San Francisco and what to do in it

one of my Oakland neighbors was packing up a Uhaul to move back to SF last week

reliable as in not funded by the chan zuckerberg initiative / sufficiently disentangled from the mess that SF city politics seems to be / coming from somebody who actually does outreach and regularly interacts with homeless people / journalists, blogs, or twitter threads that don't feel the need to speak in sanitized jargon

just curious if people who actually live in the bay area can direct my attention / share links / etc., any tips appreciated

How y'all holding up, Bay Area?

Pretty well in the city itself. It's neither been as hot nor as smoky as past events since I've been here, so crossed fingers it holds up.

SF is fine. Healdsburg/Napa, Santa Cruz/Big Basin, Carmel/Salinas is a different story:

Rolling Western U.S. Is On Fire / Wildfires Thread

Yesterday morning, they arrested the guy who is suspected of starting the Carmel fire, he was from Fresno (of course).

it wasn't Bobby Salazar was it?

Sacramento Valley currently bad smoke & we have some light ash on the ground, nearest fires are 30-40 miles away but the cumulative smoke from the Sonoma County & Contra Costa fires are definitely compunding conditions here

Okay so: quick note here that my sis is looking for a new roommate at her Inner Sunset spot. She's looking for a woman for a roommate, someone in theiir 30s or older and very chill/easygoing, either working from home or at a setup that's VERY safety-conscious, obv. Drop me a direct line if you have any leads!

So the mayor has closed beach parking lots since a few hundred people had a mini burning man last night. On one of the hottest days of the year. Has anyone actually gotten COVID at the beach? I haven’t seen a single anecdote of someone thinking they did. If you have one, I’d love to hear it.

lol I wondered if there'd be an official response to that -- saw pics on fb -- burners gonna burn i guess

Collective punishment seems like a stupid response.

After spending the last few weeks in the smokey haze of the still yet to be contained CRZ lightning complex fire*, and also with the current Spare The Air policy in place, I agree with the Mayor on this one on prohibiting bonfires or any fires esp. if the city is indeed still under COVID restrictions.

*68% as of posting:
https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2020/8/16/czu-lightning-complex-including-warnella-fire/

VegemiteGrrl, we might have talked about this before, but where are you located in the Valley? I lived in Los Molinos and Chico for a while. (I recommend neither).

Sacramento!

Ah, yes. Despite some very weird times there, I always liked Sac. The last I spent any amount of time there, I went to a metal show in a suburban neighborhood and was one of the oldest people there, other than my friends who were playing. It was pretty fun, actually!

I also love that mural somewhere that reads "In Scarcity We Bare the Teeth." I caught a glimpse of it on public transit after coming into town from the Roseville train yard. Ate very cheap and good tacos and drank cold beer near the Megabus station on the west side.

ohhh yess i love that mural!! so great

https://live.staticflickr.com/7297/11129585563_76e4c0b57d_b.jpg

https://www.flickr.com/photos/rickele/11129585563

rick ele! he's up in Olympia now, i think?

So, orange enough for you?

not enough teal

so dark!

When my alarm went off this morning I thought it was someone calling me in the middle of the night with bad news.

I still don’t smell much smoke. I read that the smoke is being suspended between the calm atmosphere at the surface and the winds rushing far above it

It's still totally dark. This is some nuclear winter shit right now.

xpost Yeah, more on that:

https://www.sfgate.com/news/editorspicks/article/Bay-Area-yellow-glow-sky-wildfire-smoke-15550298.php

so weird

Just about noon and finally getting a bit lighter here in Marin. The birds and deer I've seen seem very confused like they know it's 2020 and everything is f'ed up.

lol the squirrels are probably having the same conversation

Straight up apocalyptic vibes.

Don't sweat it, eventually we won't have any forest left to burn.

That's the only thing stopping the August Complex from spreading further south. A few days ago it ran up against the fire line from the 2018 Mendocino Complex.

Going on a small bike ride around the city pretending I'm in some martian colony.

a fun game to play is "what parts of living in SF always felt like 2020", occurred to me while I was biking through SoMA

If your child received a turkey sandwich from SFUSD today, please discard.

But of course

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/Silicon-Valley-co-living-start-up-fails-hubhaus-15628436.php

quelle surprise

the thing is actually -- hahaha -- part of what led to their demise is the very strict and elaborate San Francisco Planning Code that also caused the great expense and suffering of the ice cream shop guy in that other sfgate article.

The issue is that San Francisco has specific definitions of what constitutes a "family" for the purpose of single family housing. This goes back quite a while, and wasn't just put in place to prevent things like Hubhaus, though it is possible that enforcement of this has increased because of entities like Hubhaus. If you have more than 5 unrelated people living in a house (or apartment) then San Francisco generally rules that is "group housing" which is a different use category in the SF Planning Code that is often not permitted in parts of the city, and the owners can get fined and tenants evicted if the City rules against them. This happened to one of the Hubhauses recently. (I wanna say near St Francis Wood???)

The more than 5 unrelated people living together thing has been loosened over the years with a "facts and circumstances" type test (based on a CA Supreme Court case in I wanna say 1980?) ... anyway, now, you can theoretically have more than 5 unrelated people be "a family" if they behave in a family like way: pay bills collectively, control the membership of the household, prepare and eat meals together. But Hubhaus obviously failed this test because they are a corporation placing people in these houses, and the individual tenants pay Hubhaus ...

actually -- Hubhaus was just the master tenant in that case; the owner was some trust.

honestly who hasn’t been on at least 1 muni ride like this pic.twitter.com/WxThbTWYof

— jacq-o-lantern 🎃 (@hojicha_babie) October 19, 2020

lol wow

:)

https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/Marvel-Studios-movie-filming-downtown-SF-Shang-Chi-15659724.php

Oh yeah forgot to tell everyone I'm the star wait hold on.

the streets in my neighborhood were blocked off for this yesterday

I'm really excited that my polling place this time is the bar around the corner that of course can't open. Figure I'll drop my ballot off in person and say hi to the poor staff and owner.

BTW the fact that they still have to pay Alcohol Control Board fees is some BS (although hardly the worst of it)

my polling place has always been the senior living center around the corner - no longer, for obvious reasons i guess. too bad, it was super close and there was never a line. voting by mail this time.

When I lived in the Excelsior (the last election I voted in), my polling place was a garage up the street! There were jars of preserves and pickles on the shelves. It was really weird and charming, just like SF was at the time.

Sounds like my old polling place in Mission Terrace! I guess we were almost neighbors.

Maybe! I lived at Naples and Avalon for a few years

my polling place is the Church of Sweden, I was happy to drop my ballot off there on election day in 2016, but I really wanted to vote early this year

I probably bicycled near or around your place for several years, then, Dan. I used to work on *shudders* Chestnut Street, and eventually had to go between the top of Fillmore and Chestnut by the time I left that job, and the Bay in general.