Totally wiped out trying to cross the useless fucking train tracks on Townsend. First time I've done that in nine years. Fuck this weather.

I'm kinda confused about how I landed flat on my back but ended up with road rash on my palms...

Persistent rumor has it that the only reason that the useless menace of those tracks on Townsend (that run less than a block, and terminate right in front of the Adobe building) still exist is that Caltrain's contract specifies that if they don't make use of those tracks, ownership of that right-of-way reverts to the City. So once a month, they very methodically roll a train down the street... then roll it back. "See? We're 'using' it", they say, and no Caltrain bureaucrat gets a black mark on their record for having accidentally reduced the amount of real estate under their control. [citation needed]

They've killed the Coke sign! This is a tragedy! A travesty. A tragavesty.

Now normally I have a visceral, knee-jerk allergy to advertising in pretty much any form (and I don't even drink Coke, see sidebar), but I have to admit that I have some love for that Coke sign.

It was so old and janky and never worked right! Half of the lights seemed to run on Lucas three-position switch technology (off, dim and flicker) and it was a different half almost every night. I have long had this fantasy that the reason the sign always looked like that is that there is only one guy left in the world who knows how to fix the mechanical relays that drive its pattern logic, and that guy is 95 and has trouble getting up and down the ladder to sweep the birdshit out of the contacts with his vintage Nineteenth-century wire brush.

That's how it is in my head, anyway. If the reality is not actually like that, then I don't want to know.

But anyway, replacing it with a slick, modern LED facimile? Feh! I shake an angry fist.

"Energy Efficient" LED Sign to Be Unveiled in Late December.

The Coca-Cola Company announced today plans to replace the historic neon sign in San Francisco`s South of Market district. Coca-Cola has maintained a display alongside the southbound lanes on the I-80 freeway heading in to downtown San Francisco for more than 75 years. In its place will be a state-of-the-art LED display that is consistent in size and brightness with the existing sign but 80% more energy efficient and is to be powered by 100% sustainable and certified "green" energy. [...]

To begin preparations for installation, power will be shut off to the existing display starting today. Skilled display and lighting workers will begin carefully dismantling and removing the display faces. By December 11, it will be completely disassembled and the installation of the replacement faces will begin. [...] Coca-Cola also plans a `flip-the-switch` ceremony to celebrate relighting the new sign. More details will be forthcoming.

Under Prop D, signs ranging from digital billboards, like the one seen heading into Oakland from the Bay Bridge, to "dancing inflatable men" would be allowed along Market from Fifth to Seventh streets, according to the Planning Department.

Why Delhi's buses are so deadly: an economic analysis

At least 115 people were killed by Blueline buses in 2008. The Blueline's grim numbers stem entirely from two perverse economic incentives: the driver's salary is wholly dependant on how many fares he picks up, and each bus is in direct competition with every other bus on the route.

Blueline buses are not typically driven by their owners. Instead, thousands of drivers rent their buses from a smaller group of owners at a cost of three or four thousand rupees a day plus maintenance. With passengers paying between two and ten rupees a ride, drivers are forced to pick up a few hundred people before they can even begin to consider buying lunch.

[...] But with an estimated 2,200 Blueline buses careening across Delhi on any given day, it's no wonder the newspaper reports are almost identical every day. After an accident, the driver tries to flee, an angry mob beats him, the police impound the bus, the driver is thrown in jail, the owner of the bus is not mentioned. Sometimes the driver escapes, in which case the mob finds its release in setting fire to the bus.

And while the Delhi government has pledged to replace the Blueline with modern city-run buses in time for the Commonwealth Games, newspapers report of a cabal of "powerful people" who own the majority of the Bluelines, and who aren't going to let the city cut them out of the transit racket quite so easily.

This is essentially the same racket behind San Francisco's taxicab industry, except that apparently our local taxi drivers are shiftless and lazy, with no work ethic to speak of.

Is there a photo-blog of the bridge construction? It seems like (here in The Future) there ought to be someone on the work crew with a camera, but I haven't come across it yet. I want to see the mega-engineering porn.

Somehow, after all these years, I had never managed to make it to the Cable Car Museum until a few days ago.

It is full of gigantic loud spinny things. It is amazing. You must go.

The museum is small, but it's also the actual head-end of the cable car system. The museum part is a mezzanine overlooking the workshop floor and the giant wheels that run the four remaining cable car lines. The current plant was built in the early 80s, but earlier in the century there had been dozens of plants around town to run the various lines, each powered by steam engines. Steam engines!

It's also a great place to get your apocalyptic car-hate on, once you read about how the majority of the cable car lines were dismantled due to lobbying from the then-powerful internal-combustion bus lobby, despite the fact that cable cars were cheaper and more reliable. The busses mostly won, obviously, but there was a public outcry that saved a few of the cable car lines. San Francisco has been the only place in the world with an operating cable car system since 1957.

Previously, previously.

AT&T is planning on installing new "street-level communications cabinets" on sidewalks throughout the city. [...] To be clear, they will not be replacing their current boxes. Rather, they will be installing an additional box at each location that will be about four feet long that will connect to the old boxes. AT&T may also be "upgrading" many of the existing boxes, which will now be 5'5" tall by 26" deep. AT&T plans to place the new boxes 18 inches from the curb. The company says that they are unable to place the boxes underground because it would require fans and ventilation to protect the sensitive fibers.

A number of San Francisco neighborhoods have already fought the project; see this article from August, which suggests that they had backed down on their plan. But based on the recent community meeting, they seem to be moving forward again. State law prohibits localities, including San Francisco, from preventing this project.

More:

AT&T's rival Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable company, apparently thought so too. It ran ads in Illinois calling the cabinets "giant utility boxes." AT&T didn't think it was funny and sued Comcast in March for running a "false, deceptive and disparaging advertising campaign." The companies signed a standstill agreement in May.

Goldberg noted that Verizon Communications Inc. was able to bury its fiber-optic boxes underground in town -- a fact the phone company was more than eager to confirm.

I was only just informed that Shepard Fairey has a show in SF. Why don't you people tell me these things?

Dear people I actually know in real life: We must go to this. I saw his show in NYC, and the full-sized canvas versions of his prints are incredible. I guess he's here until the end of the month? (Which is Tuesday.)

I went down to The Embarcadero to see what this "Sunday Streets" business was all about. I didn't get there until it was almost over, and missed all of the events (including the mass "Thriller" dance at Peewee Herman Plaza, sadly) because it ran from 9AM to 1PM on a Sunday -- seriously, WTF? Who is out and about at 9AM on a holiday Sunday? All the fuss people were making about street closures for something that ended before lunch?

Anyway, it was very weird biking down that street with no cars. It took me a while to get it into my head that I could actually use the whole road, not just the bike lane.

The most striking part was how quiet it was, even though there were 10x as many people there as normal -- and how it didn't smell at all like exhaust. I didn't expect to notice that as much as I did, but yes, roads without cars on them don't stink! It's like when your ears finally pop and you can hear again. You don't notice it until it's gone.

It was even more noticable at 1PM when they opened the floodgates and let the noise and stink back in. Sad.

Dear Diary, tonight I saw a shirtless man run down the middle of the street. Being chased by another shirtless man. Whose pants were falling down. Because he had just taken off his belt. Which he then began using to beat the first man.

Good times.

Ignore That Logo Under the Tape!

To ensure that only the companies that pay millions of dollars to be official Olympic sponsors enjoy the benefits of exposure in Olympic venues, organizers have covered the trademarks of nonsponsors with thousands of little swatches of tape.

In media centers, dormitories and arena bathrooms, pieces of tape cover logos of fire extinguishers, light switches, thermostats, bedroom night tables, soap dispensers and urinals. The Taiden Industrial translation headsets in a large conference room have had their logos covered, as have the American Standard faucets in the bathrooms nearby, and the ThyssenKrupp escalators down the hall.

The International Olympic Committee says that such "brand protection" is essential for the Games to raise the corporate money that keeps them going and growing. The Games get 40% of their revenue from sponsors, with the rest coming from broadcast rights, ticketing and licensing. Sponsors of China's Games, believed to be the most lucrative ever, have contributed some $1.5 billion in cash, goods and services, estimates sports-marketing group Octagon.

The IOC says the brand-protection practices here in Beijing are consistent with procedures at past Olympics. Actual enforcement of IOC sponsorship-protection rules falls mostly to whichever city is hosting the Games, however, and by some indications no host has taken that role more seriously than China. In many cases, even products that don't compete with anything made by official sponsors are having their logos covered.

Previously, previously.

Scientists find bugs that eat waste and excrete petrol

They start out as industrial yeast or nonpathogenic strains of E. coli, but LS9 modifies them by custom-designing their DNA. Because crude oil is only a few molecular stages removed from the fatty acids normally excreted by yeast or E. coli during fermentation, it does not take much fiddling to get the desired result.

Using genetically modified bugs for fermentation is essentially the same as using natural bacteria to produce ethanol, although the energy-intensive final process of distillation is virtually eliminated because the bugs excrete a substance that is almost pump-ready.

"Our plan is to have a demonstration-scale plant operational by 2010 and, in parallel, we'll be working on the design and construction of a commercial-scale facility to open in 2011," says Mr Pal, adding that if LS9 used Brazilian sugar cane as its feedstock, its fuel would probably cost about $50 a barrel.

This is awesome, only because it's so rare to see sanity in these matters:

Was I worried? Yes, a tinge. But it didn't strike me as that daring, either. Isn't New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It's not like we're living in downtown Baghdad.

Anyway, for weeks my boy had been begging for me to please leave him somewhere, anywhere, and let him try to figure out how to get home on his own. So on that sunny Sunday I gave him a subway map, a MetroCard, a $20 bill, and several quarters, just in case he had to make a call.

No, I did not give him a cell phone. Didn't want to lose it. And no, I didn't trail him, like a mommy private eye. I trusted him to figure out that he should take the Lexington Avenue subway down, and the 34th Street crosstown bus home. If he couldn't do that, I trusted him to ask a stranger. And then I even trusted that stranger not to think, "Gee, I was about to catch my train home, but now I think I'll abduct this adorable child instead."

Long story short: My son got home, ecstatic with independence.

Long story longer, and analyzed, to boot: Half the people I've told this episode to now want to turn me in for child abuse. As if keeping kids under lock and key and helmet and cell phone and nanny and surveillance is the right way to rear kids. It's not. It's debilitating -- for us and for them.

A few months back I wrote about the "public space" zoning regulations. There's now been a new article about it. I don't think there's much new information there that wasn't covered in the links you folks posted in the comments, but there is a pretty slick Google Maps display of all the spaces mentioned in the article.

Oh, and that one on 2nd Street that I made fun of? "Enclosed empty concrete lobby as public park"? The article says, "Though passers-by must pass through doors to use the chairs and black granite benches, the space feels like an urban piazza."

Suuuure it does.

My understanding is that the zoning regulations in San Francisco tend to require construction projects downtown to put in "public space", the presumed goal being to get some greenery and open plazas into the area instead of featureless concrete canyons.

What they tend to do instead, though, is build things like rooftop gardens on top of office buildings. While these areas are technically open to the public, it might not be easy explaining that to the doorman who has never heard of any such thing. And how would you know it even existed if you weren't already a tenant of that building?

Or, this example that I've walked by a few times: I can't remember exactly which building it is (somewhere on 2nd Street maybe), but it's a relatively tall office building whose footprint is something like this:

The black area is the building, and the white area is glass-enclosed and looks like a lobby or food court... but really it's just a big empty space filled with tables. It goes all the way up: there are no building-floors above it. There are no storefronts or vendors inside. It's incredibly uninviting, and always empty. And next to the street-facing glass doors is a plaque that says something like "DESIGNATED PUBLIC SPACE, OPEN 8AM-9PM." They could have just left the glass off and planted some trees, but instead someone thought this walled-in concrete slab was a better idea.

Anyway.

purple_b tells a story of how, years ago, one of the local papers published a list of these so-called "public" spaces downtown, and he went and visited many of them. But he no longer has the list, and my google-fu fails me on searching for anything like that.

I would like to find such a list.

I'm also curious about what the actual zoning rules are that result in this kind of thing.