When the ancient Polynesians invented surfing, they often used a paddle to help them navigate. Fast-forward a few millennia, and Stand-Up Paddleboarding, or SUP, finds itself trendy again. Part of its increasing popularity is that standing upright allows surfers to spot waves more easily and thus catch more of them, multiplying the fun factor. Paddling back to the wave becomes less of a strain as well. The ability to cruise along on flat inland water, surveying the sights, is another advantage. Finally, its a good core workout. If youre sold on the idea, schedule an intro SUP lesson, free with board and paddle rental, and you may find yourself riding the waves like a Polynesian king.More
In the past 30 years, light artists have reimagined an art form that has always had the ability to turn the night sky, or a simple window, into luminescence. Last fall, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts turned its southern glass wall into a parade of sound-sensing lights, Lightswarm, that changes with the movements of nearby people and things. Future Cities Lab, the San Francisco design company behind Lightswarm, has originated another notable light sculpture. Located by the YBCA's steps at 701 Mission, Murmur Wall will light up in arresting ways as it incorporates local trending search engine results and social media postings. Onlookers can offer their own contributions, which will feed into the Murmur Wall's data stream and light up the sculpture. What's trending in San Francisco? If you're walking by the YBCA, you can see firsthand — at least through light patterns that reflect the city's volatile internet habits.
Murmur Wall debuts Thursday at 6 p.m. and continues through May 31, 2017, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 701 Mission St., S.F. Free; 415-978-2700 or ybca.org. More
December is almost over - the New Year is coming up and everyone is busy drying off from the rain or holiday shopping. Let's take a look at what's happened this month.
"Arroyo" means "stream" in Spanish, and the mural on El Arroyo Laundry's outside wall, by Ernesto Paul, depicts a mountainous stream in Latin America where women are washing clothing amid reeds, rocks, and waters that are the epitome of idyllic.
Posted
By Chris Roberts
on Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 2:35 PM
The San Francisco police officers who shot and killed Alejandro "Alex" Nieto at Bernal Hill Park in March 2014 did not use excessive force, a federal jury ruled Thursday.
Nieto, 28, a city native and a security guard at an area nightclub, was approached by a rookie police officer and his training sergeant responding to a 911 call reporting a man with a gun on March 21, 2014.
After a brief encounter, in which Nieto was told to put up his hands but pulled out a Taser, police opened fire. As many as 50 shots were fired, and Nieto was shot at least 15 times.
Posted
By Chris Roberts
on Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 1:30 PM
The adult film company of James Deen — the porn star ex of Kink.com fame, let loose from the Mission District fetish empire's stable of studs last year after allegations of rape from his former partner and other co-stars — has been slapped with a hefty fine for disobeying state safety regulations.
That is: Third Rock Enterprises, Deen's company, faces fines of up to $77,785 for not using condoms on set, according to TheWrap.
You may recall the efforts of the Aids Healthcare Foundation to put California's porn performers in all kinds of protective clothing: dental dams, goggles, gloves, and other latex layers that, porn stars say, are unnecessary and would drive the adult film business to other wilder states in the west.
Recently, Cal/OSHA's board voted against requiring that kind of gear, but the same agency also found that Deen's company "failed" to vaccinate employees properly, according to reports.
Posted
By Max DeNike
on Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 12:30 PM
Pixabay
Namaste emoji.
It’s not easy to find an employer who “gets” you. Most bosses are working for the company employing you and the boss, and that means the company comes first. But what’s good for the company is not always good for the employee. For millennials, this is hard to take.
Thankfully, one boss gets it. Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, believes his employees work too much, and this stifles innovation — that all important cornerstone of any successful disrupter.
Ramirez had murdered four people and attacked four others in July 1985. He started off August by attacking a couple in Northridge on August 6. He then killed Elyas Abowath, 31, and repeatedly sodomized Sakina Abowath, 27, in the couples' Diamond Bar home two days later. Fearing that the Southern California media had raised too much awareness of him, Ramirez struck north in search of new hunting grounds.
"The people we get here I would call third-class types," Bristol Hotel manager Alex Melnikov told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1985. "About 70 percent are on dope. I don't ask a lot of questions."
Ramirez left his room smelling like skunk and drew a pentagram on the bathroom door that police later removed as evidence.
That little bit of guerrilla advertising was hilarious and likely would make City Attorney Dennis Herrera’s civic-minded blood boil. But we’re guessing Herrera and other City Hall elites might let slide a new “vandalism” campaign featuring the likes of Mario Woods, who was killed by police in the Bayview late last year.
Popping up on Twitterand Instagram in the past day is a fake iPhone camera ad featuring a photo of Woods with the tagline “Shot on Keith St.” In smaller letters next to that, it says, “by San Francisco Police Mario Woods / 21 times.”
Posted
By Chris Roberts
on Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 10:46 AM
click image
Flickr/David Foster
You think you know a city. San Francisco, the "greenest city" in America, that bastion of environmentalism where elected officials openly call for an end to the use of fossil fuels, is in the oil business on the side.
The San Francisco Examiner brings us the news that the city has owned 800 acres of land in Kern County near Bakersfield since 1941, when a local businessman willed the land to the city as a gift.
The land is currently leased to Chevron, who pays the city about $320,000 a year for the right to drill, the newspaper reported. Supervisor John Avalos, who has minted himself as the most reliable critic of the nation's addiction to fossil fuels, has introduced legislation that would end the drilling. Problem is, that would also end a revenue stream to the
city's parks and libraries.
Posted
By Chris Roberts
on Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 11:59 AM
Mike Koozmin/SF Examiner
1049 Market Street, Ellis Act central.
The saga of 1049 Market Street — affordable live-work lofts populated by artists, photographers, and musicians near Civic Center — just took another turn, after the landlord there filed what activists say is the biggest Ellis Act eviction in the city's history to get the remaining tenants out.
Since the fall of 2013, an ownership group led by San Mateo County resident John Gall, a Stanford grad and former pro baseball player, has been trying to remove residential tenants from some of the 84 units at 1049 Market Street, a former commercial building that at some point, possibly in the wild bygone days of the 1990s, was converted — illegally — to residential use.
Gall has said that returning the building to its legal purpose of commercial use and converting the lofts to offices is the only way his investors' financials work out.
Now it appears he's taking the nuclear option, using the Ellis Act — a state law that allows a landlord to empty a building in order to "go out of business" and then sell it, albeit with restrictions — to get the tenants out, according to housing activists, who are planning a rally at the building for later today.
Posted
By Max DeNike
on Tue, Mar 8, 2016 at 11:01 AM
Mike Koozmin/SF Examiner
Supervisor David Campos says homelessness in San Francisco has reached a state of emergency. He is blaming Mayor Ed Lee for not doing enough to alleviate the problem, while calling on his colleagues on the board to take immediate action to help those living on the streets.
Campos’ move could create controversy for several reasons, not the least of which is the plan to build a shelter for alcoholics and one for intravenous drug users. As the San Francisco Chronicle reported, people would be able to drink and safely inject drugs at the respective sites.
This bombshell was paired with another report that outlined how the company had replaced U.S.-based customer service representatives (all contractors, of course) from U.S.-based "Centers of Excellence" — Uber's terminology — to cheaper contract labor based overseas.
Uber immediately dismissed the numbers and offered its own. There were only five complaints of rape between 2012 and 2015, and 170 "legitimate" complaints of sexual assault over that same time frame, according to the company. The reason for the vast discrepancy? People named Rape, people with the word "Rape" in their name (Like Don Draper, the company says) and people saying stuff like, "you raped my wallet."
BuzzFeed's screenshots purport to show 5,827 customer service tickets complaining of "rape," and over 6,100 tickets complaining of sexual assault. It was not immediately clear what time frame is covered.
Uber declined to allow a BuzzFeed reporter to sit with an Uber customer service representative to check the screenshots' veracity, citing privacy concerns, but insisted on five rape reports and 170 sexual assault reports over a three-year period.
Posted
By Chris Roberts
on Mon, Mar 7, 2016 at 7:00 AM
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Ed Lee/Facebook
Over the weekend, as our friends at SFist noted, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee appeared at a campaign rally in his native Washington state ahead of the March 26 Democratic Primary there.
Ed's choice: former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a friend-of-tech who of late has been a fixture in California, appearing at tony homes in the Peninsula for fundraisers (the Hillster graced Atherton on Feb. 21; her husband, cigar aficionado Billster, popped into Hillsborough earlier in the year.)
But, as past results have shown, this might not be an endorsement Hillary wants. When he was mayor, Gavin also endorsed Hillary — and how'd that turn out?