the Bay:
On November 1, Alma will sail back to her birthplace at Hunters Point, bringing this historic scow schooner from San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park back to one of the Bay Area’s most dramatically changed historic waterfronts and communities, and closing a circle of history. We hope you will join us to welcome Alma and open the Year of the Bay — a year which brings the America’s Cup and the opening of a new span of the Bay Bridge — to all of the diverse communities of the Bay through voyages of the Alma, exhibitions, and an innovative humanities crowdsourcing project that will go live online November 1 at http://www.YearOfTheBay.org.
The Year of the Bay crowdsourcing project is sponsored by Stanford University’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project is directed by Jon Christensen, former director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford, in collaboration with Historypin.
Here is a quick run down of the day’s events:
10:30 AM: Welcome the Alma and celebrate the opening of a new segment of the Bay Trail at the
EcoCenter at Heron’s Head Park in San Francisco.
Noon: Lunch at the EcoCenter.
1-2 PM: Demonstration of the Year of the Bay crowdsourcing website to collect stories, photographs, and recollections about San Francisco Bay.
2-4:30 PM: Natural history walks at Heron’s Head Park and along the surrounding bayshore.
4:30-6:00 PM: Reception and toast to Year of the Bay at the EcoCenter at Heron’s Heads Park.
Please RSVP: alma@beautifulcommunities.org or 415-822-8410 as space is limited.
Your humble crew from the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, Stanford University, Historypin, the California Historical Society, Heyday Books, Literacy for Environmental Justice, and the EcoCenter at Heron’s Head Park eagerly await your reply.
And this being Burrito Justice, here is the article from the SF Call in 1891 announcing the launch of the Alma:
Captain John Hackey lived on 210 Steuart and Howard, right by the water like you’d expect.
Awww, the owner named it after his daughter Alma!
Not sure which J Peterson was papa though. John the Shipbuilder (red arrow) seems obvious, though I really don’t know what a “shipliner” or master mariner actually do (blue arrow).
.
524 Front seems like kind of a crappy neighborhood — hey, tenements!
605 4th seems nicer — (near South Park). Also — wine!
UPDATE:
So it looks like John is our man?
Searching for Alma Peterson through the years — assuming she was born in 1890/1891 — we find a few references that might fit:
1900: Alma Peterson, Cakewalker!
(Doubt the picture is her, but who knows…)
1901: Grammar school graduation:
Hearst Elementary was at the corner of Fillmore and Herrman (now the site of the Brotherhood of Electrical Workers):
Looking at the 1900 directory, we see many potential J Petersons:
Lots of maritime related Petersons. None of the John’s really seem to fit though, right? I mean, I doubt a guy who built a boat would be a machinist in a boat building company (John W, 1916 Greenwich)? Maybe James and Joseph?
Joseph Peterson at 513 Hickory was within walking distance of Hearst Grammar School, though isn’t a master mariner the guy sailing the boat vs a boat builder? But Joseph Peterson (listed as Teamster in 1900 and 1891h always lived down in Butchertown right next to the Hunter’s Point Shipyard…
Anyway, our Alma Peterson of Hayes Valley may be a red herring. Sorry for the anticlimax, but hey, history.
But I leave you with one historical nugget — behold THE JANITRIX:
Sunset-lit Bernal Moonrise
Enumerating Hoodies
Esteemed Mission writer @brittneyg asks an extremely important question about San Francisco:
http://twitter.com/brittneyg/statuses/261131094580162560
Esteemed journalist @alexismadrigal was initially skeptical that hoodies count be counted:
http://twitter.com/alexismadrigal/statuses/261131707011444736
I applied some quick order-of-magnitude guesstimation, and the impossible seemed within reach:
http://twitter.com/alexismadrigal/statuses/261142885007777792
@therealWBTC decided to collect DATA:
http://twitter.com/TheRealWBTC/statuses/261148850855759874
So take the survey! Do hoodies outnumber San Franciscans? Add you zip code and we can answer that and other eternal eternal questions, like how many dogs have hoodies? Who has more hoodies, the Mission or Outer Sunset? How many hoodies leave the city each day down 280 and 101?
Burrito Justice 