Goodnight, 26 Valencia
Of all the Muni schedule changes, the 26-Valencia affects me the most. It’s pretty much the only bus I take, and with its departure I probably won’t ride Muni at all. It looks like BART wins out.
Muni Diaries has a two-part eulogy on the 26. A consistent theme seems to be a pleasant ride that didn’t come often enough. I frankly cannot see how the 14 and 49 will pick up the slack — in fact I predict a veritable clusterfuck — and I am hoping that its absence will lead to a phoenix-like twentysixsurrection.
Anyway, I wanted to provide some historical context — the 26-Valencia was was once the 26-Guerrero streetcar:
(scan via CPRR.org)
It ran along Mission-14th-Guerrero-30th-Chenery-Diamond-San Jose:
(scan via Octoferret)
Here’s a description of the 26 Guerrero from a 1914 tour guide:
via us.archive.org, click for 14MB PDF
Here are the 26 Guerrero streetcar lines on Guerrero and 28th, via SFPL:
Guerrero-26 streetcar tracks at 28th
Spots Unknown has pictures of the 26 Guerrero streetcars.
My last 26:
I’m hoping this leads to something better. Maybe the city gets wise and turns Valencia into a bicycle and light-rail corridor, and perhaps the ripping up of Cesar Chavez to replace the sewer main gives us an opportunity for BRT down CC to the 22nd St Caltrain station (or even light rail between the J at 30th, Caltrain and the T-Third…)
But regardless, I think we’ll see it again. I was speaking to the driver and we agreed: you just don’t fuck with the 26-Valencia.
Muni Danger Data
As we await the death of the 26-Valencia, safest bus in the Mission, Nick (loyal SoMa reader, rider of the Mission-traversing 12-Folsom/Pacific and Buboblogger) asks exactly what an “incident” is on Muni.
UPDATE: Per secretivek’s request, here’s a quick and dirty conversion to a scatter plot (click to embiggen).
I found the SFPD source document for the bar chart that sheds more light onto incidents. The data below is from January to August (which raises another question, since the minutes were recorded during Sept-Oct — if you KNOW there are 4x the incidents on the 14-Mission, why are you spending twice the time on the K? Then again I’d rather ride the K than the 14.) Here is a breakout by crime:
Assult and disturbance/disorderly conduct is over 37% of incidents. Fare evasion is about 3% of incidents (though I don’t know if this includes fare inspectors). I’m kind of curious on Operator/Passenger assault. Is that the driver attacking someone?
Only one insane person, but I guess that can be enough.
Here are the figures for Ingleside Station that includes the southern Mission, Bernal, Glen Park, Portola, Excelsior and Visitacion Valley.
Here we learn it is significantly safer to ride Muni in the morning:
Muni in morning
BART at night
You will get
Home alright
Ironic Beers
Much is made of PBR as the ultimate hipster beer. But TK over at 40 Going on 28 presents us oldsters with a quandary. While we like our microbrews — Sierra Nevada and Anchor Steam — those calories do stack up. TK points to a treasure trove of beer calorie data and a quick glance is sobering shocking:
| Beer | calories |
| Sierra Nevada Pale Ale | 175 |
| Anchor Steam | 153 |
| PBR | 153 |
| Coors | 149 |
| Budweiser | 145 |
| Miller Lite | 96 |
However, alcohol content varies more than you would expect. I have taken the time to plot this very relationship.
We can obviously cast aside all the beers above the best fit line as they serve little purpose. There are a considerable number of outliers to consider. Olde English 800 (5.9%/160) and Rolling Rock (4.5%/120) are certainly contenders. But the “ice beers” seem to serve us well — Keystone Ice (5.9%/142 calories) is followed closely by Milwaukee’s Best Ice (5.9%/144) and may prove sufficiently ironic for the Mission.
But rather than eyeballing this, if we list the alcohol % per calorie ratio (bang for the buck) a surprising trend develops: the lite/light beers actually prove most potent.
And through scientific study I have determined that for a beer to be truly ironic it must break 3.5 — sorry PBR and Hamm’s, you just don’t cut it.
| Beer | %/c |
| Anchor Steam | 3.20 |
| Sierra Nevada | 3.20 |
| Hamm’s | 3.26 |
| PBR | 3.27 |
| MGD | 3.29 |
| Bud | 3.45 |
| Red Hook | 3.46 |
| Colt 45 Malt Liquor | 3.51 |
| Olde English 800 | 3.69 |
| Rolling Rock | 3.75 |
| Bud Light | 3.82 |
| Milwaukee’s Best Ice | 4.10 |
| MGD 64 | 4.38 |
| Miller Lite | 4.38 |
| Anheuser Busch Natural Light | 4.42 |
| Milwaukee’s Best Light | 4.59 |
Behold Milwaukee’s Best Light (4.5%/98), the new ironic beer!
At 4.59, Milwaukee’s Best Light simply crushes the rest. PBR and Sierra Nevada fail by over 1.2 points! Sadly this finely crafted brew is not available at BevMo.
UPDATE: Sadly, it turns out that MBL is merely Miller’s ‘economy label‘. But Beer Advocate gives it a D! This clearly means we will see it in Dolores Park in the very near future.
NYT Disses La Lengua
The New York Times waxes rhapsodic over Bernal Heights and Glen Park in the Nov 27 Escapes section.
Looks like someone broke out the thesaurus:
Bernal Heights Natural Area, a 24-acre knob of red Franciscan chert that rises from a sea of colorful row houses like the prow of a ship, has a 360-degree view of San Francisco in its pastel glory. The city ripples into the distance in all directions…
(Knob of red chert? Pastel glory? Perhaps the author was attacked by a Pantone color wheel as a child. Hey, Pastel Glory would be a great name for a band.)
They properly acknowledge Mission as the western border of Bernal, but they then have the nerve to diss La Lengua:
The 24th Street Mission BART stop is actually closer to Bernal Heights than is the Glen Park station, but the walk from there has little scenic appeal.
Ha ha, little do they know that Mission St is a giant DMZ and Valencia is the way to go. (Oh crap, looks like they already do.)
Muni Danger Bus
SF.Streetsblog brings us this SFPD chart showing the Muni routes with the most incidents (blue), vs percentage of SFPD rides in minutes as tracked by TransLink (red).
Our frenemy the 14 Mission leads the city in terms of incidents.
UPDATE: It looks like an incident is anything from fare evasion to assault. Below are breakout charts, with the full SPFD report here.
Here is a breakout of incidents by Mission routes:
Thank you, Muni, for killing the safest route in the Mission.
And yes, I know that the 14 has about 10x the ridership of the 26, meaning the incident per capita is about the same. But can you really imagine a more crowded 14 or 49?
Goodnight, 26.
Blight Here, Blight Now, Noe
Breaking news! Blight exists in Noe Valley AT THIS VERY MOMENT.
Now I know what you’re thinking — “how can you possibly detect blight without the advantage of retro-history and the assistance of Eric Fisher’s time machine?” By walking up Duncan between Church and Dolores:
Sometimes blight arrives because you don’t rebuild. Other times it comes around because you don’t finish. This site has been under construction for at least two years, and I don’t think any work has been done for about a year.
But how exactly do we know this is blight as opposed to procrastination? Easy:
Click to zoom for the commentary added by neighbors regarding Contractor “LOSER”.
“Tack down your tarps.”
“Your neighbors are getting pissed – you lock it down or we will.”
Peel back the blue tarp and you see old school Noe ready to roar.
Enceladus, Saturn, 3D Stereo Fun
No, not enchilada, Enceladus. The Cassini space probe, launched in 1997, has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004 and has returned all sorts of ridiculously crazy-detailed data and pictures of Saturn and its moons.
Epic shots during Saturn’s equinox, when the rings were nearly edge-on to the sun and height variations cast long shadows:
Planetary Society, via NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute
Earlier this month it skimmed 64 miles above Enceladus, an icy moon that gets squished by tides from Saturn and as a result has geysers that vent up through cracks on the surface:
NASA / JPL / SSI / mosaic by Emily Lakdawalla
A mosaic of a cracks, or tiger stripe – Enceladus is about the width of Arizona, and the cracks are over a mile wide (a little wider that San Andreas Lake / Crystal Springs reservoir off 280).
NASA / JPL / SSI / mosaic by Astro0, unmannedspaceflight.com, via The Planetary Society
And here is a 3D stereo shot of the crevasse (rotated 90 degrees from the shot above):
(Sorry if you can’t cross your eyes to see the THIRD DIMENSION. On another planet, no less.)
And just so Republicans don’t think their tax dollars are wasted on a single icy planet, Cassini’s radar picked up what is believed to be methane lakes the size of Superior on Titan:
(NASA, University of Arizona, Planetary Society)
UPDATE: I am an idiot and took pictures of 998 Valencia (to the left of ATA) rather than the un-AA space at 988 Valencia (to the right of ATA). I get my empty Valencia storefronts confused. My apologies.
Some redecorating going on in the not-American Apparel on Valencia and 21st former Botanica Yoruba space?
What kind of establishment would want a wall of horizontal beat-up two-by-fours? Discuss.
Proto-BART, Valencia Sky Train to Palo Alto
Eric Fisher has unearthed and scanned proto-BART plans from 1956. Some fascinating detail, including a Marin line routing along Kearny, Columbus and down Lombard (instead of Geary in later not-to-be plans).
Various alternatives were presented. One included underground stations for the Marin line at Lombard & Van Ness, with a tunnel under Russian hill to Columbus & Green, and a terminus at California & Kearny. Both elevated and suspended trains were considered.
A few different options were proposed for downtown.
One was a tunnel from the East Bay meeting with the Marin terminus at California, dodging over to Market as we know today, then continuing down Valencia.
The alternative would have come in from the East Bay over the Bay Bridge and run above Mission (with stops at 4th and 8th).
The Peninsula line would have dangled above Valencia (with stops at 14th and 22nd), then cut down Tiffany Ave to a tunnel at Dolores & San Jose, exiting around Bosworth, with a station at Ocean.
The plans show the line continuing south down the Peninsula to Palo Alto with a maintenance yard at Arastradero.
All sorts of crazy detailed suggestions for Marin, and past Palo Alto to Santa Clara / San Jose / Los Gatos (no 280 or 880 yet!) More can be seen on this system-wide map and the rest of the detailed maps on Eric’s Flickr stream.
My Two Hills
Sutro, Mission’s Protector:
Troy Holden, Caliber: At This Hour of the Day
Bernal and Sutro, together again:
Trees of Bernal, at night – 60 second exposure on a cloudy night (tonight):
Bernal on a hot, sunny morning (through my Oakleys):
Houses at night, west side of Bernal, (60 second exposure, last night)
Burrito Justice 
