Neighbor Demece Garepis, the high priestess and Jedi grant-wrangler for the Precita Valley Neighbors, is asking Bernalese to stuff the ballot box vote online to help get a community information kiosk installed in Precita Park:
After our Precita Park Clean Up last month, we made a video showing our support for an information kiosk in Precita Park. Like the one on Bernal Hill, the kiosk is a community information board serving the needs of all neighbors – from preschool to meals on wheels. Now is our chance to vote for our Precita Valley Neighbors Community Kiosk! If we get enough votes, we can fund our kiosk through the San Francisco Parks Alliance Action Grants!
Click here then follow the links to VOTE FOR PRECITA VALLEY NEIGHBORS COMMUNITY KIOSK!!
Thanks!
Demece Garepis, contact
Precita Valley Neighbors
PVN even made a video to support the effort. Watch it now, before it takes home an Oscar in 2016:
PHOTO: Precita Park by Telstar Logistics
Bernalwood 
Seems like an OK idea although a lot of paper litter may be a side effect. Some more benches, aside from those in the playground area, would me much more useful I think.
sure why not? now that the commerce is spread out around the park, the park itself should have the board
Do these boards often get defaced? Maybe the one up on the hill works better because there is less traffic up there?
Will Campos not be allowed to put his political campaign posters on it? 🙂
WHY keep cluttering our parks with non-park things? John McLaren had it right when he buried statues behind trees and forbade a streetcar line in Golden Gate Park. What’s with all this “organizin” anyway? People who WANT to get involved will get involved. The rest of the folks just want to be left alone. Can’t people understand that? When I used to hang out at Precita Park it was because it was a quiet space that few people used. Now, that’s changed, but it’s still usable. But now kiosks? What’s next, Blue Bottle Coffee? Taco Trucks? Rock concerts?
then don’t read the kiosk and be perfectly left alone
Rock concerts?!?!? YES, PLEASE!
Another information micro-aggression.
HA! New favorite term “information micro-aggression.”
🙂
I don’t have any problem with the kiosk per se, & I appreciate the work folks put into making Bernal Heights such a lovely place to live. But is it the best use of resources?
Once I went to the site to see that it’s just one measly $5,000 grant & 18 finalists, I became interested in what other neighborhoods were requesting. In the end, I voted for the BRIDGE project to support 27 fruit trees as part of a community garden for those living the Potrero public housing. This project sounds like there’s a lot more bang for the buck, supporting healthy eating, exercise, skills development, an improved (less wasteful) water system, education. (This grant is just part of a larger project, so not trying to say that $5k will change the world.) In this age of information overload, and such a demand for funding wonderful community-driven projects, I just can’t see how an information kiosk could be at the top of anyone’s list.
This is a lovely and thoughtful suggestion–better for a community that really needs support that maybe they would not get otherwise. And such a project in Potrero has the added benefit of rippling out and potentially improving nearby areas. (A kiosk ends up being a piece of wood covered in plastic, paper, and thumbtacks.)
I also like the suggestion of having more benches around the park, as it has become even less enjoyable to detect a remotely clean place to sit down there. And benches probably make good neighbors more than a kiosk can. Maybe someone will actually look up from their phone to greet some local stranger who sits down next to them. (Sorry, I must be out of my mind.)
The proposed kiosk, though well-intentioned, seems to be just another trinket to add to Bernal at the expense of anything of potential community usefulness. I agree with David K on this one: People who want to get involved know where to go or who to talk to. If this were China in the 1980s, a community board where messages are hung has some real utility (though it could also land you in jail, so be careful what you post). But in the age of the Internet and in Precita Park–which is flooded on the weekends by young people who basically grew up online–it smells of quaint wastefulness swimming in a sea of it.
I wonder: If the kiosk does not receive the grant, can its fans just collect $5,000 and get it constructed in their vision? If you’re looking for funding, I strongly suggest you follow any neighbor who has been able to afford a home in Bernal in the past several years, since they may have Benjamins burning holes in their trousers, so much trifling pocket change.
I agree this kiosk idea is a truly inane use of $5000 in an era when everyone has smartphones for information access, and posters can be hung in many storefront windows. Really odd this got covered as it’s more or less embarrassing. There is one up at the hilltop park but there’s nowhere else to post anything there and its main use is for dogdoo bags.
YIKES! At the risk of side-jacking this thread…
Anyone who goes to the website to vote and considers other projects vs. the Precita one: PLEASE don’t vote for the Sutro Stewards project. They have a very misguided and destructive view of what should happen to San Francisco’s already tiny tree population. Details available. Sorry for digression. Carry on…
🙂