Bikes to Books, Part II
Bikes to Books season is upon us once again! On October 8, join me and Nicole at a Shaping SF talk.
Wednesday, October 8, 7:30-9:30 p.m.: Shaping SF public talk, 7:30-9:30 p.m.
Making History by Making Maps panel discussion at Shaping San Francisco’s Public Talks series, with Dick Walker co-author of The Atlas of California: Mapping the Challenge of a New Era.
Eric Quezada Center for Culture and Politics, 518 Valencia, SF
We’ll be talking up our collaborative map project from concept to creation, fielding questions, and unveiling our expanded poster version, on the one-year anniversary of its publication, and the 26-year anniversary of the street-naming that inspired the project.
Event is free. Maps will be available for purchase.
And come ride with us on October 11th!
Saturday, Oct 11, 12:45-4:00 p.m.: Bikes to Book bicycle tour, co-hosted by Litquake:
Meet at 12:45 p.m. at Jack London Street (at South Park in San Francisco)
Ride will commence at 1:00 p.m. sharp
Ride will end at approximately 4:00 p.m. in North Beach, outside City Lights Books
Bring bikes with gears, snacks, and enthusiasm
Event is free. Maps will be available for purchase.
Combining San Francisco history, art, literature, cycling, and urban exploration, “Bikes to Books” began as an bike ride homage to the 1988 street-naming project spearheaded by City Lights founder and former San Francisco Poet Laureate, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in which twelve San Francisco streets were renamed for famous artists and authors who had once made San Francisco their home. First published in 2013 in The San Francisco Bay Guardian, and later in partnership with City Lights Books, the physical map can be found in many of San Francisco’s finest book emporiums, and is appropriate for use as a navigational tool, a history lesson, and a unique work of art in its own right.
Fire the Fourth
Yesterday on BFF.fm, @brockwinstead and I spoke of many things, including the fire of September 17, 1850, one of the six fires that hit San Francisco in the space of a year and a half.
Side note: good news! You can now subscribe to Burrito Justice Radio via RSS!
Here’s a rough map of the affected area today.
Here’s a GIF of the 1853 Survey Map (more on that over at Pastmapper) — caveat emptor, this was surveyed in 1851-1852, after another TWO fires had taken place..
The fire burned up to the brick walls of the Daily Alta itself.
Here’s the famous shot from Portsmouth Square in 1851, looking across Washington St. at that survivor, the Daily Alta building.
I’ve started making a rough map of what burned over on Mapbox. Red is what burned, blue is what survived, and yellow is what got torn down.
It’s a work in progress. The map doesn’t have the granularity or metadata I need to realistically keep track of what was where. Also, they didn’t exactly record the street address numbers with any great gusto. (I get the impression not all streets had actual numbered addresss at this point.)
Also, people are not exactly listed in alphabetic order within letters.
Anyway, during the fire some of these people were a little too focused on rescuing their goods, in this case gunpowder:
And in addition to the play by play of the fire’s path, the Daily Alta also published fascinating list of all the businesses lost. Here’s just a sample:
One of these days I’ll get this info embedded in a slippy map.
If this fourth fire was too much for you and you wanted to get out of San Francisco before it burned down twice more, here were some of your options:
A first class fare to NYC, adjusted for inflation, was about $10,000. If you wanted to slum it in steerage, you’d only have to shell out $5,000. Getting to Portland would have run you $1200. More on ocean transportation of that era over here.
La Lenguahenge
Or perhaps Duncanhenge.
Seriously though, while I probably should have waited a few weeks for the sun to hit Diamond Heights, this shit is hard with @karlthefog so cut me some slack.
Bicycles in the Sky (Valencia Street Skycycle)
Hooray! According to Bernalwood, a raised bikeway is coming Valencia Street!
Well, about 551 feet of it. (image via Bernalwood)
This is part of the Mission/Valencia Gateway project. From the SFBC:
San Francisco is set to get its first raised bikeway next year! The showcase bikeway is part of the Mission/Valencia Gateway project and will stretch southbound on Valencia Street from Cesar Chavez Street to Duncan Street. This one-block bikeway heralds a completely new type of bicycle infrastructure to our city, one that will become more common in the next few years, as raised bikeways are integrated into the Masonic Avenue and 2nd Street projects.
Raised bikeways are common in great bicycling cities like Copenhagen, but relatively new in the United States. Raised bikeways create a protected bikeway without bollards or barriers, instead building the bikeway at an intermediate level between the sidewalk and roadway.Learn more about raised bikeways and see designs here.
The raised bikeway is an unexpected but very welcome enhancement to the Mission Valencia Green Gateway project, which wrapped up public outreach last year after three community open houses as well as feedback from hundreds of neighbors and SF Bicycle Coalition members. In addition to the raised bikeway, the final project design also includes wider sidewalks, permeable pavement and two new plazas, one at Mission and Valencia and a smaller one at Duncan and Valencia.
Hooray! Though @TheRealWBTC thought it was a bit different:
https://twitter.com/TheRealWBTC/status/509743321128767489
Had the mid-twentieth century had its way, this might have been! A 1956 proto-BART proposal had an elevated train running down Valencia Street! This would have obviously been abandoned and converted into a High Line West at some point. Behold the Valencia Skycycle!
Of course, the Raised Bikeway is just an intermediary step towards the glory that is Valencia St Park!
New York Burrito
A New York burrito. (via @sjiang, one of our undercover agents)
No pizza in San Francisco is this bad.
This “burrito” contravenes all known protocols and traditions. Also, it is incredibly dangerous to compromise the structural integrity of a burrito by removing the foil. A properly wrapped burrito is about 70-80 PSI, and by defoiling the burrito you are taking your very life in your hands.
Therefore, for the safety of New York City and its boroughs, we are arming the Burrito Railgun and disengaging the humanitarian safeties.
Take cover, Manhattan, for a we shall met a fiery rain of al pastor upon the unworthy, inbound at 29,000 mph.
Burrigible
Did anyone else notice a giant burrito floating over Bernal around lunch?
Bigger question: is this related to Star Trek IV?
Or is it more along the lines of
ALL THIS HILLS ARE YOURS
EXCEPT BERNAL
ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE
Hopefully they will not proclaim
TAKE US TO YOUR
BURRITO THOUGHT LEADER
Jesus Sutro
Seismogenic
Today’s guest on Burrito Justice Radio on BFF.fm was none other than @seismogenic, an anthropomorphic friend who is a newly minted seismologist with the USGS down in Menlo Park. If you want to hear about
- SF, LA and Imperial Valley faults
- earthquake forecasting, prediction and early warning
- SF geology
- chert
- serpentine
- some really good earthquake music (seriously)
…here’s the replay link. (And if you like what you hear, why not make a donation?)
Valencha
My guest on BFF.fm on Wednesday was none other than @guero310, that rare breed, a second-generation Missionite!
show archive (big mp3)
Lots of great talk about the neighborhood in the 70s and 80s and 90s, as well as his dad in the 50s. We covered Groger’s Western Store, and taqueria history and pricing. $2.88 for a burrito and coke!
And his playlist:
- Fluorescent Adolescent – Arctic Monkeys
- To Cool For This Crowd – Girls in The Eighties
- Thursday – Asobi Seksu
- Clumsy Sky – Girl In A Coma
- Jaulas – La Plebe
- Sat, May 31st 2014 Sacramento, CA at Southside Park
- Sat, Jun 28th 2014 Oakland, CA at Oakland Metro Operahouse
- La Chuchilla- Aterciopelados
- Clumsy Sky – Girl In A Coma
- Swim Surfer Blood
- Jaulas – La Plebe
- Spanish Bombs – Tijuana No!
- Swim – Surfer Blood
- Chihuahua -Bow Wow Wow
- Bratty B – Best Coast
- As The World Falls Down – Girl In A Coma
Imperial Overreach
Bernalwood reports: David Campos has tried to eat Precita Park!
(h/t @strngwys for the GIF. Godzilla and Bernal, oh man.)
While La Lengua has had its differences with the Bernalian Hegemony, we support microhood rights rather than amalgamation.
Precita is Bernal. Period. Try talking to people next time, David.
UPDATE: Precita Park has been removed from the Calle 24 District.
Burrito Justice 
